If you don’t, it’s game over and you’re back to the beginning. There’s no mid-level checkpointing, but if you have a credit you can restart the level you died on. You can earn extra lives or “credits” at the end of each level, depending on your performance specifically, your accuracy, how many enemies you shot down, and how many got away. That’s because even though Panzer Dragoon was made for the Sega Saturn it’s built like an arcade game: you have two shots to fly and shoot your way through its seven levels. But it’s still got a long way to go before it’s regarded as anything more than a retro curio.“But yes, I did say it’s less than two hours long. The superior sequel is supposedly being remade next, with a VR game by a separate team also underway, so Panzer Dragoon’s story has not ended yet. Somehow we can’t see that happening though and so all you’re left with is a very old game that, while it looks better than it ever has, is not improved enough to appeal to anyone but existing fans – who will be the least accepting of the control and visual changes. But if that’s going to be the attitude we’d rather they just didn’t bother, or try and sort out, after all these years, a proper remaster collection of the original Saturn games (all Saturn games, not just Panzer Dragoon). The grand finale of Summer Game Fest was… Final Fantasy 7 Rebirthįrom Sega’s point of view the problem is presumably that Panzer Dragoon doesn’t warrant any additional money or effort being spent on it, as it’s not that well known even compared to something like Streets Of Rage. ![]() At heart, Panzer Dragoon is a very simple game and all you have to do is point with your reticule (which is now awkwardly superimposed over the top of the dragon, instead of seeming to be a 3D object projecting out from it) and shoot the various enemies that assail you. Beyond concerns about how the game looks and sounds, it just doesn’t feel right to control. Why there’d be any need to rush the release of a 25-year-old Saturn game we don’t know, but unfortunately far too much of the game feels underdeveloped and heavily constrained by its low budget. Also, bizarrely, the much-vaunted new arrangement of the original soundtrack, by Panzer Dragoon Saga and Orta composer Saori Kobayashi, isn’t included at launch and will, along with motion controls, be added later as a patch. Although the initial claim that it would run at 60fps is clearly not true. The remake does have its moments though, as some areas, such as Episode 3’s night-time raid in a desert canyon, look generally very good. The lived-in look of the technology is gone, replaced with visuals that look too clean and oversaturated compared to what was implied by the Saturn original. Unfortunately, the first stage has fared the worst, as instead of an ethereal lake filled with mysterious ruins, there’s a lot more extraneous detail that ruins the mood and makes the fantasy world seem a lot more generic. A third mainline game, the well-received but commercially unsuccessful Panzer Dragoon Orta, appeared on the original Xbox, but that was the end of the franchise… until now. A brand new IP at the time, the Saturn also hosted a direct sequel and highly-regarded role-playing spin-off Panzer Dragoon Saga. ![]() Panzer Dragoon is one of the few games that fits both criteria and if you did happen to own a Saturn back in the mid-90s then you almost certainly also played Panzer Dragoon. As a result, there are a lot of well-regarded Saturn games that never got released outside of Japan and a much small number of exclusives that were a) released in the West and b) considered to be any good. Almost completely ignored in the West, in favour of the first PlayStation and Nintendo 64, it was surprisingly successful in Japan (despite, equally surprisingly, the Mega Drive not being very big there). The Sega Saturn console put the company firmly on the road to crashing out of the hardware business, but it holds a peculiar position in gaming history.
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