darkSpyro

ANB isn't the best Spyro game in the world, in contrast, I think its the worst.
It takes out ALL the game-play elements that the series is unique from, and leaves a very dull gaming experience.

1. No challenges or puzzles (Guardian 3 minuet tutorials don't really count)
   
2. It contains the smalles amount of levels a Spyro game has ever supplied 5 (Compared to average of 20)
   
3. No collectables AT ALL (Gems turn from collectables, to life/mana/XP)
   
4. Totally Linear gameplay
   
5. No challenging death system
   
6. Gems turn from collectables, to life/mana/XP
   

Doesn't sound like much, but it's what makes the Spyro games Spyro games. And the lack of is what makes ANB a rejected platformer in Spyro-wrapper.

I mean as a stand alone game, its ok. But as a Spyro game... It's not a Spyro game, its just a game that just HAPPENS to have the same main-character as that Puzzler your so attached to.

The reason that there wasn't any collectables and gems were changed to different things is that this game is meant to be a reboot of the series. It's meant to be the beginning of a different series: The Legend of Spyro. This series and the original series are so different, I think they can be too difficult to compare most of the time.

Though I guess they did put collectibles in the second and third TLoS games. The Eternal Night had Scriber's Quills and health/magic relics that you had to collect to increase your max health/mana, unlike ANB where it automatically increased as you went through the levels (I think it was like that when I played on my friend's PS2 version anyway).

One thing I didn't like in TEN/ANB is that once you've completed a level, there's no going back. So if you get to a hard part you're basically stuck there for what seems like forever and a day frantically trying to beat that stupid part so you can go further. Plus in TEN if you missed a health/magic relic (the most obscure one being the very first one in the game, funnily enough) you could get quite stuck later on due to lack of health/magic. The original Spyro games were far more tolerable in this part, because if you got stuck somewhere, you could always go back and try and collect everything in another level until you felt confident enough to try and beat the hard part. I guess this is one of the things I liked more about the older Spyro games.

DotD has more collectables: it has clusters of experience gems around the level that you have to smash to get 100%. Unlike ANB, they only appear once. Even if you replay the level, it will not reappear once smashed. There are also pieces of armour to collect as well as special red and green crystals to give you more health and magic.

TEN and DotD were both a lot harder than ANB, if you'd like some difficulty. I've only played ANB a couple of times at my friend's house and I noticed that on ANB each enemy just took a couple of easy hits to kill, while I died multiple times in the first level of TEN.

Speaking of levels, I agree with you that there are less levels, but they're bigger than the levels in the original series. Though I guess more very different levels and having the freedom to choose which level to enter next had its advantages.