Spotlight – Skylander Review
Spotlight is a new core Light Skylander making her debut in Trap Team. She isn’t just any new Skylander, she is the first core Skylander of the Light element, which debuted in Trap Team. However, she had been in Skylands before. Master Eon found her in the Prismatic Palace when he was looking for the Crystal Orb of Light. When he found the orb, he reached out to touch it, which caused bright light to shine out of the orb. The light was so bright Master Eon had to shield his eyes. When he was able to lower his hand, he saw Spotlight standing before him in a respectful bow. He had not seen a Light Element creature before since it was not one of the eight common elements of Skylands. He sensed that the Ancients set her to him for a reason so he took Spotlight to the Core of Light and trained her to defend it as a member of the Skylanders. But when Kaos destroyed the Core of Light, Spotlight mysteriously vanished. Only now has she finally re-appeared.
Spotlight is another dragon Skylander. At first when I heard this, I was slightly disappointed as we have seen plenty of dragon characters with the likes of Spyro, Cynder, Drobot, Sunburn, Flashwing and even the new Blackout. She is also a very plain looking white, which fits her light theme, but didn’t excite me much. When you take a closer look at her though, you will notice how she glimmers and shines with a pearlescent gold flaking in her paint. That is a bit better than a flat white look. She also has these big gold rings in her wings and tail. It makes you wonder how she can fly but definitely gives her a magical look about her. She has no armor to speak of which adds to her plain look, but her pose is that of power and elegance and invokes enough curiosity to see what she can do on the battlefield.
My initial impressions of Spotlights attacks were also not very good. Her main attack are concentrated beams of light that come out of her eyes. These beams do not initially extend very far in front of her. Because they are concentrated, it means that you really have to be precise with your aim. You won’t get a lot of collateral damage or wide area of effect damage when you use her. Even her secondary attack which is her Halo Rings don’t excite. The rings will damage enemies if they hit them, but if they don’t then you can shoot the rings to have the eye beams get refracted in a slow turning 360 degree circle. The problem with this attack is that it takes a while for the ring to complete a circle, so it might be a while before you hit your opponent. The early upgrades all make these attacks a little more interesting. The Bright Eyes upgrade allows the Eye Beams to do more damage, the Halo Effect upgrade will allow the Halo Rings to encircle enemies they hit and slows them down, and the Hello Halos upgrade allows more Halo Rings to be active at one time. The most interesting early upgrade is the one that adds a third attack. The Heavenly Aura upgrade is a magical area of light that damages anyone caught inside of it. It’s a lot like Thunderbolt’s Cloud attack which we recently reviewed.
There are two upgrade paths to choose from for the final few upgrades. The Ringer path will upgrade the Halo Ring attacks. 
We did not choose this path, but it doesn’t sound too bad. One upgrade makes the rings larger and do more damage. The Ring Shot upgrade allows the rings to should light beams of their own. This sounds like it could be pretty devastating. The final upgrade will light up enemies caught in the rings with the Heavenly Aura. We chose the Visionary path which upgrades the Eye Beam attacks. The Aura Charge upgrade allows you to shoot the Heavenly Aura with the Eye Beams to power it up for more damage. If you are already throwing out the Heavenly Aura on a regular basis, then you will probably end up shooting it quite a lot, which will make this upgrade beneficial. The Light it up upgrade gives the Eye Beams a longer range and more damage. This upgrade, while basic is extremely useful. It was after this upgrade that I realized how truly powerful Spotlight’s Eye Beam attack was. The Eye Beam attack is constant, meaning that as long as you hold the button down, the Eye Beams come out. When you shoot this beam at a slow moving enemy which is coming at you, it does a ton of damage, assuming you can keep the beams pointed at the enemy. To get rid of the smaller or faster characters, she can wipe out a ton of them by just spinning in place while shooting the Eye Beams the entire time. Being able to deal constant damage at that kind of range after the upgrade is very powerful. Her Soul Gem attack is called Light Dragons and it’s really just a more visual and interesting way to add more power to the Heavenly Aura. After the Soul Gem upgrade, shooting the Heavenly Aura will cause Light Dragons to shoot from the Aura, heavily damaging enemies they hit. By the time Spotlight had all of her upgrades she had become one of my go to characters.
Once fully upgraded, Spotlight is an excellent core Skylander. My mistake in the beginning was to play her like a ranged character. Her Eye Beams attack looks like a ranged attack, but it doesn’t really act like one. The key is to treat the beams like a manually controlled light sword. You don’t need to swing the beams to do damage. Focusing the attack on one character will deal major damage over a short period of time. But you can swing the beams around and still do a lot of damage every time the beams cut through an enemy. The beams can even knock back some enemies which can be extremely valuable in the arenas. Though she appears to have no armor, she never really seemed like she was quick to be defeated. I never really had an issue with her becoming overwhelmed by enemies. She is also pretty fast so getting out of the way of trouble isn’t too hard. Since she’s not a Trap Master, she’s not really imperative to have, but I think she has enough power and pizazz to make a good edition to any collection.
SkylanderNutts gives Spotlight…
8.5 out of 10
Spotlight Video Review
Share this article!
