The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night is the second installment of The Legend of Spyro, following The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning. The game is primarily an Action-Adventure title with some light platforming and RPG Elements, and its gameplay centers around unlocking and strengthening Spyro's elemental breath abilities.
After Spyro's defeat of Cynder in the previous game, the Dark Master's power over her wanes, and she changes back to her true form — a young dragon no older (or larger) than Spyro. Yet, touched as she is by the darkness, Cynder is compelled by a shadowy figure named Gaul to try and release the Dark Master from the Well of Souls in order to cloak the world in an endless night. Spyro, led by visions of a strange dragon master, pursues her in the hope that he can prevent her from making a horrible mistake. In the process, however, Spyro may fall victim to the darkness himself...
The game was released for the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Wii and PlayStation 2 in 2007. The handheld versions were developed by Amaze Entertainment and feature a notably different gameplay style, playing out as side-scrolling Metroidvanias with a heavier focus on platforming and exploration than the console versions.
This game contains examples of:
- 11th-Hour Superpower: Spyro gains access to Dark Spyro at the end of the game, using it to easily dispose of Gaul.
- Alien Sea: The seas around the Ancient Grove, and over which the Skavengers' pirate fleet flies, are the same vivid purple as its Grimy Water. Later, the sea around the White Isle is a bright, glowing aqua shade.
- Bag of Spilling: Due to unleashing his Aether fury from his battle with Cynder at the end of A New Beginning, Spyro loses access to his elemental powers and has to re-learn them via dreams, coached along by the Chronicler.
- Breather Episode: The Sky Pirates arc is rather lighthearted and comical compared to the rest of the game.
- The Cameo: Under the ice in the Celestial Caves, you can see fellow Activision platformer Crash Bandicoot frozen in the ground.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The different kinds of gems are distinguished by color — red ones restore health, green ones restore mana, purple ones fill up the Fury meter and blue ones give experience points.
- Crystalline Creature: The four elemental trials in the Celestial Caverns are populated by variants of the previous game's crystal brutes charged with fiery, icy, earthen and electric elemental energy.
- Cutscene Incompetence: In a cutscene, Spyro is captured by the pirate Skabb right after defeating a magic being three times Skabb's size, without the player even being given the opportunity to fight for his freedom. Later in the game, one does have to physically fight and defeat Skabb.
- Damage-Sponge Boss: Gaul. Besides the fact that you don't have access to Spyro's elements for it, Spyro's normal attacks against him do pitiful damage, despite the fact that his attacks aren't too hard to dodge. As a result, the battle with him can take anywhere from twenty minutes to a solid half hour. Thankfully, his second form goes down far quicker since Spyro is in his Superpowered Evil Side form during it.
- Denser and Wackier: Not the game itself, but the three CGI shorts that were made to promote it. They have a heavier emphasis on humor and silliness by comparison to the actual product.
- Disney Villain Death: Skabb, after losing to Spyro, staggers backwards off the side of his ship, falling to his death.
- Disk-One Final Boss: Skabb's death ends his arc, but not the game.
- Double Jump: Spyro can flap his wings to achieve some extra height and air time during jumps.
- Downer Ending: The Dark Master is freed, and Spyro, Sparx and Cynder are frozen in crystal under the remains of the Well of Souls, where they'll stay for the next three years.
- Elemental Embodiment: The four elemental trials in the Celestial Caverns are populated by elemental enemies — the fire trial is home to fire elementals, depicted as clouds of flame in loosely humanoid shapes, and each is home to hulking conglomerations of crystals charged with the appropriate elemental energy. Each trial also ends in a battle against one of the four Elemental Spirits.
- Elemental Punch: Spyro's elemental powers now come with either a Breath Weapon or a physical attack performed with horns, tail or bodyslam.
- Elite Mook: In the Ancient Grove, the grove beasts are essentially stronger versions of the common growths — they have the same body plan and attack animations, but grove beasts are considerably tougher and hit harder.
- Embarrassing Old Photo: Occurs with Sparx when the Chronicler shows a picture of Spyro and Sparx shortly after they were born, greatly embarrassing the dragonfly.
- Enchanted Forest: The Ancient Grove is a deep, unexplored forest untouched by civilization, shrouded in constant gloom by the canopies of its towering trees and by an ever-present shroud of fog. It has no intelligent natives, although plenty of aggressive animals and animated plants roam its shadows. Spyro travels through it in search of a tree he saw in his dreams, although, once he finds it, the tree pulls itself from the ground and attacks.
- Foreshadowing:
- During the pirate ship arc, Spyro finds a letter from a figure called Hunter telling him that he has allies and looks forward to the day they meet. They indeed meet each other personally three years later in Dawn of the Dragon and become allies.
- When Terrador mentions the name of the Mountain of Malefor, we're treated to a brief glimpse of the dragon statue in the temple dojo, something which Sparx takes notice as something "weird". Spyro later comes upon a more grander yet dark version of the dragon statue in a shrine within the Well of Souls, further driving it home that the statue we see in the temple dojo is that of the Dark Master himself.
- Flashback with the Other Darrin: The intro cutscene is a retelling of A New Beginning's final battle and ending. Billy West redubs Sparx's lines originally performed by David Spade and Mae Whitman also redubs Cynder's lines that were done by Cree Summer.
- Flunky Boss: The electric elemental in the GBA version. On its own, it would be fairly easy. It's invulnerable and causes collision damage as its main attack, but it's not too hard to dodge. When it does become vulnerable, however, it summons a swarm of Ledge Bats to protect itself.
- Gangplank Galleon: After escaping the pirate fighting arena, Spyro first navigates through a large flying ship, battling both regular and ghostly pirates and avoiding venting steam pipes and firing cannons, before leaving it to fight his way across an entire airborne ship, hopping around on lifeboats and gliding from vessel to vessel. In the end, the level culminates in a boss battle against the fleet's captain and his parrots. Throughout the level, collectibles and health pickups are hidden inside treasure chests and piles of gold coins left lying around all over the ships.
- Ghost Pirate: Spectral pirates are encountered as enemies in the Fellmuth's brig, and occasionally within other ships in the fleet.
- Gilligan Cut: After defeating Ravage Rider during the gladiatorial battles, Sparx says that now they might finally get to ask for a room upgrade. The next shot is of Spyro being bodily thrown back into his cell.
- Gladiator Games: After Spyro is captured by the pirates, he's forced to fight in prize combat against a variety of monstrous foes.
- The Goomba: The toadweeds, found in the first level of the game, take three hits to kill and you literally have to sit there and stare at them for them to have a chance to hurt you.
- Grimy Water: The Ancient Grove is crossed by a river of bright purple poisonous water, alongside several smaller scattered pools of the stuff. Falling in it will harm Spyro in the same manner as falling into any other pit hazard in the game, and in some areas he must use his ice breath to create platforms across large stretches of this water.
- Hailfire Peaks: The Celestial Caverns are meant to test Spyro's mastery of the elements, and are consequently divided into four areas; each is themed after fire, ice, earth and electricity, built to make use of each element's effects on terrain (the ice area requires Spyro to create temporary ice platforms in the water, for instance), populated by elementally-appropriate recolors of the area's basic set of enemies, and capped off with a fight against its associated elemental spirit. The whole affair ends with a boss battle against a spirit that cycles through all four elements.
- Human Popsicle: Dragon Popsicle considering the series; to survive the mountain caving in around them, Spyro shields himself, Cynder, and Sparx in a crystal. They wake up three years later.
- Karma Houdini: Scratch, one half of the parrot captains of the Fellmuth crew that kidnapped Spyro and the Manweersmalls, gets to fly away after Skabb is beaten and get off scot-free, never to be seen again.
- Kill It with Fire: During the first phase of the bossfight against Arborick, Spyro has to use the fire bombs to set all of Arborick's body parts ablaze (upper body, left arm, right arm, pelvis, right foot and left foot).
- Living Statue: Stone statues of axe-wielding warriors in Grecian armor serve as training dummies in the dream sequences where Spyro learns to master the elements. Later, they are also found as regular enemies in the first part of the Celestial Caverns.
- The Lost Woods: The Ancient Grove is a deep, unexplored forest, where navigation requires platforming off of fallen trees and branches to move over areas where plant growth, stumps and rocks block progress; one bonus area is located entirely among tree trunks over a bottomless pit, and Spyro must carefully pathfind across branches and giant floating jellyfish to avoid a deadly fall. Aggressive animals and Treants make up the local enemies; a giant Treant is the final boss.
- Metroidvania: The GBA version has some elements of this. While most of the really important abilities are on a linear path, there are a few such as health and mana upgrades that require exploration of the levels in order to gain, often being in out of the way locations you likely wouldn't find without exploring. Similarly, it's possible to revisit previous areas in the game unlike the console version in order to explore them using later gained abilities.
- Mix-and-Match Critters:
- The Death Hounds are a mix between dogs, lizards and armadillos.
- Scratch and Sniff, the two pirate parrots, have bat wings and lizard tails.
- Mondegreen Gag: The Assassin wears a heavy helmet that muffles his speech and makes him rather hard to understand. At several points in the game, his attempts at dramatic speeches, threats and Badass Boasts are undercut by the fact that Spyro and Sparx can't actually understand him and stop paying attention to argue over what he's saying.Assassin: Mwahahahaha! Time to feel some pain!
Sparx: Ahhhh! He's going to steal my brain!
Spyro: Actually, he said it's time for pain.
Sparx: Really? Whew! [pats his own head] For a second there I thought I lost you, buddy. - Monster-Shaped Mountain: The Mountain of Malefor is shaped like the head of a monstrous, skyward-gazing dragon, with caverns on its peak resembling eyes and two rows of curved pinnacles that frame its caldera like a titanic set of fangs.
- Mook Maker: Swamp mite nests steadily spawn new swamp mites, creating a constant stream of insects to harry Spyro until the nests are destroyed.
- Panthera Awesome: Armored sabertooth cats appeared as enemies in the DS version.
- Powder Trail: There are occasional powder trails leading to massive stashes of explosives set there by either the Apes or the Skavengers. Spyro can ignite the powder with his fire breath to cause a massive explosion.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: After being sealed in crystal, the Chronicler tells Spyro that, when he awakes, the world will be different but he won't be alone. We then see Hunter watching over the three of them.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: After Skabb has been beaten, Sniff tries to intimidate Spyro and Sparx and put himself and Scratch as their next opponents. The latter has had enough of the pirates by this point, and gives the bird a punch right in the face.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The ice dream temple in the GBA version. Spyro will have a hard time getting traction for most of the level, and automatically slide down slopes unless fought against. Though you can find an upgrade near the end that will keep Spyro from sliding on the ice anymore.
- Snake People: In the GBA version, the boss of the Ancient Grove is Naga, a scaled humanoid with a serpent's trunk and a large dorsal crest.
- Spin Attack: The bulb spiders and the crystal ball spiders often attack by raising their legs into the air and spinning across the ground in an attempt to hit Spyro.
- Technicolor Toxin: The poisonous Grimy Water of the Ancient Grove is a vivid, shocking purple.
- Temporary Platform:
- Several areas require Spyro to platform off of roots and branches that cannot support his weight, and which will bend down when he lands on them. Navigating these areas requires some careful pre-planning of one's route, as Spyro must leap off immediately after landing and the player can't stand around to survey the path ahead. Some of these sequences are fairly short and take place within otherwise normal areas, usually as side routes to reach a collectible. Others are much longer and required, and often above Bottomless Pits.
- In other areas, Spyro must climb over platforms being swept down waterfalls.
- In the dream sequences, the path between each testing area takes the form of a series of small floating platforms. Some are stable, while others flip over periodically or rotate continuously, alternating between a flat, safe surface and a spiky, harmful one. The slower ones can be navigated with precise timing, but on the whole they're meant to train the player to use Spyro's new time-slowing powers.
- Spyro can create platforms over bodies of water by shooting icy blasts at them. These platforms are strictly temporary, however, and will melt and crumble after a few seconds.
- Tournament Arc: Partway through the game, Spyro is captured by pirates and forced to compete in Gladiator Games for their entertainment.
- Treants: The Ancient Grove is inhabited and defended by a number of humanoid agglomerations of wood and plant matter — the common growths, the stronger grove beasts, and the towering boss Arborick — who endlessly patrol the forest in search for intruders and attempt to crush Pyro with sweeping blows of their limbs. While quite strong, they're vulnerable to fire.
- Underground Monkey: Most enemies and bosses are simply reskins of ones from A New Beginning:
- The first enemies encountered, the toadweeds, are simply purple recolors of the frogweeds, the first enemies in the previous game.
- In the Ancient Grove, the local growths are simply recolors of the ones from the first game's Swamp. The grove mites and grove worms are lava beetles and magma worms adapted to match the poisonous forest instead of the Munition Forge's Lethal Lava Land. Arborick is also a remodel of the Stone Sentinel.
- The Skavengers and their scurvywing and blundertail mounts are recolors of the Apes and their dreadwings and buffalo beetles.
- While the Ravage Rider uses a distinct model, its attack and movement patterns are recycled from Steam's.
- The four elemental trials in the Celestial Caverns are populated by crystal brutes, first encountered in the previous game's Concurrent Skies level, tweaked to have the colors and elemental effects of their respective sub-areas.
- The Executioner and the Elemental Spirits share the same basic model and attack animations as the Ice and Electric Kings in the first game.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: You fight Gaul in the Well of Souls, an ominous Monster-Shaped Mountain with green sludge flowing everywhere and a skylight through which the corrupting lights of the moons' eclipses can shine on you.
- Villain Teleportation: The Apes found in the Well of Souls can perform short-range teleports while battling Spyro.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: In the GBA version, the Naga serves as this. If you haven't been using Spyro's dodge effectively before, this battle will teach you to use it well if you want any hopes of beating him.
- With Catlike Tread: At the beginning of the game, Spyro and Sparx has to traverse through the temple while avoiding waking up the elder dragons. While Spyro is at least trying to keep quiet, Sparx seems to think that communicating around the sleeping dragons is difficult.Sparx: What?! I can't hear you over all this snoring!
- World Tree: Spyro spends a good bit of the beginning looking for a large tree that he and his mentor saw in a vision in an ancient and deadly grove.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Played straight when Spyro is told by the Chronicler that there's nothing he can do to stop the Night of Eternal Darkness, Malefor from being freed, and Cynder returning under the latter's control. Given that said event is a celestial alignment, Spyro can't stop it. This is subverted in Dawn of the Dragon, though the only opinion we have on the world's destruction being fated to happen is from the one trying to destroy it.
