darkSpyro

I don't know about y'all, but Giants is my favorite installment in Skylanders franchise.

It has a great story line, unforgettable new characters, great gameplay, and high replay value.

IMO the other installments just don't seem to have the "depth" or charm that Giants has. They seem just thrown together and rushed.

Giants never fails to bring a smile to my face. Where as the other installments leave me wanting.

Agreed, I LOVE Giants! probably the one I play the most out of the series, the levels are LOTS of fun and it has a great storyline.

I'm still bound to this game as well as SSA. The latest two games, not as much. I continue to build my collection of green base and orange base figures for these games. Not only these games are cool, but I keep seeing many used oranges and greens at EB Games/Gamestop for $3 and $4 CAD (~$2.50 USD) and getting them all. I tried doing the orange base collection two years ago, but didn't get much success from the pricing and the same old hard-to-find irritation.

I like collecting orange and green bases too . I am backward buyer

Just regret never picking up ninjini, i have some form of every skylander between giants and ssa. Then i stopped, sort of outgrew it i guess but im playing again and its so much fun, and its great when i see threads like this because i feel like i didnt miss out on much from the other two games

i actually think giants is the worst

boring level design, least new characters, story pacing is meh, most features were done as good/better in sa or polished in later installments

i wouldn't outright call it bad though

it still has some merits like good lore, the best backwards compatability, a few nice environments and great pvp

but these days i never play/want to play it

I loved Giants, but also of the heroic Challenges. It gives quite a lot of gameplay and I still play it frequently

Favourite of all
In order of fav to least fav
1giants
2 Superchargers
3 swap force
4spyros adventure
5trap team

The toys themselves were awesome and so many cool variants and game ideas . Everybody wanted a polar Whirl Wind .

Light cores were invented , Battlepacks were invented . Sadly no adventure packs but your old adventure packs got an upgrade .

S2,s showed up which was great if you missed out on the green bases the first time .

Unlike the later gimmicks you only needed one Giant .

This was my favorite too! It just felt so... good!

Top 5 Lists
1. Spyros Adventure
2. Giants
3. N/A
4. N/A
5. N/A
I never played other ones, I just gave up after buying so many giants

GIANTS!!! My favorite, too. It's where I started. It's the only game I finished at 100%. The wow pows were the best. The game play was improved, great PvP and chapters, and Broc's battles were fun extras. Heroic challenges did get tedious, but wasn't it awesome to invest in a character and watch them kick butt something fierce afterwards!?

Second least favourite. I always found it boring after the story.

1. Swap Force
2. SuperChargers
3. Spyro's Adventure
4. Giants
5. Trap Team

I'm playing it atm. Still, I want to earn all the achievements before playing swap force.
Also, I have plenty of skylanders to play.
I'm in love with bash.

The only downside : the game is kinda slow. I played swap force a little bit and as far as I can say, the game is faster.

Agree!

Not only for the Giants, the new characters and the storyline. It has the best gameplay. It fits perfectly with the features of the previous game instead of ignoring it (like current ones), has PvP with elemental advantages/disadvantages and 4 different types of game, battle arenas (21 of them!), it keeps heroic challenges, and story levels are enjoyable and easy to re-play. And if you already had one skylander of each element from the previous installment, you didn't even need to buy anything else if you didn't want to, not like current games, that all are absolutely greedy money traps.

The only downside, as I previously stated, are the graphics and the frame rate of the PS3 version. If it would have kept those features from the first game, the game would be absolutely PERFECT.

If i have one itty bitty fault with Giants is too many variants of older characters.

Sure I get it , its a bit easier but all those S 2,s LC,s, Legendaries could have been channeled into making a couple extra giants or new cores .

I know this is most likely an unpopular opinion, but I think no game so far has reached the first two under many points of view.
Yes, I do consider Trap Team and Imaginators to be the best Skylanders game so far but Giants and SA were simply on another level.

Giants was basically a SA 2.0 and I never found it to be a bad thing: they took the best from the first game and improved it, while keeping a full compatibility with everything (if I remember correctly).
I really wish Skylanders 3 could have followed that path but instead we got a game which screams "LOOK AT ME, I'M NEW AND SHINY" yet lost some magic along the way.
And that says a lot since Giants is my least favorite TfB game overall, because of time restrictions of course but still.

I cannot look at jumping, fancier graphics and other innovations introduced by V.V. and say I don't like that, because it wouldn't be true but I still think the series lost a lot of identity (which Trap Team, also known as Giants 2.0 or even SA 3.0, thankfully managed to partially bring back) after SWAP Force.
It's not a complaint, I loved all the games so far and I think they are all memorable and well made for their own specific reasons, but I cannot avoid feeling like this.

Which is also basically my answer to the V.V. vs TfB dilemma: I only feel like playing Skylanders with games developed by the second team, no matter how fun, engaging and challenging the former's are.
That being said, I suspect a lot of my problems with the last three games were caused by Activision, even if we'll probably never be sure.

Hope this is the right topic to share this thought without attracting too much hate.

^This!

I totally agree with you, Drek95! It feels like the original spirit of Skylanders was lost after the two first games, like it's not the same anymore. Like when you play any Pokemon generation beyond red, blue, silver and gold, do you know what I mean? New games are enjoyable, but don't feel the same, it's like it's not really Skylanders anymore.

Despite of that, I really like how V.V. do the things, but they have very much to improve.

Quote: Halvmorke

^This!

I totally agree with you, Drek95! It feels like the original spirit of Skylanders was lost after the two first games, like it's not the same anymore. Like when you play any Pokemon generation beyond red, blue, silver and gold, do you know what I mean? New games are enjoyable, but don't feel the same, it's like it's not really Skylanders anymore.

Despite of that, I really like how V.V. do the things, but they have very much to improve.

Absolutely!

Moreover, I do understand that everything needs to evlove and change and that's exactly what I think TfB did with Trap Team and Imaginators, while SWAP Force and SuperChargers feel more like spin-offs of some kind, especially the latter despite the great plot and awesome level gimmicks.

Sometimes I think about where would this series be if V.V. never developed the third game or tried to stay closer to the first two games; was it all their "fault" or did Activision played a role in making the games change faster and having a unique identity?
I'm really curious to see what they have in mind for the seventh game.

Again, I still love this series and find it highly enjoyable, interesting and fun but... Different.

Giants was actually my first game. (Parents were too lazy to do research on sa so they said no) I don't like saying bad stuff about it because of that reason, it's special to me. However...
Yeah, it was bad.
The story was short, levels perhaps too easy. Forgettable NPCs, and just, a horrible plot. Also it added nothing new when I compare it to my copy of SA.
The giants had too little of a story. They were strong, but extremely slow, also they had no point due to the fact that they weren't needed for elemental gates. Just feats of strength.

Lemme finish Imaginators and I'll tell you if I still feel the same. I have a hunch that I will always love Giants the best, but right now I am having so much fun with Imaginators.

Totally agree with Drek and Halvmorke.

I feel the same, and I also agree with Drek and Halvmorke. People tell me it's just because Giants was my first game, but I think SSA and Giants had a style and feel that the newer ones no longer follow. Swap Force disappointed me because it felt a bit empty compared to the previous. That atmospheric feel of them is one of the main reasons I adore the series. Trap Team sort of brought that feel back for me which is why it's my second favorite game, but it quickly reverted back to how I felt with SC when it came around. It actually feels like a completely different world now, as the original had a lot more fantasy aspects. While revisiting the first two I think to myself, 'who thought there would have been vehicles as a gimmick 5 games in?'

But really Giants is my favorite because of that magical feel. The music, the textures, the designs and how it gave us a bigger look at the original version of Skylands. It used to feel a lot more diverse. I'll always miss that feel, and I sometimes feel a little sad that we probably won't be seeing it again. After beating Imaginators, I stand for this opinion even more. Don't get me wrong though, I still buy and play every game that comes out, but my view on the changes will likely remain throughout.

I only ever had the first two, but I did not like it as much as SA. I only liked it more when it first came out because of the hype, but the levels are not really that fun. The characters are really cool tho. I love the added characters for Giants. I just didn't like how short it was compared to SA and it's lack of fun levels to me, personally

I'm currently working on a review for the game, but I'll post my brief thoughts on it here:

Giants is a decent enough instalment, but it was too safe a bet for Toys for Bob after the ambitious Spyro's Adventure. What the story eventually builds up to is what I think should've been the focus, The enemy design was especially lazy; while there's new enemies to face and there's a few memorable toughies (the ambushes in the Elemental gates were a pleasant surprise), so many were made artificially more difficult with more waves of mobs, made even worse when many of those had invulnerability when attacking. I can't emphasise how much I hated that, and SWAP Force is a blighter for it too.

Having said that I did enjoy the Giants mechanic, or at least I do now because I'm not paying through the backside for them. I felt their potential could've been greater with Giant-equivilant boss battles ("You need a Giant to face Iron Slugger, Portal Master") or arm wrestling, but I suppose with it being the first attempt at Gimmicklanders TFB can be spared for not wanting to go overboard with them.

It's one of my least favourite instalments so far, but it has one thing going for it that no other game does: The Oracle. That level is a blast.

Giants is my favorite out of all the Skylanders Games.

I really liked the overall construction of the game and how the Gimmick wasn’t overpowering. The gimmick could certainly been expanded upon, but the ways they chose to do it in future installments.....I just don’t get it.

I’ve come to the conclusion that in general, players who like the theme, feel, and story of Skylands tend to like games like Giants and Swap Force more. Those who like the Portal Master and TTL concepts more prefer Trap Team And Imaginators. I’m starting to feel that if we are ever going to get some solid story and gameplay driven Skylanders games not despised by chunks of the fanbase, they are going to have to take this thing away from the TTL model.