darkSpyro

It's no secret that I'm not a TFB fan. Giants nearly made me drop the series and Trap Team made me hate Activision with a passion for the Trap Master-only gates; and pretty much the only thing I liked about it was the trap gimmick.

So, I skipped this game for a while because I got Breath of the Wild instead. But with a lack of other things I wanted for Christmas, I ended up getting Imaginators, finally. I had low expectations - despite the DLC you still can't make dragon-style Imaginators, I've heard the game is near-impossible to play with old characters, and most of all, it's made by TFB.

But I'm four story levels in and... I'm actually having a good time? First impression was that enemies have way too much health (even using Senseis), but the bosses were the perfect difficulty if I'm not using Imaginators (in which case they're too easy). Now that I've played a while, the regular enemy encounters are actually fun. Yes, the enemy encounters are fun. I haven't said that about TFB enemy encounters since SSA, where the main fun was setting up the more difficult combos, like using Whirlwind's clouds to best effect. And similar to SSA, my characters are actually feeling distinct. I actually have to watch the health of a couple of them, while others are tanks. Not sure if this'll go away as they level more, though.

I think a huge part of this, though, is the lack of elemental areas within levels. No more am I poking around, finding a secret area, only to get smacked in the face that I need to spend money on a character I don't even like to get in. And this happening several times a level. Now, at worst, there's a shrine I can't do anything with. All I'm really missing from that is an animation and a little bit of progress towards a bonus Imaginite Chest. Yes, there's Elemental Realms in M.A.P., but they feel the same way as the level packs in previous games - a bonus level you can purchase if you want rather than a roadblock preventing you from 100%ing another level.

Plus there's the fact that the Racing Mode unlocks stuff I couldn't access in Superchargers by default. I was able to unlock most of it in Superchargers, but was never able to find a good deal on the Land Racing Pack or Nightfall (as I got Sea Shadow separately). Now I have access to the tracks and upgrades that I couldn't get in Superchargers. Still no one online, though.

Will this be my favorite Skylanders game? No. VV games are still uniformly better. But it may just be my favorite TFB Skylanders game since the original.

The story is gonna get worse. Way way worse. It'll be bland and uninteresting. The first five levels are pretty good but after that bleh. The senseis are good for what they are including imaginators. I'm not gonna list thing after thing about WHY this game is the worst in the franchise. But hey someone actually agrees with me about TFB and that VV are the better devs so there's that I guess

Hey there are good levels afterwards, at least for the first run. Dragon Temple has a meh story but I still stop to look at the pretty decoration and I have fun with the enemy encounters.

Not even worried about the story at this point. It's already just "go here. Why? Because Kaos is here, that's why!" and Kaos being evil because that's what he does. Doesn't even have his usual tier of plan where he almost succeeds - he's looking pretty incompetent.

What's really standing out is the combat being just about the right difficulty on whatever Medium is called this game, and the fact that TFB is taking VV's lead and putting in various minigames throughout the levels other than just lock puzzles. Additionally, for the first time since SSA, Kaos feels like he has the same powers you do, since he's creating Doomlanders with the same parts you can make Imaginators from.

Also decided that since I reached the halfway point, it's probably time to do the Adventure Pack I have: the Crash one. Oh wow. VV one-upped TFB in their own game. It was like I wasn't even playing Skylanders: just a Crash game with the occasional Skylanders combat section, lock puzzle, and Skystones. And even the difficulty is there, because I could not get Crash's and Cortex's Soul Gems the first time through. Makes me wish the N-Sane Trilogy was on Wii U so I could play it.

Alright, I'm glad you're enjoying the game, Ladala. I agreed with a lot of your points and if you like Adventurer (medium-equivalent difficulty), once it starts getting too easy for you, you can really stretch how long you like that difficulty setting by trying retro Skylanders on it before going to Expert. Not all of them are very good, but I've found some (like Series 3 Blitz Spyro, Spitfire and Cannon Ball Runner Ka-Boom) are good choices. Also, you can make a dragon style Imaginator if you don't mind it being a serpent-style one and not a quadruped.

Quote: SkyFan91

But hey someone actually agrees with me about TFB and that VV are the better devs so there's that I guess

Make that two.

The game is not bad, i played it myself and the skylanders npc are pretty cool i just think that people are saturated from the games themselves, the prices are quite hight for the "dlc" we get and lets not forget how weak older skylanders had became

I am curious about the older characters. I've heard about how they're basically useless, and while I haven't experimented in actual combat, it doesn't seem to be the case for all of them.

When I did the whole put-every-Skylander-on-the-portal-to-add-them-to-my-collection thing, I had several of them aim a few attacks at the training dummies to see how much damage they did. Most of them seemed to be doing the same amount as the Senseis normal attacks. There were a few oddities, like Trigger Happy only doing 10 damage per hit at a low fire rate in comparison, and Tree Rex having almost no range with his standard attack, but most of them seemed decent. Especially Spyro, with his 70+ damage per hit at about the same rate of fire that Senseis were doing a little over 30. And this is normal, S1 Spyro down the Sheep Burner path, at that.

Maybe their weaknesses show up better in battle though. Or perhaps it's because I was comparing many who were fully-upgraded to Senseis that were barely upgraded.

well they keep buffing spyro sheep burner every single game so spyro is pretty strong

rip blitz spyro 2011-2013 the devs sure gutted him

on most old skylanders is just better to play at easy or normal max or enemy take forever to die

Quote: SkyFan91

The story is gonna get worse. Way way worse. It'll be bland and uninteresting. The first five levels are pretty good but after that bleh. The senseis are good for what they are including imaginators. I'm not gonna list thing after thing about WHY this game is the worst in the franchise. But hey someone actually agrees with me about TFB and that VV are the better devs so there's that I guess

so a game that has never had to much emphasis on story to begin with has a game that is bad because of a bland story?

I don't care what Kaos is doing, I just want to punch him with my newly bought skylander

Yeah, but it's good to have a reason. There was more impact when he actually wins or does a lot of damage and it was treated as such, not as 5 seconds of panic then 'yeah we have a mcguffin for this let's fix it already'.

Buuut with the TV show I have more than enough of the Kaos fix, so it's not that big of a deal now. Well, if there was a game to compare Season 2 to.

The bosses are so boring and uncreative. After the great boss fights in Trap Team, it was a big dissapointment.
The story is really meh ... They wanted to make a "Skylanders Academy" story, but it never reaches the great writing and twist of the serie.
Spyro, Stealth Elf, Eruptor, Jet-Vac, Kaos, Glumshank ect are better written characters in Skylander Academy as in Imaginators.

I've only found the old characters to be useless on the harder difficulties. Basically medium is hard for them, hard is nightmare, and nightmare is impossible. Whereas with the imaginators you need to be on nightmare to have any sort of challenge. Senseis are obviously what the game is most balanced around, since with them easy is actually easy, medium is actually medium, etc.