darkSpyro

First off, a disclaimer: I do not intend to speak for every Skylanders fan or player of the 3DS version in this letter. As a matter of fact, if there were an account of an n-Space employee on this forum(or, in the case that there was one I didn't know of, I did know that they were here), I would have just sent them this within a Private Message. I also do not intend to say that n-Space did not put effort into Giants, nor demand they follow my thoughts(they're the dev team, I've never even worked with a Raspberry Pi). Anyway.

For a straight year and a half, I have been playing Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure on my 3DS. Vicarious Visions really put a lot of effort into it, and it's a wonderful, well-polished game, reeking with charm. Whenever I want to level up a Skylander I always jump right to this game, not even the console versions, or sometimes I'll even come back and play it with my favourites just to beat some time records, or just for fun. I think that it really is beautiful, and I can see myself playing it for years to come. I was looking forward to the sequel.

But n-Space were making it? Well, I don't really like Heroes of Ruin, and neither does the fifteen second trailer interest me much... But I'll give the game a shot anyway, since I already have all these Skylanders and it's not that much more compared to what I'll eventually spend.

Oh, the game is out... Yeah... I didn't really like it much. I'll get to why later- but anyway- it DID eventually grow on me. I ultimately prefer Vicarious' efforts, but Giants is a good game too, and to me levels such as The Windy Dunes, Westernland and Ships Ahoy are very well themed and I actually frequently return to them. The addition of being able to disable Time Challenges is also VERY welcome, and the wider levels give the game a different playstyle, which I think should change every year to keep it fresh.

But then there's the problem... Oh, how problematic it is. The game makes bugs snug in a rug, which is to say, it's riddled with glitches.

I know that I am not alone in this case. I don't know if every glitch I mention affects every copy either, and those of you without any are in for a treat. Simply check any Metacritic professional review- almost all of them mention that the game lags upon a batch of certain areas. Upon finishing a level occasionally some trigger (? I can't figure out exactly what it is) will occasionally make the end recap sporadic and glitchy. Time records are often reset to 0:00 or spazz out and change to another level's(which direly upsets me, as I love competing for the best time). Sometimes the game will cause an error and force a system reset(often after sporadic end recap, it's happened five times to me in 90 hours). Something that I have found consistent on my copy's three files is that The Pit and Coldburn from Dragon's Peak and Empire of Ice have a problem with telling between wether you have the Time Challenge set or not.

Now, occasionally I will let interruptive bugs slide, even major ones if they can be avoided. But these glitches are not just "once or twice", at least in my case. The lagging becomes unbearable with how often it occurs to me, the Adventure Pack levels I mentioned, which are some of my favourite in the game, are near unbeatable thanks to their glitch, and the game's hatred of storing time records correctly has made one of my favourite pastimes stuck in the past(ba dum tss).

I feel like I have understated that I respect the work that has gone into Giants, and admire n-Space's effort on it. But I also want to make a plea. That Giants' issues be fixed in Swap Force. The problems with Giants have made me wary of what will happen in the next 3DS games, and I am not asking to go back to Spyro's Adventures' style just for the sake of it, but I want to see the mistakes in Giants be corrected. I don't really know how to word this last part... I only wish to see n-Space, keep on moving forward the levels the way you are, but please, correct the mistakes of Giants. And I will have faith that you can outdo it, maybe even Spyro's Adventure.

A personal request from a single fan, who loves the 3DS games, Nibelilt.

Um, the Spyro's Adventure 3DS game is decent at best. The levels all feel the same. You run from point A to B, jump on small platforms that don't really challenge you, and you have to do so in a hurry, or Hektor starts shooting his stupid lightning bolts at you, negating any attempts at exploration. In other words, Spyro's Adventure 3DS is a linear as a hallway action game, in my opinion.

Giants on 3DS was far better. The platforming on the game was incredible, and as a platforming genre aficionado, even I was falling from some of the platforms, and I consider myself to be an expert at the genre. The levels felt different and I didn't feel like I was tied to a straight line. Every other level didn't feel like hallway > waves > hallway > waves > hallway > next area > hallway > waves > hallway > waves > hallway, etc.

The only thing I would ask an N-Space employee, is to make sure to make the framerate better, as Giants kinda ran choppy at times. Other than that, I would tell them nice job, and here's hoping Swap Force is just as fun as Giants was on 3DS. No more hallway action games with a time limit for this Skylanders fan.... please.