I got to the third world of Spyro the Dragon, and things are getting a bit more dangerous. I’m beginning to like collecting more and more. It’s just so nicely done!

The Magic Crafters

The Magic Crafters is a snowy mountain themed world, with appropriate level names. Enemies are mostly various types of mages. As usual, we have those that need to be charged, those that cannot be charged and need to be burned to death, but also those you can attack however you please, but are more dangerous in general, because they are more aggressive than the previous enemies.

The hub world had two thieves I needed to catch. One was just running around in a small circles, so all it took was proper positioning and flame breath. For the other one, I had to charge and cut a few corners, making it a really tight catch.

The thing I find weird about it is that I’m only in world three, but with the two eggs int he hub and one in Alpine Ridge, I only have 4 eggs left to retrieve. Even stranger, the High Caves level has another two eggs I need to retrieve, as indicated by the status screen.

I’m beginning to think the fifth world will be one of those short ones a lot of platformers have.

I’ve seen a few of these today.

Alpine Ridge took me to my first Game Over screen. There’s a lot of difficult jumps and pitfalls in that one, thanks to the mages moving stuff around with their powers. I took one too many wrong judgments and lost my last life. Luckily, Game Over simply means you start back at the hub world, with four lives remaining. No progress is actually lost.

Observations

There’s another flying level in Magic Crafters, called Crystal Flight. The dragon I rescued right in front of the portal to this level says that these levels are special areas where dragons learn to fly. I guess there’s an actual story to the levels, albeit a very light one.

This is where my “at home” session ended. The original plan was to play Spyro on my train ride, but I couldn’t keep myself away from the game. That’s the beauty of collectatrons – the urge to collect sticks with you.

The Magic Crafters, train session

On the train ride, I got back to Spyro after a break, so I had a fresh view on it. I still got to a game over screen by experimenting with jumps at Wizard’s Peak, though. I decided to give another level a go and went with Crystal Flight first.

Crystal Flight is the special flying level of world 3. I got used to the controls in world 2, so this one didn’t take nearly as long as Night Flight. The only thing to master here was the order and placements of the four object groups. Once that was memorized, it only took me a couple of tries to get through all of it without any mistakes.

After Crystal Flight, I went inside the Blowhard portal. This one confused me for a while. I went through it, rescued a single dragon and got within 25 gems of the final goal, but I couldn’t find the last 25 for the life of me.

Then I remembered, isn’t this supposed to be the boss level? Well, what happened was that something I that was a regular enemy was actually the boss. I was supposed to hit him once and then chase him around the level, but for some reason, he disappeared after the first hit, so I couldn’t find him anymore. Once I restarted the level, he was back in his place and this time, it worked. The boss of world 3 actually felt slightly easier than the one in world 2.

I wen’t back to Wizard’s Peak and after a couple of minutes, finally figured it out. My original idea to use the supercharge pads to give myself a boost and jump to distant platforms was correct, but the part I missed is that I’m not supposed to just supercharge off the edge. Instead, I had to jump right before the edge while supercharging.

Supercharging?

This world introduced two new abilities Supercharge and Super Flame Breath. These abilities aren’t new moves Spyro learns. Instead, there are special locations within the levels which allow you to temporarily use them.

It’s difficult to tell, but the yellow thing on the floor is an arrow indicating the ability to Supercharge.

For Supercharge, charging over special surfaces boosts the power and speed of your charge and gives you temporarily invincibility. With Super Flame Breath, a fairy gives Spyro a kiss and then his Flame Breath is stronger for a short while. I only encountered the second ability once, though. The Supercharge, however, appeared in several levels and was the main mechanic of Wizard Peaks.

The fairy gives Spyro a kiss, causing him to blush (?) and do a Super Flame Breath.

Back to Wizard Peaks

As I said, I figured out I was supposed to jump and that was all I needed to collect the final bunch of treasure and one last eggs in this level. With this last egg, I actually retrieved all the eggs in the game, if the status screen is to be trusted.

The hub level

Back in the hub level, I was missing 10 more gems, but my realization about Supercharge gave me a new perspective, so while attempting to use it to explore, I noticed a hidden platform over the waterfall lake. I used glide to get to it and found the locked treasure chest inside. Since I already knew where the key was, I had no trouble opening it. With that, the third world was completely cleared and I was able to go to the fourth.

Before that, though, there was one more thing.

Artisan world, secret level

One of the dragons I rescued told me I’m supposed to jump on the platforms near the waterfall in the Artisan world to get to a secret level. I used the balloonist to go back and did just that. it lowered the wall and opened a portal to the flight level of the first world.

The balloonist can also take Spyro to previous worlds.

This one was stranger than the previous two. I’m sure there’s a proper rout to follow in order to collect everything in the order the game tells you to, but I wasn’t able to figure it out. Instead, I destroyed four train wagons, flew through the nearby arc, then destroyed another train, flew through another arc and destroyed the final train.

After that, I spent some time destroying planes, before moving on to the remaining arcs and finally, destroying the 8 treasure chests.

As I said, I’m sure this isn’t the proper order of doing it, but it worked for me and I had plenty of time left once I was done.