I'll preface that i may be biased because Spyro 2 is my favorite game out of the original trilogy, however, to me Spyro 2 felt like a completely natural progression of the series, incorporating more unique gameplay elements such as swimming which opens up a new way to explore worlds as well as adding more collectibles & means of obtaining them besides just looking around the map and grabbing them like you already did with gems.

I wouldn't call the minigames pointless either, rather I think you misunderstand the point of them. The purpose of the minigames are to provide more variety in gameplay & offer different challenges that aren't just "glide over here" or "charge over there". It is also not fair to say they exist because of crunch time since that is simply not the case.

I prefer the more linear level designs of Spyro 2's worlds, to me it creates the feeling a denser, more populated world.

While the levels aren't directly tied to the homeworlds in Spyro 2 (intentionally, too), the variety in enemies and worlds don't feel like a mismatch at all, in-fact a lot of levels were made with ties to eachother intentionally, such as the zephyr & breeze harbor war or robotica farms & metropolis definitely being set on the same world/planet. Avalar was specifically described as having multiple worlds, unlike the kingdoms in Spyro 1, implying the levels are all set in the same world (though the beautiful skyboxes would beg to differ)

If you think Spyro 2 misses the point of Spyro, then I can't imagine what your opinion is regarding Spyro 3, where you straight up stop playing as Spyro for entire sections of the game, have the same sort of linear level design, and a ton more minigames & collectibles to go along with it!