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.
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.
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
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