The third season of Crash Team Rumble, and arguably the most ambitious season thus far, this was a season I had been very excited for due to my love of the Spyro franchise, and seeing another crossover between Crash and Spyro again, and arguably the most involved one so far was a great thing to see. Crash Team Rumble is a pretty controversial game, all things considered - a turn for Crash that not a lot of people wanted to see, and a particularly lower budget option due to it being a side game that was supposed to release around the time of Crash 4. 

Still, in spite of that, both due to my love of the Crash franchise, and the cheap price of it, I decided to give it a shot regardless, and by the time the beta came around, I was hooked on it. The gameplay was a very fun translation of the traditional Crash platforming gameplay into a MOBA, and it felt like the most accurate Crash spinoff to the original gameplay, especially compared to the racing and party spin-off outings. Being able to play as characters like N. Gin, and N. Tropy was a really neat novelty, the soundtrack was pretty great, and how it adapted various levels and gimmicks from Crash 4 into the game was a fun twist. 

But as time has gone on, a lot about Rumble has unfortunately just gotten more and more stale. The netcode is honestly a bit of a mess, with it lagging randomly for not much reason at all, and it taking forever to even connect to the online services whenever the game launches to begin with. The playerbase and matchmaking feels really badly balanced, with often times - dedicated players who have gotten to Level 100 within a week or two are against you, while it feels like your team is constantly filled with new players without much to do. That's also not including all of the annoying glitches that is still in the game, even months later. Stuff like Elora's cartwheel randomly disabling itself, causing her mobility to plummet unless you deliberately die and respawn. Not to mention the poor balancing for ages, with Cortex and Coco's power and mobility still remaining incredibly strong, and Tawna not far below them.

Season 3 is arguably the most content packed season of the game to date. Spyro and Elora got added to the game, both of which feature practically new movesets that would've needed to be designed from scratch. A lot of limited time modes and events, a Winter event that had a ton of cosmetics for every character, and more. It also IMO had the best battle pass so far, filled with a ton of Spyro inspired cosmetics, items and music, with the best IMO being the Fireworks Factory OST, and Moneybags Dingodile.

However, in spite of all, this season is the only that really drained me out by the end. The season was way too top heavy, leaving the last month of the season being incredibly barren with very little content, and meaning I had to grind the Party Mode repeatedly to try and continue the rest of the way, a thing that's annoying to do with a lot of teammates who seem to either be first time players, or outright bots, who don't know what they're doing, and basically guarantee a loss as they refuse to collect items, do the objectives, and so on so forth.

It's a shame because I think the maps and some content introduced this season was some of the best yet. Spyro is one of the best new characters once you get the hang of how to play him, and the maps added this season has a whole massive ton of new features, making the maps much more interesting. But no matter what way you really cut it, the problems is really starting to catch up with Rumble. The netcode is a shambles. The glitches are annoying to deal with and it feels like you have to wait a full season for simple bugs to be fixed, and while the cosmetics and base gameplay is great, the game has grown to the point where it really does feel like it's miserable to play against the hardcore bunch of players who make up most lobbies now, who get to level 100 almost immediately, making it feel unbelievably demoralising to fight them. 

I honestly don't know if I'm gonna continue on with Season 4. I mean, I'll get the battle pass regardless because the game is at least kind enough to refund it's battle passes, but still. The game doesn't have enough content, and a ton of problems that exasperate how repetitive and grindy it is. I've done all three seasons to completion so far, and honestly, my enjoyment of the game has just dropped more and more over time. A new player might still be able to have fun, but I don't know with all the try-hards that now fill the game, and that's coming from someone playing since the closed beta.