10 HARDEST Levels in Spyro Games

10 Hardest Levels in Spyro Games

Welcome to MojoPlays, and today, we’re taking a look at the 10 most difficult levels across the “Spyro” games.

Fireworks Factory

“Spyro: Year of the Dragon” (2000)

To be honest, Fireworks Factory isn’t all that bad to play through casually. The big reason why it even ends up being hard is because of the boss fight with the Twin Dragons. See, whenever you land a hit on one of the dragons, they lose a segment of their body. However, they will also move around the stage a lot faster than before. Take too long to land another hit, and they’ll regenerate. Yes, it is a constant tug of war here, but the speed boost is really what ends up making the fight go on way longer than it needs to. And that’s why some players cannot stand Fireworks Factory. The rest of the world is great - its this boss fight that makes it a headache.

Misty Bog

“Spyro the Dragon” (1998)

In terms of navigation and combat, Misty Bog isn’t as bad as some people make it out to be. It's a relatively flat swamp with most of the enemies being easily torched. But what makes Misty Bog a real pain in the tail is simply collecting all of the gems. There are plenty of gems hidden in faraway areas you can easily neglect. Some are even tucked away on even lower platforms than the game lets on. For as linear as it appears, Misty Bog can steal way more time from you than most of the first game’s other worlds will.

Time Machine Lab

“Spyro: Season of Ice” (2001)

In general, “Season of Ice” is a somewhat difficult game to play. We’re all onboard for a 2.5D Spyro game, but there are a handful of moments where you can’t tell where Spyro may or may not land. There’s no sense of depth or distance in this game. Time Machine Lab can be especially troublesome because of this, and it doesn’t help that the entire world is so labyrinthian in its design. What makes things even worse is how most enemies here can protect themselves against fire, thus forcing us to use the incredibly awkward charge attack. Yes, there are more moments of us falling off the level than we would like to admit.

Yeti Boxing

“Spyro: Year of the Dragon” (2000)

Don’t get us wrong - the minigames in “Year of the Dragon” are incredibly fun, but Yeti Boxing has become the bane of our existence. Full disclosure, it was a cool idea having basic fighting game mechanics in a 3D platformer. But the problem here is just how unfair the fight quickly becomes. Your opponent can recover and attack way faster than you do, and you’ll notice many obvious uses of input reading. Really, you’ll end up losing due to some sucker punch he was able to weasel in because of frame advantage. And so, some players choose to just not complete “Year of the Dragon” because of this… and maybe Fireworks Factory. But mostly this.

Fracture Hills

“Spyro: Ripto’s Rage” (1999)

Though it isn’t the biggest hurdle in “Ripto’s Rage”, Fracture Hills has gained a notorious reputation for completionists. Overall, the level is straightforward in traversal, and finding every collectible isn’t super grating. However, the mission where you must escort the Alchemist is where most people lose their minds. The Alchemist wants you to escort him to Hunter, who’s location is literally twenty feet away and completely out of the way of a group of menacing golems. But for whatever reason, the Alchemist wants to take the most complicated route possible and try to run into every golem possible. If he gets hit, you have to restart the mission. Sounds like fun, right?

Dark Mines

“Spyro: A Hero’s Tail” (2004)

This is another one of those games some people enjoy because “ooh, but the potential it had” even though that potential was lightyears away. Regardless, if there was any point that summarizes how infuriating “A Hero’s Tail” is to play, it's Dark Mines. This is one of Blink the Mole’s levels, and as many of us might recall, Blink’s levels sucked. Not only did he have some of the most abhorrent mechanics in exploration and combat, but Dark Mines got excessive with the combat by placing enemies all over the place. Had there been a few extra checkpoints, maybe Dark Mines would have been more digestible. Alas, that is not how history unfolded here.

Tree Tops

“Spyro the Dragon” (1998)

This is easily the hardest world to complete out of the entirety of “Spyro the Dragon”. The big reason we say this is because of how obnoxiously disconnected Tree Tops is. Play through it normally and not collect everything, then sure, it's no biggie. But if you want that 100% completion, you’ll have to think outside of the box here. Gathering every gem in Tree Tops will require you to charge, jump, and glide off of very specific ledges in order to reach hidden areas. And yes, there is a good chance you’ll time your jump incorrectly and barely miss a ledge.

Super Bonus Round

“Spyro: Year of the Dragon” (2000)

So, imagine collecting every Dragon Egg, beating the Sorceress, and watching the ending. You’re done with “Year of the Dragon”, right? You can move on with your life, right? Not if you want to complete it! Here, you’ll have to chase down more thieves for more gems, take part in a ridiculously tough skateboarding race against Yetis, pilot Hunter’s dumb little submarine again, fly around the map to destroy UFOs, and then, fight the Sorceress AGAIN in a boring UFO-based rendition of her boss fight. We did all this before! We suffered! Let us be! Had the mechanics been tweaked a bit, we wouldn’t mind, but come on!

Cloud 9

“Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly” (2001)

In case you haven’t played “Enter the Dragonfly” before, well, you needn’t bother. The game is a horribly broken mess that barely functions half the time. But if you somehow power through it, you’ll get to suffer from one of the hardest and worst levels in Spyro history, Cloud 9. If you come across certain areas that make this level look unfinished, well, that’s because it is. Cloud 9 seemed to have escaped QA testing as it boasts even more bugs and glitches than any other level in the game, which can result in even more cheap deaths than before. Despite this, there is still one world many of us Spyor fans resent more than whatever pile of 1’s and 0’s Cloud 9 ended up becoming.

Breeze Harbor

“Spyro: Ripto’s Rage” (1999)

Now, this level isn’t hard because of difficult jumps or absurd combat encounters. Pretty much nothing you would expect from typical games. Play it straightforward, and yeah, you can expect the usual stuff as you would in other “Spyro” levels. But for completionists, one phrase plagues their minds: “Trouble with the trolley, eh?” Breeze Harbor’s minecart minigame is one of the most abysmal minigames you could ever play because of its tight turns and awful controls. For as good as it was overall, even the “Reignited” remake of this level couldn’t really mitigate the migraines here. And so, Breeze Harbor lives in infamy as the hardest world, all because of this one minigame.

What’s the hardest level you played in a Spyro game? Let us know down in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe to MojoPlays.