REVIEW OF REMAKE
Kid Icarus: Uprising is my favorite game of all time. It is also a game that may never get a sequel, and maybe not even a Switch port. The worst part is, its such a unique specimen, there aren't even any "Uprising clones" that have been made since, at least to my knowledge. It took a while for Dark Souls to get a series of clones and now even Breath of the Wild is seeing duplicates start to crop up. So until an Uprising clone can come out in the future, I'm going back to the past to play as many Uprising-like rail shooters as I can.
Panzer Dragoon has always been on my radar since I started searching for Uprising-likes and I always thought it looked like a cool fantasy alternative to Star Fox. And to its credit, it has a pretty cool aesthetic. It's like Nausicaa meets Skies of Arcadia with a touch of sci-fi. Flying from desert canyons to lush green forests to a dimly-lit underground facility to a military city floating on the sea keeps things interesting. The gameplay, while straightforward, is pretty good, too. You point and shoot or hold the fire button to lock on and fire a homing attack. Girls und Panzer Dragoon's big gimmick is four-direction shooting. Your dragon will always fly forward, but you can turn yourself around to shoot enemies and projectiles that come at you from the left, right, or behind. Two downsides to this, though. One, your reticle moves with your dragon, so in order to shoot at things, sometimes you need to put yourself in their line of fire, resulting in you getting hit. Two, not being able to move your dragon when not facing forward makes getting hit a common occurrence, especially on the rare occasion when enemies are shooting from two sides at once. Thankfully, your dragon is made out of Elon Musk polygon cyber car. I played on normal and ate all kinds of shit yet only died once because running into obstacles hurts you more than projectiles.
The story has a neat premise but the opening cutscene drags for way too long and the story is more an excuse to take us from one cool landscape to the next. Loading times are the biggest problem with this remake. I don't know how it was on the Saturn and other consoles, but on Switch, it would take at least 30 seconds for a level to load, and even then, some of the lighting and shadow effects are wonky. Also imagine my surprise when I found out this game is only one hour long. Yeah you can replay it on harder difficulties and with a bevy of new cheats, but there's no real reason to outside of increasing your shot-down ratio. Music is entirely unmemorable; point a gun at my head and I couldn't remember a thing.
While a decent time, Panzer Dragoon is not worth $25 on modern systems. If you're interested, I'd say wait for a sale of around $10. I heard the sequels are more in-depth and that the same guys behind the remake are doing Zwei this year, so hopefully it goes over better.
Kid Icarus: Uprising is my favorite game of all time. It is also a game that may never get a sequel, and maybe not even a Switch port. The worst part is, its such a unique specimen, there aren't even any "Uprising clones" that have been made since, at least to my knowledge. It took a while for Dark Souls to get a series of clones and now even Breath of the Wild is seeing duplicates start to crop up. So until an Uprising clone can come out in the future, I'm going back to the past to play as many Uprising-like rail shooters as I can.
Panzer Dragoon has always been on my radar since I started searching for Uprising-likes and I always thought it looked like a cool fantasy alternative to Star Fox. And to its credit, it has a pretty cool aesthetic. It's like Nausicaa meets Skies of Arcadia with a touch of sci-fi. Flying from desert canyons to lush green forests to a dimly-lit underground facility to a military city floating on the sea keeps things interesting. The gameplay, while straightforward, is pretty good, too. You point and shoot or hold the fire button to lock on and fire a homing attack. Girls und Panzer Dragoon's big gimmick is four-direction shooting. Your dragon will always fly forward, but you can turn yourself around to shoot enemies and projectiles that come at you from the left, right, or behind. Two downsides to this, though. One, your reticle moves with your dragon, so in order to shoot at things, sometimes you need to put yourself in their line of fire, resulting in you getting hit. Two, not being able to move your dragon when not facing forward makes getting hit a common occurrence, especially on the rare occasion when enemies are shooting from two sides at once. Thankfully, your dragon is made out of Elon Musk polygon cyber car. I played on normal and ate all kinds of shit yet only died once because running into obstacles hurts you more than projectiles.
The story has a neat premise but the opening cutscene drags for way too long and the story is more an excuse to take us from one cool landscape to the next. Loading times are the biggest problem with this remake. I don't know how it was on the Saturn and other consoles, but on Switch, it would take at least 30 seconds for a level to load, and even then, some of the lighting and shadow effects are wonky. Also imagine my surprise when I found out this game is only one hour long. Yeah you can replay it on harder difficulties and with a bevy of new cheats, but there's no real reason to outside of increasing your shot-down ratio. Music is entirely unmemorable; point a gun at my head and I couldn't remember a thing.
While a decent time, Panzer Dragoon is not worth $25 on modern systems. If you're interested, I'd say wait for a sale of around $10. I heard the sequels are more in-depth and that the same guys behind the remake are doing Zwei this year, so hopefully it goes over better.
OvisAries
2 years ago
If you want something like it, you owe it to yourself to play Panzer Dragoon Orta, it's absolutely incredible and the series' swansong.