Cobra Cadabra and King Cobra Cadabra - Skylander Review

Cobra Cadabra and King Cobra Cadabra – Skylander Review

Cobra Cadabra is a new Magic core Skylander making his debut in Skylanders Trap Team. He began his journey as the assistant to the Great Mabuni, a traveling magician that performed all over Skylands. He dreamed of one day becoming a famous magician himself. The Mysteriously Mad Magic Masters of Mystery was a magicians guild that had for centuries taught all of the greatest magicians in Skylands. They refused to allow Cobra Cadabra to become a magician. The Great Mabuni though saw the potential in Cobra Cadabra and decided to teach him everything he knew. This was strictly forbidden by the Mysteriously Mad Magic Masters of Mystery and they soon found out. The guild sent a team of magic rabbit enforcers to punish Cobra Cadabra and the Great Mabuni. Cobra Cadabra remained calm. He used what he learned to play an enchanted tune on his flute and cast a spell on the rabbits, which he then led away. The guild was very impressed by this and decided to accept Cobra Cadabra as a member and made him a magician. Soon he was also made a member of the Skylanders.

Cobra Cadabra is one of only two snake Skylanders so far. Rattle Shake from Swap Force was the other. Perhaps it’s because Cobra Cadabra is a core Skylander but he is much more snake like than Rattle Shake. It’s his movement that really stands out as snakelike. He moves with an upright slither that is rather mesmerizing and quick. He never really leaves his basket, he might be confined to his basket, or maybe he’s just shy, but the basket never really seems to hamper his speed or movement. In fact he will momentarily leave his basket as he dashes between two baskets, but more on that when we explain his attacks. He has an alternate version called King Cobra Cadabra which exchanges his dark blue and purple body for a white and yellow body. They both stand in the same pose, but King Cobra Cadabra is given some stat improvements from the start. Both figures look pretty good, though I think I prefer the darker coloring of the original Cobra Cadabra.

When it comes to attacks, Cobra Cababra’s main attack is his Magic Flute. He can use Attack 1 to blast enemies with the music notes of the flute. It’s a ranged attack which starts with a low to medium distance. The distance will become medium to long after some upgrades. Notes fire out of the flute at a good clip, but they do seem to move rather slowly. His second attack is the Cobra Basket. Pressing Attack 2 will lob a Cobra Basket which pulsates and damages nearby enemies to the beat. An upgrade will unlock his third attack called Launch Cobra! This will launch Cobra Cadabra out of his basket and into another basket and he will damage anything in between. It’s his version of a dash attack. This attack will also leave a basket behind which damages enemies that come near it. The Keep the Beat! upgrade allows the Magic Flute to do more damage when played to the beat of the music. I don’t know what “music beat” they are referring to, so I’m not sure if all of the notes do extra damage or if it’s just certain notes. Some of the notes shot are orange and those could be the extra damage shots, but I still don’t know what “beat” they are referring to. The Pungi Power upgrade will allow the Flute attacks to travel further and again do more damage. Finally, the Basket Party upgrade allows you to have up to 10 Cobra Baskets at once, however, once we had all upgrades purchased we were never able to get 10 baskets out at once. It’s a pretty useless upgrade, but you still have to purchase it if you want to get to the specialized upgrade paths.

Cobra Cadabra can further upgrade either the flute attacks or the basket attacks. The Concerto Cobra upgrade path will focus on the flute upgrades. The first upgrade is called Reverb Riff and will allow the notes shot from the flute to bounced off walls and enemies and do extra damage. We found that this does happen but it doesn’t seem to bounce as much as other characters bouncing projectile attacks. It could just be because the range of the projectiles is not as long. The Ultimate Flute Rock upgrade just adds more damage to the flute attacks. The last upgrade is called Snake Charmer’s Solo and by holding attack 1, you can play an enchanting song that charms enemies to fight for your cause. Once again we could not determine if charmed enemies were actually fighting for us. They definitely did show signs of being charmed when little hearts come out of the enemy after being attacked. Even if they are not charmed, they definitely pause, and the attack can be moved around while active which makes it a good attack to use and hold over a group of enemies. The Master of Baskets path will upgrade the Cobra Basket attacks. The Basket Quintet upgrade will allow you to throw five Cobra Baskets at once. You would think that if you threw another five baskets out, that the Basket Party upgrade which allows you to have 10 Cobra Baskets active at once would allow all 10 baskets to be active at one time. However, we found that was not true. The first five baskets always disappears after throwing out the second set of baskets. So with this upgrade it seems like the Basket Party upgrade is broken. The next upgrade is called Call and Response. This allows you to shoot Cobra Baskets with your flute to power them up. The last upgrade is called A Tisket, A Tasket and by holding attack 2, you can detonate all of the active Cobra Baskets. This upgrade might have been more useful, if you could have actually had 10 baskets out at once. His soul gem ability is called Big Basket Bomb and it allows Cobra Cadabra to launch into all active Cobra Baskets for a massive explosion. It’s basically the same thing as the A Tisket, A Tasket upgrade, which almost makes the Master of Baskets path not worth using.

Overall Cobra Cadabra isn’t a bad Skylander to use. However, he does seem to be the most broken Skylander we’ve seen so far. The Basket Party upgrade doesn’t work, so there is no way to get 10 Cobra Baskets at once. This makes the Master of Baskets upgrade path less useful, since you can’t actually get all of the baskets out that you want. Also the soul gem ability is basically the same as the final upgrade in the Master of Baskets upgrade path, but more powerful which further makes that upgrade path not useful. We also found, that we just went back to using the Magic Flute when we got in trouble. Because of these things we would highly recommend using the Concerto Cobra upgrade path, even though that path has an upgrade that is supposed to charm enemies to fight for your cause but they never seem to fight for you. None of this makes Cobra Cadabra a bad character to use, but it does reduce his flexibility. He is mildly powerful, and the baskets you do throw out can do some nice passive damage to enemies that they are near. But he doesn’t really have a “Wow” factor or any attack that really stands out. You can get by without using him, but being a snake, he is one of the more unusual and unique core Skylanders out there.

SkylanderNutts gives Cobra Cadabra and King Cobra Cadabra…