darkSpyro

With the game now winding down, and game #4 almost upon us...it's time for reflection. So, weighing in on graphics, gameplay innovation, content etc...answer and provide details...

1. Was Swap Force a Solid Entry for the Franchise?

2. Did the Game Meet or Exceed Expectations on Gameplay?

3. Did the Game Meet or Exceed Expectations on Longevity?

4. What Changed that you Think Makes sense to Expound on in Future Games?

5. What Shouldn't Move forward in the Franchise that was Messed up?

6. What do you think for the future of the franchise?

1. Yes it was a really great game with loads on new characters!

2. Yes it met my expectations on gameplay with the new jumping ability.

3. Yes it did as the story is really long as well as finding every collectable and getting every star it the bonus missions, score mode challenges, time attack mode and arenas.

4. All of the new gameplay modes were a great edition to the franchise.

5. I would like for heroic challenges to return (or something to boost stats) but other that everything should stay.

6. I think the future is looking strong for Skylanders as long as it keeps up the fun and awesome experience in each entry.

1. Despite any negative feelings I have towards some of the changes in this game, I feel like it was a good game during the amount of time I was compelled to play it. Nice graphics and level designs made the story enjoyable to play. I also liked how the fight with Kaos's mom forced me to interact with the portal to beat her. I'd like to see some more of that.

2. Not sure about this one, but I'll say it at least met expectations. Jumping was just jumping. No penalty for missing a jump and no ability to attack while jumping. I disliked the change button controls. Older characters had button setups that allowed for powers to use two buttons at once. Now they ended up at uncomfortable angles in the new setup. I hope in the new game, they allow me to choose either the classic controller set or the new one. Other than those things, the gameplay was fun so I suppose you can take that for what it is.

3. For me, this game didn't meet my expectations for longevity. Lack of heroics gave me less to do. The portal master rank cap basically killed any desire to keep getting stars as they all became pointless. I got so tired of the game with insane to complete quests, lack of heroic stat boosts and no small amount of overall boredom that I put the game on the shelf for two months without feeling bad. That didn't happen to me in Giants.

4. I liked the arenas and bonus missions having an online score that I can compete with. The levels had that as well with a % complete. They made the arenas and all the different game modes more fun to play seeing if you could best another person's score. Online additions of any sort help these games.

The training ground dummies were a great help in deciding what powers to go with. You can use the diamond to get a lot of money, upgrade through a path and see what the damage numbers look like. Then it's not a pain to rest and try the other way afterwards. I also loved the new add on levels they did, I hope they make more of them for the next game.

I didn't have to start a new save file to get through nightmare mode! That was really cool of them as well.

Love that Camo got a S3 in this game. Give people like Boomer and Ghost Roaster a S4! I'd love to see them with a Wow Pow and path switching like Camo got!

Jumping was great, just give us the ability to attack and jump at the same time.

Most of all: beautiful graphics and level design! I hope they stay like that in game 4, even if they shorten levels to make more of them!

5. I guess I'll just list off what I'd like in the next game: Give me heroics back, I'm tired of slow characters. I'd rather have charms that make some things easier to do in the game like the Giants charms did, rather than the rather mediocre boosts some of these charms gave (+1 speed comes to mind).

Make the giants useful again with feats of strength and the breakable walls giants can knock down without a bomb (oh, and speed heroics so that they aren't so slow and useless in battles). Giants used to wreck levels on their own for a reason in the second game: they are huge and should be more powerful than the other characters. They shouldn't be a glorified oversized treasure key and useless in all other aspects of the game. I'd also say to keep this in mind for the swappers to keep them from becoming useless too.

Allow accolades to help a portal master rank as well as giving XP boosts when so many are done like in Giants. Look at how many characters we're going to have to level up to the new level cap! Don't make XP harder to get without the option to make it much easier when I just want to grind and level up a ton of characters at once.

I also miss the Luck-O-Tron to aid in the burden of leveling up so many characters as well as getting elemental power for quests. And speaking of quests: stop making them so gosh darned complicated! Like heck I'm going to play the same level 5 times PER life skylander just to get undead spell punks for their quests. At least heroics not only gave us stat boosts, but had most everything we needed to finish most quests for the skylanders in themselves alone! I have too many skylanders to go running around trying to finish ridiculous quests.

As I said in the past, I want to feel like the effort I put into things with this game is rewarded, as mentioned in the above items. I don't feel rewarded for my effort anymore like we did with heroics and the old accolades that made XP easier to get... and quests that gave us stat boosting hats instead of crappy HP upgrades.

And for the love of my sanity, if you give me cut scenes I can't skip and annoying people like Rufus and Gorm I have to listen to without skipping as well, I will find where you people live and... mail you all some very strongly worded letters!

6. For me, I honestly think game 4 will make or break the series for me. I think the Skylanders will be around for a while to come, but depending on what it added, deleted and not returned to us in the game, I may not be there to see the future. As many improvements as we were given in Swap Force, they also did a lot to sour me on the series. I want the connection back with my characters that I had in Giants. A lot of the stuff written above connected me with my favorite characters.

Also, I feel like they are focusing too much on the toys and less on the game these days. I think that mentality will run the franchise into the ground. We don't need 80 characters for the release along with 20+ variants to chase after when the game itself doesn't feel as rewarding to play. Make the game compelling to play all the time and I'll want to get new figures just to keep playing! Instead it feels like they focus on the figures with the hopes I'll keep buying and replay the same old game with the figures I just spent money on. Give us a good game and you'll see more people willing to pay for more figures I'm sure!

1. Can't really judge that against only two other games,but for all intents and purposes,it's a Skylander game like the rest. Not a good one but it was still a thing.

2. ...Most of the time? With all the unnecessary nerfs and the ridiculous aversion to speed upgrades,it feels like they decided to favor new characters for PVP, but there wasn't anything completely broken for story mode that wasn't done already with the other games. Though the jumping mechanics couldn't have been more unncessary, since you still have jump pads most of the time.

3. Make levels longer but make less of them? Nope,still the same as Giants but more tiring as far as I can tell. There's a lot more replay value, that's for sure, but it doesn't mean that it's still not boring to play 30 minutes of a level every time instead of 10 or 15.

4. Graphics are definately going to get more attention from newer fans, and - for the 3DS version - I like how they're trying more and more song styles for levels. Otherwise, they should go back with a lot of odd and kind of silly choices.

5. Dumbing down the plot, horrid character portrayal, DON'T BRING BACK THE PRIMARY COLOR DREAD-YACHT FOR THE LOVE OF EON, stuff that comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere with a lot of level stories, trading heroic challenges and speed upgrades for stuff you probably don't need anymore with your OP character. Oh yeah, and changing the controls and giving no option to have them in more confortable positions.

6. Still seems pretty bright. They have/had plenty of time to go back where they did things wrong, and with the things that went right they can keep 'em in place. Can't say for how long that will last,but I hope it's a lot.

Quote: GhostRoaster

With the game now winding down, and game #4 almost upon us...it's time for reflection. So, weighing in on graphics, gameplay innovation, content etc...answer and provide details...

1. Was Swap Force a Solid Entry for the Franchise?

2. Did the Game Meet or Exceed Expectations on Gameplay?

3. Did the Game Meet or Exceed Expectations on Longevity?

4. What Changed that you Think Makes sense to Expound on in Future Games?

5. What Shouldn't Move forward in the Franchise that was Messed up?

6. What do you think for the future of the franchise?

1. To me, yes.

2. it kinda fell flat.

3. we still don't know. *cough* jadefirekraken *cough*

4. the graphics and tessa.

5. riptide. if he gets a repose, then that will be a waste of shelf space.

6. with toys for bob coming back, anything is possible

1. I would say so. Though I can't help but feel VV tried to glorify their characters. So many of them are way over-powered. They also got idle animations and that face expression thing. Nerfing some of the old Skylanders ticked me of as well( Tree Rex, they nearly ruined him for me), I am happy that some got buffed though (Sheep Burner Spyro). I hated how they lowered stats (Especially speed), and got rid of Heroics.

2. For me, it was in the middle. I don't swap that much, when I do, it's mostly Free Kracken and that's it. Swap Zones could have been more explorable. I liked how every few chapters had it's own "gimmick" like rail riding or the jumping mini-games in Iron Jaw Gulch.

3. They did, I still play it most of the time still now. The level design is really,really great. Iron Jaw Gulch, Mudwater Hollow, and Tower of Time give off a very SSA feel. Characters are still fun to play as, I still mostly play as my favorites though.

4. Graphics, they look fantastic, and they can only get better from here. Jumping is something I had been asking for since even before Spyro's Adventure came out. I'm glad is finally here, they got creative with how some of the characters jump. I love Bash's flip. They just need to let you attack while jumping.

5. Bring back Heroics, they may have been time consuming, but they were worth it. Buff old characters a bit as well (TREE REX!!!!)

6. Skylanders has a LONG life ahead of it, if Acti allows TfB and VV to experiment (Which is seemingly does). You can tell TfB and VV (To some degree) really genuinely cares for the franchise deeply and since they do I can see Skylanders go on for a long time. I, in all honesty, hope someday it gets a internet following like Pokemon does today. I can see it now "Skylanders is a MAN'S toy" or "But does it go BOOM?!". I also hope that Skylanders will get a bit darker (Which in my opinion has been doing), but I've gotten on about this before, so I'll won't talk about.

1. Yes, it had it's ups and downs but the characters were amazing.

2. Okay gameplay, worst yet so far imo.

3. Nope, hard to find something to do.

4. Jumping and Portal Master ranks. Oh, and sharing money systems.

5. The terrible glitches.

Console version

1. For as much as I hate on it, objectively, yes. To me, personally, no, it's my least favourite console 'landers game so far. It ruined several of the things I liked best about the older games and ended up feeling much less special to me.

2. At the absolute worst, it's "good enough". The gameplay is actually really solid. I appreciate several new features a lot like Time Attack, and the controls in general feel smooth, which is great. The new levels are mostly pretty good purely in terms of level design. I like a lot of the new Skylanders. Most of them have at least one creative concept, be it in gameplay or design, to help them stand out.

3. I squeezed plenty of hours out of it, but it's repetitive. I guess that could apply to all Skylanders games but it feels worst in SF to me because doing Quests just feels unrewarding compared to Heroics. There are Survival Arenas now, but the Arenas in Giants were basically the same, so I don't count those as being new, but there are more of them than the Giants ones, and their level design is better, even if they lack the same personality, so they're an improvement. I don't care for Score Attack, but Time Attack is GLORIOUS because I love speedrunning(but there is sill dialogue in levels in Time Attack- WHY? That's dumb when you'll want to keep replaying it to get the best score). Multiplayer sucks to me, though, they improved co-op but I never cared for co-op and there are so few Battle Mode arenas it's just pathetic. I haven't tried multiplayer survival.

4. The obvious graphics and other stuff like improved level design etc., which I'm confident are going to stay around. But honestly, I'd rather see them put a bit more focus back to other things, too. I guess I'd like to see TFB get more experimental with Skylanders' gameplay like VV did with certain ones, such as Wind-Up. Also I like being able to access extra modes like battle made from the pause menu, and being able to switch to Nightmare in an existing save. I think SWAP Zones should be kept somehow in future games. They don't have that much longevity, though still a fair bit, and they can help to add a bit of variety. My favourite are the Dig and Rocket Zones. The only ones I dislike are Spin and Stealth Zones, because the former just feels horrible to control and the latter is just kind of boring to me. Honestly, the only thing I hate about SWAP Zones is that so few Skylanders an play them. I'd love to fly through a Rocket Zone with Spyro- and it's disappointing that there's nothing explaining why I can't. So I'd like them to keep something similar to SWAP Zones, but possibly more accessible, in future games. Optional minigames to do stuff aside from the main game and beating up enemies. Not forced minigames like the turret ones that have been in all the games, which in my opinion are really boring if they go on for too long. Also, a little thing, I like how if Giants jump near an enemy from a decent height that they deal 50 damage.

5. Bewarned, if you have not played the game, this section contains spoilers: STORYTELLING. THE STORYTELLING IN SWAP FORCE SUCKS. There's no magic in the game any more. Characters completely ignore you- the Portal Master- and talk to your Skylander every time instead. That's not how it should be. It should be like SA, it made the game much more special, and gave you more attachment to the story, and it was just much more unique and cool than the generic story they made in SF. The only exception is Eon, and Kaos' Mom at the end- and they reaaaally shoehorned in the latter. Speaking of Kaos' Mom, PLOTHOLES are a problem with SWAP Force's story: why can she go in her Portal just fine? And how does removing your items from your Portal get her out of there? Also, this one isn't quite a "plothole", but the villains know you're in one spot and know where you are and never attack you... It's a small thing, but it really bothered me throughout the game... It's lame. Plus, it just seems that there's very little interesting, fleshed-out lore behind Cloudbreak. There's some concepts for lore, and they're interesting, but never really given depth. I can't pinpoint why but it feels like it wasn't really in a good "left ambiguous" way, perhaps just because of the way I see the rest of the story.

In general, SF's story just feels too silly as well, it doesn't take anything seriously, so it never feels like there's any real danger. Silliness is fine, Giants pulled it off and still managed to feel darker than SA or SF, but SF went overkill. EVERYTHING in the game is silly, and if the game takes itself seriously it just falls flat because everything else is so over-the-top, and it's completely forgotten later too. Even with the villains, it feels like many of them were put in just to have bosses, rather than being properly given backstory, etc. Look at Mesmerelda. Gone as quickly as she appears. SF cares most about the new shiny graphics and new Skylanders and has those features glorified, while everything else aside from the actually-really-good level design is left kinda half-arrrred. Also, Quests suck, especially when compared to Heroics, but I'm not going on about that again. Some old characters also got RIDICULOUS nerfs and need to be fixed in the next game(Sprocket has become an inferior Grilla Drilla, Boomer's charged ground slam actually does LESS damage than it did before when it was never that powerful, Prism Break is just too clunky to use and doesn't deal enough damage in general, Tree Rex has been ruined and has little feeling of force now, Slam Bam cannot freeze the other player in Battle Mode), while a couple of new characters (namely Bumble Blast) should be nerfed slightly, and other new characters (like Grim Creeper, and Slobber Tooth, and Rip Tide) also feel underpowered and deserve a boost or two. The Skylanders should be more balanced to encourage picking different ones. Some like Prism Break and Spooky Spectre Grim Creeper are simply unusable in SF. (I've heard S2 Prism Break is better than the other versions, but you shouldn't have to buy a particular version of a character if you want them to be decently powerful.)

I can't really think of anything else or be bothered to write more at the moment, although if I nitpick end I could find more stuff that I think should be fixed. However, if I have to nitpick to find an issue, it's probably not that important. Ohh, actually, one last thing: GET RID OF THE UNSKIPPABLE CUTSCENES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LEVELS. I'm not talking about the loading screen ones which you can skip, I'm talking about ones like the one at the start of Motleyville where you need to watch Sharpfin walk out of jail, the one at the start of Cascade Glade where you have to watch Tessa explain Gobble Pods, the one in Mudwater Hollow where you have to listen to Snagglescale talk about tube bridges and piranhas and then you need to fish- they're short, but once you've replayed the levels over and over, seeing them becomes annoying, and if you just want to play a short session they get in the way. There's no point to them. It baffles me that they're still in these games, especially after Giants did such a good job letting you skip most stuff. Really, we should be able to just completely turn off cutscenes so that we don't have to bother with them when we don't want to at all. Also, NO RUFUS EXPY IN THE NEXT GAME, PLEASE. I know I'm complaining about a lot and barely saying "this is excusable"- but I don't know what VV actually decided to put in and what was Acti's fault, so I'm not going to blame either for this stuff nor excuse them, because it could have legitimately been VV screwing up that caused some of these issues or pressure from Acti and I'll never know. I'm just pointing out stuff I see in the game. For the record, I actually have a small collection of VV games, and I've been a fan of them since I played SSA on the 3DS when it came out. I'm not trying to just hate on them. I'd love seeing a Skylanders game with VV's game design and TFB's storytelling style.

3DS version

1. I guess? It was much better than Giants, at least, so there's that.

2. I guess it met them? I didn't really have very high expectations for this game. I hated playing Giants so I was expecting to dislike SF. Heck, I actually enjoyed parts of this game a fair bit as you'll see if you read the post I liked to above, so I guess you could say it exceeded my expectations, but I really didn't have any. I mostly got the 3DS version because I knew it would have an exclusive more than because I wanted the game.

3. No. I didn't even clock 50 hours on it, because the console lock-ups it's caused have driven me to stop playing it. That's quite low for me. I clocked more time on Giants- around 60-ish hours- and I disliked that game because it bored me so much. Fun fact, actually, I just had a really weird dream where my 3DS locked up and then bricked because of this game. (I've clocked over 2000 hours on my 3DS, have StreetPass data that took ages to collect and a fair number of downloads, and it's my favourite console, so it would be devastating to lose it.)

4. I can't think of anything in particular. In general, SF on the 3DS was much better than Giants, although it's still nothing outstanding... So I'd like to see the next game get better too so that we can have another really great 3DS Skylanders game someday.

5. I'm probably alone on this but I don't like the Skylanders selection screen because it's a big middle finger to the lore of Skylanders and was never given a good explanation. I agree that there should have been more slots to hold Skylanders than just two, but there should have been a good explanation for it. Besides that, it just makes the game too easy, because if you have just a few Skylanders registered the game isn't so hard you'll have to worry about losing all of them. Usually on the hardest levels on the hardest difficulties you'll lose 2-3 Skylanders but as long as you aren't careless it isn't hard to solo them either. Also, the story in general need to be improved. It's really lacklustre, while not awful, there aren't any memorable characters or moments or lines and pretty much no memorable original lore.


6. I don't really care what happens, and I don't really care about speculating on it. If it keeps going forward, I have the choice of wether I want to play the games. If it dies, then I've still got several good games, and I had a good run with it. If it counts, I'd like to see them toss bones more often to non-US countries in the future. I feel like AU, at least, has been shafted lately, we're still waiting for Wave 4, and I know NZ is even worse off in terms of releases. We also still don't have Legendary Night Shift and no hint on how to get Quickdraw or the Giantkicks, and I doubt we're ever going to see Royal Double Trouble at all. Also, less important, but we miss out on tons of rare variants that are easy to get in the US. I don't want to see too many more of those cases as more figures are made.

I personally loved the game, but all I ask is for better reposed characters, longer gameplay and having all cut scenes allowed to be skipped immediately.

Swap Force was a solid entry.

with that said, certain elements in it were BAD for the series. Namely, I 'personally' am at a break point for characters vs content. SF left alot to be desired, simply because trying to level so many characters to level 20 is way too much 'redo', it gets to a point where I avoid trying to three star stuff when I go through it, even though my natural inclination is to 3 star everything on the first play.

So the game didn't entertain as long as I'd hope, my wife didn't like it which truncated that further.

At this point, I will NOT be getting SL4 on launch, and will wait to see how much content there really is.
- Unreall

We need reposes that are totally different so its unique but also keeps the old reposes of that character unique.

1. I honestly think that it is. It has great gameplay and a very interactive story just like Giants and Spyro's Adventure. Granted SSA was lengthier, but the length of this game made up for it in content, not just levels.

2. The game definitely exceeded my expectations! I thought it might have been like a shorter SSA, but it was completely different.

3. The game met my expectations, but didn't exceed them. It sure is long, but I think it might be too long. What with 80 being the maximum rank, I'm at 77 after having this game for like 4 months; I think the game is too long and too expansive.

4. I think the game should expand more on the individuality of the new characters. One of the things I really disliked about this game, was when leveling up, a lot of the characters said something revolving "Power Blast"

5. The minigames. ESPECIALLY fishing, I feel like fishing makes Mudwater Hollow last 3 times longer than it should. Some of the others are ok, like the Rafting, that's not so bad. The grinding was always really cool and I also really liked the turret challenge in Boney Islands

6. I think the future of Skylanders seems pretty bright thanks to this great installment in the series

1. Yes, Swap Force continued the tradition of a whimsical journey to save Skylands as well as improving upon the mechanics of the previous games. The Swap Force gimmick was also a left-field idea that proved to be a fantastically executed one.

2. It exceeded the LOW expectations that Giants had left me with by being a fun game.

3. The Skylanders series will never have enough content to justify the price of each figure. It's slowly becoming an accepted reality.

4. Skylanders being able to jump makes perfect sense. I don't know what strange force made them stay on the ground in the past two series but it left the movement feeling limited.

5. I don't think the story has reached anything gameplay wise that shouldn't return. The story, however, needs to be worked on preferably by not having Kaos.

6. The series will eventually implode and no one will care for it after a few more installments.

Also a few extra things I dislike.
The awful Wow-Pows.

• Super Gulp Pop Fizz
  
• Heavy Duty Sprocket
  
• Hyper Beam Prism Break
  

They just feel like a waste. Why repose them if the Wow-Pow is awful? They are meant to be improved. he rest of the Wow-Pows are just decent while Turbo Jet-Vac's was good and Thorn Horn Camo's is the only amazing one.

I preordered Swap force and I still haven't finished it!

1. I think it was. To me, it was a welcome improvement over the last two games.
   
2. It did meet my expectations. I actually found the levels more fun to play than in the previous games, and the new features all are great. I also love a lot of the new characters.
   
3. It was long enough for me. The longer levels along with the extra modes and a Portal Master Rank all add to a nice replay value.
   
4. The jumping ability, along with the new modes.
   
5. I'd like Heroics to come back, or something similar to it at least. It's not too great having only hats, quests, treasures and charms to boost stats, especially since the latter two are tied to your save file. Also, I may not be a Wii player anymore come June, but if I still am, then I hope they work out the bugs and freezes for the next Wii installment. I could deal with it in SF, but it would be nice to have an experience with less bugs.
   
6. I think the future still looks good for Skylanders, as this was a great game that was much better than the last. I think the series will still be successful if they can manage to retain a fun experience with new improvements in each game.