Skylanders, Skylanders, Skylanders. This series and I has some history. Back when Skylanders was releasing, I was one of the people who really did not care for it at all. I was a Spyro fan. I had played a lot of the Spyro series, and even as a kid when Skylanders was coming, I was amongst the crowd who saw the Spyro redesign and hated it. 

I got the first game for Christmas that year, and while I actually found it a pretty alright game at the time, I never actually got around to finishing it. As time went on, I grew something of a grudge with the series. Crash and Spyro as franchises were both dead, and Skylanders' Toys to Life mechanic was needlessly money-grubbing, which turned me off even more.

But we're in a very different time now. Crash and Spyro have long since comeback. As a Classic Spyro fan, I got the Reignited Collection. Skylanders meanwhile has been mostly dead as a franchise. More than that, I had friends who was into the series and constantly telling me about all the merits of the series and all of the cool things it had done. 

Most importantly, I'd long since grown out of my grudge with the series. Unfortunately, at that time, instead what I saw was something interesting to try, yet all of the starter packs had stupidly grown up in price, meaning it was very inaccessible, especially given if you want more to explore, you'd need other figures. But thanks to a great deal I was able to snag earlier this year for Superchargers and a whole box of figures, I was finally ready to jump in and give the series a try.

Now, there was a big reason I went for Superchargers - I had not only heard a lot about the game's good qualities, but it was also the game in the series with online co-op, which meant this game was done fully with the resident Skylander fan of the board - @Failinhearts joining me for the ride. What came from there was a big adventure, filled with Skylanders lore drops, and explanations. Since this was what could be considered the conclusion to what the other games were building up, I had a lot to learn. But the more I learned, the more engaged and interested in the game.

At the risk of reducing my thoughts of the game down to a joke gif, I feel this is the best way to illustrate really how the game's experience was for me. After being either against Skylanders or completely indifferent against it for so long, it clicked.

Playing through the game, it just clicked. With a pretty diverse line-up of 15 or so Skylanders, each from different games, I got to experience why so many had found enjoyment with this series. The characters are pretty diverse and unique, all of them with different abilities, and personalities, and a certain fun in discovering exactly how each Skylander plays against each other. Where my initial plan was just playing as Cynder or Spyro, and nothing else, I also found new favourites in completely unique characters, such as Trigger Happy, Tree Rex, Magna Charge, Swashbuckler and more.

While the toys to life mechanic is very money-grubbing and I still despise it for how much it locks out for so much money, I can't lie that there's a really magical feeling putting characters onto the portals and seeing their different effects. From light up characters, to Swap Force characters allowing you to swap the upper and bottom halves of the characters to combine elements and powers. 

People say that Superchargers is generally the weakest game in the series, but personally? I enjoyed it quite a lot. Even jumping into what is meant to be a conclusion, I was able to appreciate some of the bolder decisions like having Kaos finally win and become the ruler of Skylands, forcing the heroes to fight back with everything they have against this ancient evil as you discover more about it. It was fun exploring different and diverse levels, from a prison escape in the underworld, to a chicken farm, to a world where you're shrunken down to the size of ants and have to escape a obsessive collector. The racing and driving was also incredibly fun to me, and while I didn't love the sea and air vehicle sections as much, it still did a good job breaking up the levels and introducing new segments that diversify things further. 

This time, the gameplay in general just really clicked for me. It was fun levelling up my Skylanders, it was fun going through their skill-trees and finding out what new abilities they could get, and the game always remained at just a perfect level of difficulty that was engaging but still playable. Even as we approached the Nightmare mode run, it still wasn't too tough a time, and frankly, it's just a really damn fun game in co-op. There's just something fun about mashing two Skylanders together and seeing how they work off each other, and trying to match up each other. Especially in the cases like Trigger Happy where two of him can cause some properly serious havoc. The graphics and music was also just really charming, some of the levels like the Cloud Kingdom reminding me of locations in Spyro.

Even this time, I grew a soft spot for Skylanders Spyro, being much more accepting of him as a alternate take on the character. Josh Keaton does a really great vocal performance for the purple dragon, and I kind of warmed up to the design as well, although I would say it's because the design has seen improvements compared to Spyro's Adventure.

What else can I really say? I was very pleasantly surprised by my time with Superchargers, and while it did get annoying trying to max up all of my Skylanders, and there was some really damn annoying bugs like a infinite portal screen, or the final boss glitching out several times whilst doing the Nightmare run, and I never want to see James Prong's stupid face in this series again, this was a great time, and I'm really happy I ultimately gave the series another try.

As surprising as it is, I'm a casual Skylanders fan now, and I've managed to snag all of the other games in the series for pretty reasonable prices, and I can't wait to explore the rest of the games in the series. This won't be the last time we'll see Spyro and the other Skylanders in this blog series, that's for sure.