Panzer Dragoon Saga
All throughout the Saturn's life, the system struggled for an RPG to define it, in comparison to the alliance of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest on the PlayStation. Many fans felt GameArts' Grandia would be Sega's flagship RPG; that was later ported to the PlayStation, where it received its only release outside of Japan.
Instead, that role ended up going to Panzer Dragoon Saga, one of the last titles officially published by Sega for the system. Panzer Dragoon Saga takes the vibrant world found in the previous games and fleshes out its back story, filling four CDs worth of cinematics, and telling the story of a young dragon rider named Edge.
At the beginning, Edge is working at an excavation site for the Empire, until he's attacked by a rogue squadron of soldiers looking for a mysterious artifact. Despite being flung into a chasm, he awakens unharmed, and ends up stumbling upon a dragon, who flies him out to safety. He begins his journey to find the man who nearly killed him, a rebel soldier named Crayman, and discover the secret behind the artifact that his crew was massacred over.
During the initial attack, Edge notices a beautiful young girl frozen into the wall, much like Han Solo in carbonite. We eventually learn that she is named Azel. She's abducted by Crayman's army for reasons that are rather unclear. She later appears riding a powerful beast known as the Atolm Dragon, and immediately targets Edge as her enemy. She appears to have been brainwashed, although only Edge can set her straight before she unleashes terrible devastation upon the world.
Panzer Dragoon Saga is unlike any other RPG for any other system. Other than Edge and his dragon, there aren't any other party members, although NPCs will occasionally hop onboard for the ride. Although there are sections where you run around on foot (mostly in the few towns throughout the world), most of the game -- both battle and exploration -- takes place riding on the back of your dragon. Unlike the on-rails action of the previous games, Saga actually lets you fly around and explore the many details areas of the Panzer Dragoon world, lending a lot more freedom to the experience.
The battle system is one of the most remarkable aspects of Panzer Dragoon Saga. The action takes place in real time, with three power bars that charge over the period of a few seconds. When a single bar charges up, you can make your move.
There are two standard attacks -- Edge's gun targets a single enemy with heavy damage, while the dragon's laser targets multiple foes with lessened damage. There are also several Berserk powers, which act as the equivalent of magic spells. If you want, you can wait to build up two or three power bars to attack multiple times at once. Certain Berserk attacks also drain multiple bars. Similarly, the enemy can attack after it's built enough energy, although you can't determine when that is.
During combat, you're positioned in one of four quadrants surrounding your enemies, and can move between them at will, although this momentarily stops the power gauge. A radar at the bottom of the screen will mark which zones are safe and which are dangerous. If you're flying in a green zone, the enemy can't attack; if you're in a neutral zone, the enemy can use a weak attack, and naturally, the red zone indicates that the enemy can use a fierce attack.
Obviously, you'll want to spend as much time as possible charging in the green zones to avoid damage. However, enemies often have weak points in other positions, encouraging you to fly in the face of danger to finish battles efficiently. The enemy's attack patterns often change multiple times during battle, forcing you to adapt and figure out the optimal positioning, timing, and type of attacks to use.
So, in other words, it's a lot more involving than the typical RPG battle, since you always need to think on your feet. You can also control the growth and powers of your dragon by tinkering with different attributes, which in turn alters your dragon. For example, you can choose to balance your attack power between Edge's gun and the dragon's laser, depending on which you use more often.
You also need to balance between defense and speed -- do you want to be able to take a pounding, or do you want your power bar to charge faster? Depending on how you choose your statistics, your dragon also gains additional powers, such as counterattacking and healing abilities. Although your level-up bonuses change depending on your dragon form, you can change them at any time, including in the middle of battle, so you can figure out what abilities work best against certain enemies.
|
Printer-Friendly Version
The frantic difficulty of the game?
The patterns of the enemies throughout the on-rails games has always been some of the very best examples of video-gaming flow, enemies coming in waves that were created for single strokes of the directional pad and placements which lead from one to another without pushing the player as they’ve come to expect such movements, complaints about lack of analogue support not withstanding, forgetting that the analogue pad wasn’t created yet…
The minor? Improvement in graphics of Panzer Dragoon Zwei?
Even today when I’ve showed this game to people they’ve been stunned, at the scale, design and beauty of enemies and areas you encounter throughout this game, everything from the guardian dragon to the animated transparent textures used throughout level 4 and at points with water/clouds… kept at a smooth and constant frame rate…
While these minor niggles only made me put my back up, more importantly I feel you don’t understand the gaming arena of the mid 90s, we had just come out of the 16 bit era, the arcades were still leading the way in game development, games were made to be arcade experiences, a rush, a ride something that leaves an impression, complaints about the length of the games I feel are totally unjustified, so many games of that era were both shorter and lacked any replay value, being spewed from the arcade generation, along with being born from the arcade orientated 1990s SEGA surely the longevity of the game cannot come into question, games like this, Nights and even Orta are score attack games at heart, the shmup and arcade strive for perfection, the mission to get 100% accuracy winged death rank… The slow unlocking of the contents of Pandra’s Box merely to give the player an area to “play” within, these weren’t standard practices at the time…
No game is perfect and they all do have their flaws, but I feel you may be being needlessly critical on the side of bias e.g saying the FMV in panzer dragoon saga could not compare to the work of square, at this time the only recent FMV square had done was in FFVII which if memory serves couldn’t even match panzer dragoon 1’s FMV in quality…
This article could be your feeling, however more likely I feel its probably an attempt to get a reaction, to put ones-self at a height of editorial elitism to be able (in an uninformed way) criticise such a guarded game series…
Very sorry at 1am i am running on reserve power, there are surely many a typo but now i don't care...
The Saturn was a console of its time, the playstation was designed for 3D graphics, but even it's games can be viewed as ugly/pixelated as any saturn game. Even playing the original Metal Gear Solid gets distracting if you focus on all the clipping problems and jagglies.
The game designers used the technology of the period and tried to do as much as they could with it. Nights (for example) is horrendously pixelated and has the vantage point of about 5 feet. Though if you pay attention to the colors its aesthetic is impressionistic, vibrant moving pointalism. Gameplay and music are perfect, though not only very innovative for the time, complimenting aspects to a extremely engaging videogame as a whole.
Though the author does mention the games' commendable art direction, he fails to see that technological limitations are not bad graphics, just graphics of the time and aesthetic strength should overcome the attention given to technical limitations.
To add, I thought panzer dragoon zwei was phenomenal. The first time i played it was when i was 15. After finally completing the game, the ending song played and credits rolled it was my first real conscious experience that i had just took part in something so well conceived, executed and (above all) artful. The music, the landscapes, the flight, and epic grandeur...so immensely affecting. Games don't really achieve that as flawless and masterfully. And maybe the game was short because they cut out all the fat, and all the imperfections.
I'm not gonna even get into Saga, and to say the "problems" or imperfections the author sees in the game as 'nit picky' would be a severe understatement.
Its like saying bread is crappy cause it has crust on the sides and all bread should be crustless everywhere.
pff...just kill this waste of a good subject "article"/overlong ignorant blurb.