Panzer Dragoon Saga

With its compelling story and cinematic battles, Panzer Dragoon Saga is one of the most unique RPG's ever made.

Known in Japan as Azel, Panzer Dragoon RPG, it was released in 1998 on the Sega Saturn by Project Andromeda, it was the latest entry in the popular rail shooter series on the commercially unsuccessful console. Though this time, Andromeda decided to create a very different game, but with a few similarities to its predecessors for some familiarity. Despite being a critical darling, and being considered one of the best RPGS and video games of all time, and earned a spot at #22 on G4's 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time, this game failed to sell because it was released very late in the Sega Saturn's lifetime. The game was released in April, and the console was discontinued in August, only 30,000 copies of Panzer Dragoon Saga were sold in the US, and any English copy of the game is rare and can run you at least $300 USD on sites like Ebay, making this a collector's item.

Story:

Taking place in a post-apocalyptic world, you play as Edge, a young solder who is in a group charged with protecting an excavation site. All seems well until an evil monster attacks you. While escaping this creature, you then stumble upon what appears to be a girl sticking out of the wall. Before you know what this is, some imperial troops come and attack your group. These troops are led by the evil Craymen and they ruthlessly kill everyone and take the wall containing the girl. In a fit of rage, you try to attack the soldiers and you are then shot off the cliff down into a ravine.

Apparently unharmed, you wander around confused and run into a mysterious dragon who seems that he wants to help you. You have some strange spiritual connection with the dragon and you place your trust in him, and the dragon whisks you out of the ravine and takes you to your captain. As you watch your beloved captain die, you vow to go on a revenge to kill Craymen and you and the dragon go off on your search for Craymen and try to solve the mystery behind that girl.

The game is largely voice acted, but it seems like Team Andromeda cut some corners on the localization by keeping the Japanese voices, instead of dubbing it over. Luckily they have subtitles.

Gameplay

While the previous Panzer Dragoon games are rail shooters, Saga is an RPG with mostly free-roaming exploration. There are two modes of exploration: flight, and on foot. On foot exploration is where you control Edge, and mostly takes place in towns. Towns serve the typical RPG purpose of collecting information on where to go, and can sometimes buy items. The game carries over some of its rail-shooting roots by having you call up a targeting cursor to select items or people. All of the dialog in the game is voice acted. The opening movie is in a made up language that's unique for the series, but the rest of the in-game voices are spoken in Japanese with English subtitles, which is sort of confusing with why they're different.

Flight exploration is basically this game's version of dungeons. You control the dragon and you fly around full 3D environments and can fly in any direction. Similar to foot exploration, you have the targeting cursor to select item chests, suspicious places, and target the save machines. Many of these dungeons also have some kind of puzzle that allows you to progress further into the dungeon. These dungeons feature the typical random encounters that everyone either hates or tolerates. This is where the game gets even more unique.

The game features a strange, and very unique and very cinematic battle system. The game is sort of in real time, and you have 3 bars that fill up over time, and sort of like the ATB system in Final Fantasy games, when a bar is filled, you are able to perform an action in battle. Having all 3 bars filled means you can perform 3 consecutive actions. While you wait for your bar(s) to fill up, you are able to maneuver around the enemies to avoid attacks and target their weak zones. There is a radar on the bottom that indicates: neutral, hazardous, and safe zones. These are subject to change, either from the monsters also able to rotate their position, or from the monsters changing these zones. Safe zones mean you're safe from attack, neutral means you either have a chance of attack, or the monsters use their weaker attacks on you. The hazardous zones mean that you're prone to being heavily attacked by the monster's special move.

With the action gauges, you have three choices: you can either use a basic attack, use a berserk move, or use an item. With the basic attack, you either have a choice between using the dragon's attack to target on a single target, or use Edge's laser to attack several targets. If you have one target, then these lasers will attack the same target multiple times. It's more wise to use Edge's laser to attack since it either does more damage, or attacks multiple enemies, making the battles less time consuming. Berserk moves don't need that much of an explanation, basically it just like your typical RPG magic/special attacks. At the cost of berserk points, you can cast either a really strong attack, or heal yourself. After a battle, it ranks you based on how well you fought and better scores give you more EXP.

Another aspect is dragon transformation and dragon morphing. Transformations only happen at key story points, and your dragon changes shape and becomes stronger. With morphing, you have a giant circular gauge with 4 points: attack, spirit, defense, and speed. You move your cursor around to get your dragon's stats to focus on these various stats, or just have it dead center for balanced stats. These various points also alter how your dragon looks.

Visuals

While they're pretty good for Sega Saturn standards, they look sort of clunky today. Especially since the Sega Saturn's graphics uses quadrilaterals for their polygon rendering instead of triangles like the PS1 and N64. The battle scenes are still very nice, and are sort of like the charm point of the game. The battles are very flashy and the attack sequences are pretty well animated, especially the boss scenes. While flight mode is nice, the lack of the use of fog and the short draw distance sometimes makes distant objects sort of pop up out of nowhere instead of fading in so keep that in mind. The on foot scenes are where the game also shows its age with the characters. So if you can deal with blocky characters, you'll be okay. There are also a few full CGI cutscenes that look very nice compared to the rest of the game.

The environments themselves focus largely on the typical post-apocalyptic scenery, much of the game has a depressing desolate feeling. You venture through hazardous cliffs, vast deserts, and even several ruins that are in the previous environments, and even scattered over a sea. Typical post-apocalyptic signs that a past war has ravaged the entire world.

On foot:

Flight exploration:

Music

The music for it is sort of strange. Unlike other RPG's where the soundtrack is almost entirely of a symphonic nature, Panzer Dragoon Saga seems to range between the standard symphonic music with other songs that are almost tribal sounding. This makes Panzer Dragoon Saga's soundtrack one of the most interesting, adding more to the overall unique feel of the game.

Wings

Atolm Battle Theme

Premonition of War

Verdict:

Panzer Dragoon Saga is definitely one of the most ambitious RPG's ever created, and definitely one of the best swan songs for a video game console, it's a definite must have for anyone who's a fan of RPG's. On a whopping 4 discs with its very unique and innovated gameplay, and amazing cinematic battle system, even several years later, this game still has no counterparts and sits in a RPG world where it is the only game that mixes aspects of a rail-shooter into its battle system. Though since this game had a limited print, you're stuck with three choices: coughing up a few hundred bucks for the game, illegally playing it on a Sega Saturn Emulator (or modding your Saturn to play pirated games), or patiently wait until someone either ports the game and/or remake it, seeing that Team Andromeda is a now defunct company. We all pray that this game will someday see the light of day and get more recognition that it certainly deserves. This isn't a game that's hyped up based on its rarity, it's praised because there is simply no other game like Panzer Dragoon Saga.

Music: 6/10.

Visuals (Or Graphics): 8/10.

Story: 9/10.

Content: 9/10.

Conclusion: 8/10

Dark Souls Review

Dark Souls is infamously known as one of the most difficult games for players, especially in the RPG community of gaming. The game will throw challenges that seem monumental and will also show you no mercy. So how is the game overall and what does it provide to you besides a very good challenge? Well lets check this game out to see just how good this seemingly, as described by many people, impossible game really is and if it worth your money and time in the end.

Story

In the kingdom of Lordran the first flame is dying out, and if not replenished darkness will cover the kingdom. As the chosen undead it is your duty to replenish this flame and escape the Asylum to get to Lordran. You must past through vast lands and defeat many strong enemies along the way and collect the lord souls of the people whom slayed the Dragons ending their age. These people are Gwyn Lord of Cinder, Seath the Scaless, The Witch of Izalith, and The Four Kings. By uniting these souls you hope to stop the first flame from burning as it is your destiny, or is it the one thats truly right as you risk your life dying countless times, not even knowing completely what your sacrifices will do. Only by uniting these souls can you possibly be brought an answer.

Gameplay

Dark Souls plays like what you would expect a adventure RPG to play out as, you roam new areas, defeat big bosses and the enemies before them. However these bosses, even the enemies don't go down easy. Though it is overrated to call this game impossible not knowing what to do will cause you to die more then you thought possible. The game itself requires you to actually think before acting, not charging in like a senseless madman. This is where messages come in to play which can be seen left randomly on the ground when in online mode. This can really be of help giving you an idea of what a boss could be weak against, what moves you should look to be using and just what in general is behind the fog gate.

The interesting aspect of Dark Souls is its "soul" system as I call it. In other RPG's I am sure you are used to getting XP and money after a battle, but thats different in Dark Souls. Your only means of buying equipment and leveling up is how many souls you have. So at times you have to prioritize, do I want new weapons and armor or even titanites to upgrade my weapon or do I want to level up? This is a interesting implication in the game and can get you to really prioritize at times. Not to mention if you die you drop all of your souls were you die, you can recover them but if you die again without doing so they will be gone. This also brings a challenge to the player as losing your souls can really mess you up in the game, especially if you have a lot of souls. It is possible to get souls though from dead bodies and killing bosses. However boss souls require you to prioritize as well. Either you want the rare boss weapon or you want the many souls from the boss soul. Overall the soul system as I call it can really make you think for a while whats best in your current situation, and what you may need to put off until you get more souls later.

For the most part gameplay is nothing complex, you block, roll, attack, jump etc and that's really it. You can also get poisoned, inflicted with toxic and much more life killing status effects that at times can fill up quite quick and devastate you if you are not careful. Now on to the blocking aspects blocking more useful then you thought in most games. Rolling also helps a lot as well and knowing when to attack and parry will be a big factor to helping you succeed in the game. So for the most part it is best to work on your timing and attacking skills throughout the game as in pure honesty it will make your life throughout the game much more easier. Parrying and backstabbing, or frontstabbing especially as they do massive damage and can really help your cause in a battle. It is indeed good to have a game were things such as blocking, rolling etc are actually important and useful to your survival, not just there for occasional use. 

Bonfires are something interesting added as they are a mean for leveling up, attuning magic, reverse your hollowing, and act as checkpoints for when you die, though some are hidden and take some searching to find. Though overall they do a lot for you and can even be upgraded by sacrificing some of your humanity. This is so that they can replenish your estus flasks, such as a bonfire may be only to replenish five of your ten flasks, but by upgrading it the bonfire can now upgrade ten. Each bonfire also has a firekeeper and killing them is not recommended, if one dies you can still teleport to a bonfire, but you will never be able to use it again.

The blacksmiths play a important role as well, and so do the titanite shards too. The way blacksmiths work is that they can repair, reinforce and modify your equipment. Overtime your weapon, shield, or armor will wear down and break, repairing it prevents that. By reinforcing your equipment you increase stuff like for a sword increase its attack power, for armor increase its defense and much more. Then you have a modify equipment option were you can reinforce your weapons in a special way if you have already reinforced them five times. You can either continue to do this and reinforce to +10, +15 etc or do things such as create magic weapons, divine weapons or boss weapons created from a boss soul if you haven't consumed it yet. In short there is a lot in creating and crafting new weapons and items as well as many other unique weapons just waiting to be found within the game.

Lastly, summoning is also a key feature as well in the game, you can choose to summon a NPC or player through online. You must be human mind you to do this. Summoning can greatly help your cause in general during the boss fights, especially ones like the Bell Gargoyles were there are two of them at once attacking you. One other evidence of this is against Ornstein and Smough in which alone they can be considered the hardest boss in the entire game. Even summoning Solaire, the phantom in the boss area to help the boss fight can still prove challenging. You are also mind you able to summon up to three other people to your aid. Just be careful as you can be invaded in the game as well. You can be invaded by a NPC or a actual player whom plays the game as well, either way both are looking out to kill you.

Music

The game has some pretty nice tracks actually for the monumental bosses you fight. These can range from tranquil tracks that put you in a calm mood or very dangerous ones that make you feel like you are going to die. Either way the game itself provides you with good music you are sure to enjoy. Even the ending boss has a very sorrowful theme, nothing like some monumental epic sounding instrumental just a sorrowful theme that has a sad tone to it as you fight the fallen king Gwyn. Either way you will really get a great deal of enjoyment from the music within the game that can really bring out the feelings and emotions of whats happening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs59egXnb3c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB6sOhQan9Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsps0I58yUM

Graphics

The graphics in this game are pretty good and the visuals in some areas are really nice. One key support for this is the appearance of "Anor Londo" the used to be main city where people like Gwyn himself ruled. Some other areas show some nice things as well while others it seems there could have been more for. Lost Izalith is sort of a lackluster area and does not show much do it and there is also repetitive enemies as opposed to the Demon Ruins that borders it were there is a bit more to fight. Not to mention Bed of Chaos is more of a frustrating boss rather then one thats going to challenge you so the overall area can be a disappointment. It just feels like the area could have been expanded more and could have had more to it. Now an area that had good to it but suffered from problems is Blighttown. The area is quite large and quite interesting as you traverse through the makeshift town, down into the poison swamps that leads to Queelags domain. Though framerate issues can be a bother for this area which are also evident in Lost Izalith. Overall a lot of the areas can give you a lot to look at, some of them though feel short lived and you wish there was more.

Character and enemy designs are quite nice, there are many enemies and friendly NPC's to behold. Some bosses look ferocious and will make you jump out of your skin like the Gaping Dragon and Ceaseless Discharge, some will have a creepy feeling to them and look very dark and evil like the Four Kings and Nito. There are also some that more so give off a tranquil feeling and have a majestic feeling to them, such an example can come from looking at the Moonlight Butterfly. The DLC added some fun new things and bosses, as well as the corrupted Artorias the Abysswalker.

Conclusion

Dark Souls is indeed a difficult game, quite possibly one of the most difficult you may play especially when doing New Game+ and onwards. Though some of the areas were short and not as enjoyful as others, and even some of the bosses towards the end really fell off of the difficult peak. Though other great areas and groundbreaking difficult bosses make up for it. If you also don't know were to look for the story you may find it lacking out of the game and feel like theres really not much of a story. That is until you find out that minor dialogue exchanges between NPC's and items actually give you more then a hint about it, and the story becomes much more elaborate and engaging then what you originally thought of. The music will not leave you disappointed either providing you with many great soundtracks during the boss battles and it overall brings out the feel of the game quite well. Finally the games many interesting mechanics such as using souls for experience and money is very interesting and makes you really think about things, and the use of bonfires and upgrading and crafting your weapons are also a key factor in the game that bring out even more of its enjoyment. You can even join your friends in some jolly cooperation or battle them to the death adding more fun to the mix that everyone can enjoy together. Overall the game will challenge and give you a lot to experience, its not perfect and indeed has faults, but the game is well enough to get you to want to play more, so why not give it a shot, just be careful out there, we wouldn't want to see you go hollow.

Story:8.25

Graphics:8.5

Music:8.5

Final:8.5