Enter the world of Panzer Dragoon Saga and experience a game like no other: a fusion of classic Panzer action with the most technologically advanced RPG to come to Saturn. Board your morphing dragon and behold as the mysteries of the Panzer world unfurl across four massive CDs. The new "rail free" 3D engine lets you soar deeper into role-playing adventure than you ever before imagined. Your destiny awaits.
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god motherfluffing damn, they knocked it out of the park with this. everything good about the previous panzer dragoon games was amped up here, nothing is lost in the translation to an RPG. the story is beautiful, the combat feels awesome and fitting, and i gotta say it has one of the best endings of any game. absolute classicccccccccc
Turning a 3D shooter series into an RPG may seem odd if you are unfamiliar with the prior two Panzer Dragoon games. On paper, they are relatively brief rail shooters. Which is true, but for the breathtaking imagination on display, and the richness of the world building each game packs from end to end. In each game we glimpse a small part of a larger world, filled with history, mysteries, political factions, struggle, danger and wonder.
Turning to an RPG to explore some of that world makes perfect sense - Team Andromeda had build too large of a world to be contained in shooters alone. Revisiting Panzer Dragoon Saga for the first time in 15+ years, I'm struck once again by how audacious it is on all fronts. At every turn, this game defies convention and goes its own way, and all if it works. The world is almost relentlessly bleak, with humanity scraping for survival on the ground and fighting over access to ancient secrets in the sky. The art and music combine to create a mood and set a tone that his wholly unique, making the world where humanity is knocked so far down the food chain that hunters are constantly in fear of being hunted themselves feel vividly real.
The combat system has - somehow - never been imitated, despite it's brilliant adaptation of Panzer Dragoon's core gameplay, a system that looks and feels like a shooter but has the bones of turn-based positional battle.
The story seldom takes a predictable turn, yet there's never a twist for the sake of it; this is a character-driven story through and through. The events in and around the gorgeous, ethereal water ruins of Uru form a key sequence where enemies become tense allies, motivations clarify and alliances blur - and the story flows entirely from the clash of personalities and ideas, not contrivances.
I love the world this series, and this game, create. I love the feeling of flying our dragon through valleys, fields, tunnels and the epic Tower. I love the aching, mournful tone that feels rooted in real struggle. The undulating, cohesive soundtrack where every track is perfectly evocative of it setting. And how in an era when developers were discovering boob physics, Team Andromeda had an absolute refusal to sexualize Azel or deploy a male gaze upon her, creating one of gaming's most compelling characters along the way.
The one knock on Saga is the difficulty - simply put, the game is easy. But it's also relentlessly compelling and engaging. Being hard was never the goal: Panzer Dragoon is all about immersing us in a unique, beautiful, evocative and strange world, and it succeeds on every level. A timeless masterpiece.
Turning to an RPG to explore some of that world makes perfect sense - Team Andromeda had build too large of a world to be contained in shooters alone. Revisiting Panzer Dragoon Saga for the first time in 15+ years, I'm struck once again by how audacious it is on all fronts. At every turn, this game defies convention and goes its own way, and all if it works. The world is almost relentlessly bleak, with humanity scraping for survival on the ground and fighting over access to ancient secrets in the sky. The art and music combine to create a mood and set a tone that his wholly unique, making the world where humanity is knocked so far down the food chain that hunters are constantly in fear of being hunted themselves feel vividly real.
The combat system has - somehow - never been imitated, despite it's brilliant adaptation of Panzer Dragoon's core gameplay, a system that looks and feels like a shooter but has the bones of turn-based positional battle.
The story seldom takes a predictable turn, yet there's never a twist for the sake of it; this is a character-driven story through and through. The events in and around the gorgeous, ethereal water ruins of Uru form a key sequence where enemies become tense allies, motivations clarify and alliances blur - and the story flows entirely from the clash of personalities and ideas, not contrivances.
I love the world this series, and this game, create. I love the feeling of flying our dragon through valleys, fields, tunnels and the epic Tower. I love the aching, mournful tone that feels rooted in real struggle. The undulating, cohesive soundtrack where every track is perfectly evocative of it setting. And how in an era when developers were discovering boob physics, Team Andromeda had an absolute refusal to sexualize Azel or deploy a male gaze upon her, creating one of gaming's most compelling characters along the way.
The one knock on Saga is the difficulty - simply put, the game is easy. But it's also relentlessly compelling and engaging. Being hard was never the goal: Panzer Dragoon is all about immersing us in a unique, beautiful, evocative and strange world, and it succeeds on every level. A timeless masterpiece.
look id like to write something actuallymeaningful here because i loved this but literally all i can come up with is ''that really was The Panzer Dragoon Saga.'' becayse it was. it really was the panzer dragoon saga.
Is any game worth 1,000 USD? The single-most expensive standalone Sega Saturn game and one of my Sega Saturn ‘grail’ games.
Spanning 4 discs that bring a unique game world that involves a rider and their dragon taking the fight to an empire that was only peripherally hinted at in the first 2 games, one with its own lore, landscape and language to life - the game clocks in at a relatively modest 25-30 hours (despite the 4-discs) to really flesh out the world-building with cinematics and voiced speech - in the game’s fantasy language.
The semi real-time battle system is my favorite aspect of the game, which smartly adapts and turns the radial camera system from the main Panzer Dragoon series on its head, into one that focuses on positioning your character to avoid enemy hit zones while waiting for your turn to act, reminiscent of Final Fantasy’s ATB system.
Originally conceived as a Final Fantasy killer for the Sega Saturn (that was a term that was thrown around a lot in the 32-bit era), the game faced multiple delays in development and by the time it made it out in the West, the Sega Saturn was on its last legs and thus only 20,000+ copies were printed - as a result driving the current prices for the game beyond 1,000 USD.
Perhaps no game is worth 1,000 dollars, but for 32-bit era JRPG fans, Panzer Dragoon Saga still stands as an interesting testament of that era with a setting and battle system still unique - even by modern RPG standards.
Spanning 4 discs that bring a unique game world that involves a rider and their dragon taking the fight to an empire that was only peripherally hinted at in the first 2 games, one with its own lore, landscape and language to life - the game clocks in at a relatively modest 25-30 hours (despite the 4-discs) to really flesh out the world-building with cinematics and voiced speech - in the game’s fantasy language.
The semi real-time battle system is my favorite aspect of the game, which smartly adapts and turns the radial camera system from the main Panzer Dragoon series on its head, into one that focuses on positioning your character to avoid enemy hit zones while waiting for your turn to act, reminiscent of Final Fantasy’s ATB system.
Originally conceived as a Final Fantasy killer for the Sega Saturn (that was a term that was thrown around a lot in the 32-bit era), the game faced multiple delays in development and by the time it made it out in the West, the Sega Saturn was on its last legs and thus only 20,000+ copies were printed - as a result driving the current prices for the game beyond 1,000 USD.
Perhaps no game is worth 1,000 dollars, but for 32-bit era JRPG fans, Panzer Dragoon Saga still stands as an interesting testament of that era with a setting and battle system still unique - even by modern RPG standards.
I find that some of the games I enjoy the most are those that I know very little of, by the time I check them out. Panzer Dragoon Saga is one of them. All I had seen of it, which was enough to spark my interest, was this bit of cutscene, devoid of context. There's something already pretty unique, in there. Most games back then- hell, a lot of JRPGs today, don't have that kind of animation. In just about every scene (and these aren't the "big" ones- those are FMVs) characters act and interact with each other, move around, they don't just stand there and stare at each other while they talk. Today this isn't groundbreaking, but I genuinely cannot think of a single game in Saga's era that did anything like this. Only Vagrant Story, maybe, and that one's a few years newer. It's fully voice acted, too, down to every single unimportant NPC line (Only in Japanese, though. This is probably better nowadays, but it does feel like they just didn't care to dub it, it would certainly have turned people off at the time. Given how few copies were even sold overseas, this isn't surprising. It's nice that the translation itself is pretty alright, though, minus some oddities). This is all already very admirable in a vacuum, but I think that when Panzer Dragoon Saga is looked at as a sequel to its rail shooter predecessors, it all makes even more sense. In my thoughts on the original Panzer Dragoon, I noted that the game felt extremely cinematic in a grandiose way, and Saga is a natural evolution of that. It's impressive just how much it achieves in terms of presentation, and while the story is simpler than the genre's usual fare, that very much does not harm it, in the long run.
Speaking of adapting Panzer Dragoon to the RPG canon, the gameplay is an even clearer and more brilliant example of that, which is no small feat. How do you even adapt a rail shooter into turn-based combat? Simple, you put all of the focus on the positioning of the player and enemies in regards to one another, and turn every fight into a super cinematic little puzzle. It's not the deepest thing out there, though more than satisfying enough: You can move around the foes, ducking in and out of danger and safe zones, positioning yourself so you can hit weak points, but the ability to act recharges in real time, and moving halts it briefly, so you have to be tactical. This is all capped off quite cleverly by a simple ratings system at the end of every fight. Beat it quickly and without taking many hits, and you'll be awarded with more exp and a chance for an item. The game is quite easy, and you'll never really need to play strategically, so it's nice to always have something to push you towards optimal play. Outside of battle, levels are explored entirely on dragonback, flying through caves, ruins, forests and the like, which is a nice spectacle and quite cooler than the usual on-foot dungeon crawling, though ultimately not too mechanically different. Again, Team Andromeda's penchant for the cinematic shines- style over substance is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when there's more than enough of the latter. Speaking of that, you can transform your dragon, and the way it freely warps between any combination of its forms is quite the technological marvel.
When you will be walking on foot, it will be because you're exploring the game's few towns and such. They're small, but populated with fairly memorable NPCs. I think all of them have unique models, and plenty have side-quests associated with them, sometimes small, sometimes not. Good stuff. I don't think you'll be missing out by going in fully blind, but I actually did enjoy checking the wiki's list of "secrets" and poking around at various side stories as I went through the game. As for the main story, I've mentioned already that it's fairly simple, but that doesn't mean it's bad, just more understated than expected. Mercenary Edge's group gets slaughtered by rebel Craymen, who is following some mysterious goals, and he sets out to get his revenge on him, with the help of a dragon that mysteriously bonded with him. Character development is very organic, sometimes subtle and usually not lampshaded, and PDS doesn't mind hitting you with some nasty gut punches, or hiding some pretty vital information from you entirely. It can feel slightly underwhelming at times, but it does fit the setting and tone, and I do appreciate the commitment to the original games' surreal aura.
I do have some genuine criticisms, though. While the game is mostly pretty fun, a few of the dungeons are pretty unbearable. The worst offender is the Ruins of Uru, a massive labyrinth you can only explore with a shitty little landspeeder, populated with pathetically weak encounters that offer no challenge and a lot of wasted time. I actually quite like what it does story-wise but man is it a slog to go through. Generally, the last disc of the game tends to have some of its worst dungeons, with reskinned enemies and lots of flying about with little to do. The final dungeon is a stealth one, and it completely fails as a climactic conclusion of the story and gameplay. Your offensive "berserk" powers, aka your spells, look cool but feel kind of useless a lot of the time, because they require twice as many actions as your attacks and rarely do even just twice as much damage, at least in the late game. They're useful to break past defenses but usually there's some way around them that lets you strike a weak point for great damage, which you can only do with your standard attacks.
It's a damn shame that this game was relegated to the last throes of a console doomed to fail from day one. It is absolutely one of the finest JRPGs I've played and just bursts at the seams with love for its world and for pushing the envelope on what games could be. I absolutely recommend playing it, it's quite tighter and lighter in length than your usual JRPG, has some really awesome things I haven't even mentioned, like the OST, and while Saturn emulation isn't great it is worth dealing with. Do keep in mind that it is highly recommended to be familiar with Panzer Dragoon II: Zwei before playing this- knowing the original PD is nice, knowing Zwei is quite important. So, with that, I guess that's it for Panzer Dragoon and me. I want to play Orta, but I don't know if I want to enough to figure out Xbox emulation, and I'm sure as hell not playing the Game Gear one. All I've said about this game applies to the whole series, these are some really evocative, artful games that did some extremely interesting stuff with the medium, and it's really a shame that they were stuck on a console nobody bought, because if they were on the PS1 or N64 I guarantee to you that Panzer Dragoon would be a household name today.
Speaking of adapting Panzer Dragoon to the RPG canon, the gameplay is an even clearer and more brilliant example of that, which is no small feat. How do you even adapt a rail shooter into turn-based combat? Simple, you put all of the focus on the positioning of the player and enemies in regards to one another, and turn every fight into a super cinematic little puzzle. It's not the deepest thing out there, though more than satisfying enough: You can move around the foes, ducking in and out of danger and safe zones, positioning yourself so you can hit weak points, but the ability to act recharges in real time, and moving halts it briefly, so you have to be tactical. This is all capped off quite cleverly by a simple ratings system at the end of every fight. Beat it quickly and without taking many hits, and you'll be awarded with more exp and a chance for an item. The game is quite easy, and you'll never really need to play strategically, so it's nice to always have something to push you towards optimal play. Outside of battle, levels are explored entirely on dragonback, flying through caves, ruins, forests and the like, which is a nice spectacle and quite cooler than the usual on-foot dungeon crawling, though ultimately not too mechanically different. Again, Team Andromeda's penchant for the cinematic shines- style over substance is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when there's more than enough of the latter. Speaking of that, you can transform your dragon, and the way it freely warps between any combination of its forms is quite the technological marvel.
When you will be walking on foot, it will be because you're exploring the game's few towns and such. They're small, but populated with fairly memorable NPCs. I think all of them have unique models, and plenty have side-quests associated with them, sometimes small, sometimes not. Good stuff. I don't think you'll be missing out by going in fully blind, but I actually did enjoy checking the wiki's list of "secrets" and poking around at various side stories as I went through the game. As for the main story, I've mentioned already that it's fairly simple, but that doesn't mean it's bad, just more understated than expected. Mercenary Edge's group gets slaughtered by rebel Craymen, who is following some mysterious goals, and he sets out to get his revenge on him, with the help of a dragon that mysteriously bonded with him. Character development is very organic, sometimes subtle and usually not lampshaded, and PDS doesn't mind hitting you with some nasty gut punches, or hiding some pretty vital information from you entirely. It can feel slightly underwhelming at times, but it does fit the setting and tone, and I do appreciate the commitment to the original games' surreal aura.
I do have some genuine criticisms, though. While the game is mostly pretty fun, a few of the dungeons are pretty unbearable. The worst offender is the Ruins of Uru, a massive labyrinth you can only explore with a shitty little landspeeder, populated with pathetically weak encounters that offer no challenge and a lot of wasted time. I actually quite like what it does story-wise but man is it a slog to go through. Generally, the last disc of the game tends to have some of its worst dungeons, with reskinned enemies and lots of flying about with little to do. The final dungeon is a stealth one, and it completely fails as a climactic conclusion of the story and gameplay. Your offensive "berserk" powers, aka your spells, look cool but feel kind of useless a lot of the time, because they require twice as many actions as your attacks and rarely do even just twice as much damage, at least in the late game. They're useful to break past defenses but usually there's some way around them that lets you strike a weak point for great damage, which you can only do with your standard attacks.
It's a damn shame that this game was relegated to the last throes of a console doomed to fail from day one. It is absolutely one of the finest JRPGs I've played and just bursts at the seams with love for its world and for pushing the envelope on what games could be. I absolutely recommend playing it, it's quite tighter and lighter in length than your usual JRPG, has some really awesome things I haven't even mentioned, like the OST, and while Saturn emulation isn't great it is worth dealing with. Do keep in mind that it is highly recommended to be familiar with Panzer Dragoon II: Zwei before playing this- knowing the original PD is nice, knowing Zwei is quite important. So, with that, I guess that's it for Panzer Dragoon and me. I want to play Orta, but I don't know if I want to enough to figure out Xbox emulation, and I'm sure as hell not playing the Game Gear one. All I've said about this game applies to the whole series, these are some really evocative, artful games that did some extremely interesting stuff with the medium, and it's really a shame that they were stuck on a console nobody bought, because if they were on the PS1 or N64 I guarantee to you that Panzer Dragoon would be a household name today.
MASTERPIECE!