Spyro the dragon has become a staple of the gaming industry, starring in enough games to earn him his own seat at the big kids' table in the video game hall of fame. Although the first three Spyro games were each brilliant in their own way, the little purple dragon's more recent games have fallen into a sort of predictable and safe mediocrity, kind of like 7th Heaven on the WB. Each new Spyro game was a mildy different take on the same exact gameplay, and the closest they came to innovation was deciding what sort of pun to put in the title. So when it came time to play Spyro: Shadow Legacy, for the Nintendo DS, I was expecting a scaled-down version of the same old thing, but instead I found an action RPG with surprising depth and creativity. At least that's what I would've found if the broken controls would have let me. Instead I was left to stare longingly at my DS, wishing for what might've been.

We don't need another hero
The set up for Shadow Legacy is fairly typical for the Spyro series, as once again, evil magic is afoot and only Spyro has the goods to save the day. Personally, I'd be pretty tweaked if I was the only one ever doing the heavy lifting in town…I mean come on, can't any of the other dragons lend a hand? Wing? Whatever? But Spyro's a helpful little guy, so he's happy to rescue the trapped Dragon Elders from the dark and spooky Shadow Realm. The Shadow Realm exists on a different plane from the real world, so Spyro uses teleportation platforms to phase between the two worlds. Creatures seen in the real world don't exist in the Shadow Realm, and vice versa. Certain doors and objects also appear in one world that don't appear in the other, so Spyro will have to switch back and forth between the two realms in order to successfully navigate the various areas of the game. It's a clever mechanism that makes the game feel expansive without actually enlarging the actual geography of the landscape.

The gameplay is broken up into combat and missions. In order to free the trapped dragons, Spyro must first kill off the creatures guarding the cages in the Shadow Realm. Once all of the dragons in a given area are free, Spyro can phase back into the real world and complete missions for them, usually no more difficult than a simple fetch quest. Each slain enemy or completed mission earns Spyro experience points, and with each new level he gains, he can learn two new skills. The Dragon Elders will share their dragon kata with him, teaching him stronger attacks, defensive moves, and magic spells. At first, Spyro doesn't have much choice as to the new skills he learns, as he's pushed toward learning the double jump, the glide, and the horn smash, but later trips to the dojo offer more variety and freedom of selection.

It's a kind of magic
Most of the action in Shadow Legacy takes place on the upper screen of the DS, with the lower screen being used almost entirely for informational purposes. You can choose from a not very helpful map, an item inventory, a stat screen, and the spell screen. Each spell Spyro learns is associated with a simple symbol; to cast the spell, simply draw the symbol on the touch screen. The symbols are simple enough and the touch recognition forgiving enough so that you can just use the tip of your finger to activate the spells, as opposed to whipping out the stylus every time you want to use magic.

The graphics are absolutely charming, with Spyro and pals brightly colored and nicely detailed, despite their diminutive stature, and the enemies in the Shadow Realms are creatively creepy. Unfortunately, the environments aren't equally detailed, and the game's perspective can make it difficult to judge respective heights. This may not sound like a big problem, but just wait until you've spent five minutes trying to pick up a gem, only to realize that you can't reach it because it's on a shelf above you, not on the floor next to you. You'll plummet to your death, take cheap hits from enemies, and watch temporary power ups flicker and fade away, all because it's so darn hard to judge distances and heights properly. Still, that's a minor annoyance when compared to the overall control. Not only is Spyro painfully slow, but the controls for jumping and attacking are also maddeningly unresponsive and sluggish, making combat especially taxing.

Somewhere in Spyro: Shadow Legacy, lies a good game with endearing characters, funny writing, and well-paced action, but it's buried beneath a sluggish control scheme and haphazard collision detection. Players who can adapt to the lethargic controls will find much to enjoy on this latest outing with Spyro, but those with low frustration thresholds should just look on longingly from afar.