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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A rare experience of finding an old game that was Made For You. Combat difficulty is balanced to the point where naysayers will call it easy, but the player is given an exactly appropriate amount of education in order to navigate new enemy and boss mechanics as they arise. Grinding is unnecessary. My goodness, the art. I can’t properly elucidate how much I love every aspect of visual design, the dragons and monsters especially. The music so perfectly reflects the encounters, characters, and locales. A simple straightforward story with characters painted in broad, fairytale strokes. In summary, this is My Kind of JRPG: Vibey, Beautiful, and Short.
This must have knocked the socks off of the 10 people who played it on release.
I was thinking that the idea of games as art really took it on the chin with Sega "losing" the source code for this, but like 50% of movies made before the 60s are lost forever and David Zaslav made $50 million last year.
P.S. I had a nightmare of a time emulating with Kronos, but I didn't have any problems with Beetle.
I was thinking that the idea of games as art really took it on the chin with Sega "losing" the source code for this, but like 50% of movies made before the 60s are lost forever and David Zaslav made $50 million last year.
P.S. I had a nightmare of a time emulating with Kronos, but I didn't have any problems with Beetle.
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.