E3 2019: Hands-on with Spyro Reignited Trilogy on Switch

Spyro Reignited Trilogy is coming to Switch and it is good, having had the chance to play it at E3, before it was announced, I was a little worried that it might be a watered down port, with just how good the game looked on the other consoles, thankfully, there is no reason to be concerned. 

Picking up one of the Switch consoles that Activision had on hand, I was prepared to have some long load times and basic graphics, but playing it in handheld mode, I was honestly shocked at how fast it loaded and how nice it looks. The menu has been redesigned for the Switch, now all three games appear on screen at once, with the background and picture of Spyro changing to suit the selected title, it is a small change to be sure, but one that I think works really well for the system. After swapping back and forth between the menu, I jumped into Spyro: Year of the Dragon. 

The game took the longest to load here, now I can’t say for sure if it was due to being a dev build or machine, or if it is always going to be that way, but while I say it took the longest here, it was still a short time, only around 25 seconds. Once in the game though, I did not notice any perceptible lag or frame drops, it ran quite smoothly and looked just as nice as you might expect, which is a testament to the art design that the original studio, Toys for Bob, used and while you can easily see a drop down in visual quality, compared to the PlayStation 4 version, it still holds up quite well. 

Running around the world was nice and smooth, the same actions were available, jump, glide, run and bash, blasting fire and rolling in either direction. The enemies were always visible, as long as there was no large mountain or other such structure in the way. In fact I hardly noticed any sort of pop up on the game, which again was quite the surprise, but as I was not that familiar with Year of the Dragon, I quit that and went back to Spyro the Dragon. 

The opening level of the first game, is perhaps the most basic of all, lots of open plains, green grass and a smattering of evil sheep, all waiting to be explored and toasted. The games audio was something I tested out here, it was clear and loud, even off the built-in speakers, so appears to be no drop in quality, though again, playing on a dev machine is always a little different than the one you or I own already. 

Spyro Reignited Trilogy on Switch is something I heartily endorse, it plays very well, looks a real treat, but more importantly, keeps the same feeling that the original release provided. How it plays when docked is something I am keen to see, but for now, September can’t come soon enough.

Spyro Reignited Trilogy is out September 3rd on Nintendo Switch.