Clearly there was some effort at crafting a story (even if almost all of it is actually revealed in an expository sequence near the end), but the production values in the cinematics were squandered on a game that just doesn't click in any one area and it outright offends in others. The Eternal Night eventually ends up being too difficult for a young audience, yet too pedantic for older gamers, and it satisfies neither. Specifically: it's ridiculously difficult in certain areas, suffers from sloppy controls, tons of cheap deaths and lacks some of the polish that Krome is more than capable of. The first game, A New Beginning, surprised plenty of folks with its higher production values and Hollywood voice cast, and while those elements remain to some degree, the second game has taken a major step backward in terms of how the game actually plays.
Conceived as a slightly darker trilogy, The Legend of Spyro is trying to inject a little more in the way of mythos and lore into the pint-sized fire-breather's world. A few different developers stepped up to carry on the franchise, but it wasn't until Aussie platformer vets Krome Studios came on board to give the series something of a reboot that the franchise got a proper identity.
Of course, we know now that Spyro's success wasn't a fluke, as Ratchet & Clank was a bona-fide killer app for the PlayStation 2, but the little purple dragon was left with Universal as the IP holder and no clear developer to continue a series that had sold millions of copies. When Insomniac opted to part ways with the mascot that was as much a figurehead of the developer as it was the original PlayStation, it was a gutsy move.
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