I like to split the franchise into two categories: titles with Craig Ferguson on voice acting, and those without. The latter category which is essentially this series, takes a serious quality hit and carries over none of what made the movies great, and more specifically great for adult viewers. Instead, it musters every Saturday morning cartoon trope known to man to advance an unimaginative, incoherent plotline after another. Everything is dumbed down. The characters are one dimensional and at odds with their movie portrayal; Hiccup loses his sass and regularly makes tactical blunders, Astrid is a robot, and the rest of the crew act like lunatics. Tuffnut gets an overwhelming amount of screen time, where he seems to serve as a medium for a would-be comedian to dump his half-baked lines through. Basically, leave this for the kids and forget that it has anything to do with the HtTYD continuum. If you want more of that, watch the "Legends" shorts and How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming. Each of those packs more heart and laughs in 20 minutes than the whole 8 seasons of this.

This is a fun little show that helps expand the How to Train Your Dragon Universe. I don't think it's a must watch for fans by any means, but if you're obsessed with the movies like I am these make a good companion. I do think it's a bit disappointing that this show could have been more but wasn't, the animation isn't all that good, and the story is nothing special, but I still think it's passable.

Characters seem to consist mainly of six characters and their dragons making the universe seem very small. Story doesn't seem that important for the overall movie universe either since it takes place between first and second films and there is not many surprises that the show can give us except some new dragon designs. So far only seen the first two seasons with the kids.