Hardest Spyro Games

Spyro the Dragon is one of the most recognizable mascots of the platforming genre, with the series becoming well known for its wonderful characters, emphasis on exploration, and difficulty, which can vary massively depending on the game. A good platformer will always be able to test the players' abilities without becoming unfair in the process, and while there were definitely a few Spyro games that felt a little more accessible to appeal to a wider audience, this certainly wasn't the case for all of them.

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As more titles were released, and brand new mechanics and minigames were brought into the fold, the Spyro games started to become much harder to finish, especially for anyone brave enough to find every collectible to get 100% completion. That isn't to say that the classic titles of the PlayStation era still don't have their unique set of challenges that make them pretty unforgiving. With that in mind, it's time to take a look at which games are considered the hardest, and why exactly fans regard them as being so brutal. It should also be noted that the first three games will be considered in their original forms as opposed to their remasters, as the originals are considered to be slightly harder overall.

6 Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly

Enter The Dragonfly's Level Design And Plethora Of Bugs Ramp Up Its Overall Challenge

Considering that it was the first mainline game not to be developed by Insomniac, Enter the Dragonfly was met with a lot of controversy upon its release, though many fans of the series have started to warm up to it over the years. What really lets it down is that there's a severe lack of innovation that prevents the game from standing out, and while it doesn't quite replicate the intense difficulty of the previous three games, Enter the Dragonfly is still far from a walk in the park.

The Ripto encounter can be a very tricky section of the game, especially during the final phase where it can be difficult to dodge his wide AOE attacks, but getting a 100% completion rate is especially difficult because of how frustrating it can be. Having to re-visit long and arduous levels like Honey Marsh can test someone's patience, and the plethora of bugs still in the game also add to the challenge, since it would be very common for enemies to not drop their Gems when they're supposed to.

5 Spyro The Dragon

The Original Spyro Has A Select Few Stages That Come With Pretty Intense Difficulty Spikes

The game to kick off this beloved series is fair in its overall difficulty, presenting just enough challenge to be considered relatively hard for anyone trying to finish the base game, especially those aiming to earn 100% completion. The lack of a hover feature does make a lot of the platforming much harder, and the fact that hub worlds will actually spawn enemies means it's hard to find anywhere truly safe while moving between areas.

Some levels feel drastically more difficult than others, especially Tree Tops, which many fans consider the hardest area in the entire series because of how tricky it can be to get used to the Supercharge mechanic. Spyro the Dragon might be a little easier than the other members of the original trilogy, but it can still ramp up the challenge considerably when it wants to.

4 Spyro: Season Of Ice

The Top-Down Camera Angle Can Make Season Of Ice Much Harder Than It Needs To Be

Season of Ice is Spyro's first adventure that wasn't on the PlayStation, instead being a top-down action adventure exclusive for the GameBoy Advance, which is an extremely fun game in its own right, despite how criminally short it is. Admittedly, the majority of the game is quite manageable, with a lot of the stage enemies being very slow and the environmental hazards only being tiny annoyances, but the game also has a few challenging moments due to some questionable design choices.

For example, the isometric view of the camera makes it extremely difficult to catch a perfect landing, something that can become very irritating on stages that are high up in the air with plenty of floating platforms. The Speedway minigame also presents a good optional challenge that ensures the experience never becomes a pushover for true completionists. Season of Ice starts pretty simple, but it still throws in plenty of tricky stages that even veterans of the series will struggle with.

3 Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!

Spyro 2 Contains Some Of The Most Arduous Bosses And Minigames In The Series

Spyro 2 didn't switch up much from the core gameplay of its predecessor, but one big change it did make was drastically ramping up the minigames and optional challenges. These small challenges are designed to provide the player with a quick break from the exploration and platforming sections of the main game, but Spyro 2 takes them to a whole different level. The escorting missions and Crystal Geysers are some of the most infamous examples of minigames that felt incredibly tough to take on, with all of them presenting at least a decent challenge.

The game also features what many consider the toughest boss in the series, the giant green creature known as Gulp who can use his green cannons to spew out projectiles at an alarming rate. This gives him a multitude of different attacks that he can deploy, making it extremely difficult to learn any kind of attack pattern, and when paired with a gigantic health bar, it results in a very tough fight overall. Spyro 2 provides a fantastic experience all around that always keeps the player on their toes thanks to its challenging difficulty.

2 Spyro: Year Of The Dragon

Year Of The Dragon's Adaptive Difficulty System Usually Goes A Little Overboard If The Player Performs Well

The third game in Insomniac's original trilogy features a unique system that was being introduced in many action and adventure games at the time, that being an adaptive difficulty system. It allows the game to monitor the player's performance to then either raise or lower the difficulty to provide the optimal experience, but despite this being designed to make things fair, it would still always throw a lot of hurdles at the player, unless they were performing extremely poorly.

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For example, if the player is performing well enough to be in the Normal or Hard difficulty range, the game will flood them with large hordes of enemies who can be quite overwhelming to take on, along with some downright ridiculous minigames like the Yeti Boxing, which almost feels unfair in how hard it is. If the player dies at least three times in a stage to set the difficulty to Easy, the game becomes a lot more straightforward, but it most definitely won't pull any punches on the higher difficulties.

1 The Legend Of Spyro: The Eternal Night

Eternal Night's Needlessly High Difficulty Gets In The Way Of An Otherwise Great Game

Eternal Night is quite a unique entry in the series as, despite being released in a fairly troublesome period full of controversial Spyro games, it turned out to be very good due to how well it managed to replicate the experience of the earlier games with its emphasis on exploration and puzzles. The biggest drawback for those who have played it is the difficulty, which can range from moderately challenging, to outright unfair on certain stages.

Not only are all the enemies far more aggressive this time around than they were in A New Beginning but there are also far fewer checkpoints, which can become a real problem very fast because of how long the fights can last. Spyro also feels very clunky in this game, especially when taking to the skies, which can make some of the platforming sections much harder than they need to be. It's also clear that Krome Studios decided to lean much more into the "action" gameplay with this game, meaning that when there's a room full of enemies, it's virtually guaranteed that at least another five groups are going to spawn right after, making every fight needlessly tough. It's a shame that The Eternal Night ended up turning away many players for its difficulty because, under the solid exterior, it is still a very fun game.

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