Panzer Dragoon Saga Review (Sega Saturn, 1998)

Panzer Dragoon is one of my favorite examples of what Sega used to be. They were daring, artistic, and unique. This game is all of those things. The first was one of the big launch titles on the Sega Saturn and is highly revered by fans of the platform. The second really kicked things up a notch by introducing many brand new elements to the franchise. It’s one of the most polished video games released on either of the 32-bit consoles. So where could Sega take it from here? What would up the ante?

The third installment of the series, Panzer Dragoon Saga, was an expansive role playing game instead of a shooter like the other two. It’s a rare and expensive game nowadays and has fiercely loyal fans. While I’m a fan I must say it’s a tad bit overrated.

Saga takes place following the conclusion of Zwei. You play as a new face here, a mercenary named Edge. He has been hired by the Empire to guard an excavation site that has discovered ancient artifacts from a civilization long gone. An attack from a monster causes Edge to fall inside where he discovers a girl encased in a rock wall, and a sleeping dragon. One of the empire’s fleets attacks the mine, kills all of Edge’s companions, takes the girl and leaves our soon to be hero for dead. The flying dragon awakens and Edge vows to use it to get revenge on the evil general Crayman.

The story doesn’t have a lot of plot twists. There isn’t a large cast of characters. The narrative just is far from typical even so far as the RPG genre is concerned. Where Panzer Dragoon Saga excels is the world it creates. The environments, towns, caves – basically everywhere feels lived in and as if it has a story to tell. There’s a wonderful sense of history and lore here. From an artistic point of view Saga is tough to beat. There’s an underspoken sense of dread and stone everywhere you go. This almost feels like it could have been a Hayao Miyazaki production and draws obvious influence from their films such as Nausicaa Valley of the Wind and Laputa Castle in the Sky.

I’ll start off by telling you what Panzer Dragoon Saga does differently. For starters you don’t explore via a traditional world map. When you’re not in a town or other safe zone you’re aboard your dragon and can fly through 3D environments moving in all directions. Battles begin in these areas randomly with no rhyme or reason behind the encounters. In typical fashion you’re whisked away to a separate screen where you can perform a few different commands but that’s where the similarities end.

Battles are semi-real time (it’s still turn based in that you have to wait for commands to be carried out before you can do anything) and based on placement. They take place strictly atop your dragon while flying and you can move in front, behind, or to either side of the enemy. You’ll need to do so in order to not only exploit weak points but also to stay out of dangerous zones. You have a radar on-screen that shows via color coding (clear for neutral, green for safe, and red for danger) where you want and don’t want to be. The enemies can also move and will try to keep you in their targets. Moving comes at no cost but your command bar doesn’t charge while doing so.

There are three levels on the command bar and each allows you to perform one command. This charges automatically as you sit idle but as I just mentioned it freezes when you’re changing positions. Edge and the dragon have two basic commands. You can either fire your hand gun, or use the dragon’s lasers. The first of these targets a single foe for multiple shots and the latter hits several different in-range targets. In the beginning they’re almost interchangeable but as enemies start requiring strategy you’ll need to choose carefully. Additionally you can use berserk commands (think magic in a typical RPG) and items for healing or status effects.

The battle system is dynamic and can be a lot of fun. The battles tend to be long and drawn out later on but the interactivity manages to keep things interesting. Unfortunately the pacing in the rest of the game is pretty bad. You explore town areas on-foot and I can’t think of a game with exploration as frustrating as this. The environments are fully 3D and you have total freedom to run around as you please. This is quite impressive for the Sega Saturn with no pre-rendered backgrounds.

Unfortunately the game is bogged down by labyrinthine town areas wherein you must speak to people in a specific order. This quickly gets old, but the real kicker is that there’s a day and night system and some things only happen with the sun is out or when it’s down. Effectively this doubles the area that you need to search to find someone.

Even simply interacting with characters and items is annoying. In most RPGs you simply walk up to someone and press the action button and they speak. Not in Panzer Dragoon Saga. Here pressing the action button puts a reticule on-screen that you must move around and use to select the person/object with which you wish to interact. I get that the developers were trying to establish parity between the on-foot and dragon sequences but this is annoying. I found myself stuck just moving the reticule all around trying to find something that would allow me to progress. Sega could have done much better because this mechanic is pointless and aggravating.

That’s a pretty major nitpick but it’s not nearly enough to ruin the game. At least while you’re stuck exploring towns you’ll be dealing with the absolute best graphics the Sega Saturn was capable of. Panzer Dragoon Saga is a magnificently beautiful game. I can’t think of any PS1 games that animate this fluidly environments as wide open and as much happening on-screen at once. The character models look a bit blocky but at the time of release there were few that looked as great as they do here.

The real highlight however is the art style. There’s an underspoken, but constant feel of a world that is dirty and has been lived in. The caves all look amazing but the towns fare even better. I absolutely love the style this game uses with some amazing architecture and character designs. The lighting effects are even impressive, and the enemy designs are absolutely amazing. My only gripe is that the FMV sequences are a bit grainy but that’s minor.

The soundtrack fares really well too, and thanks to the redbook audio is perhaps the best aged part of this package. The music is moody and sets a perfect atmosphere. The high point however is the battle track which is good because you’ll be hearing it a lot. Instead of a high powered rock piece the composers went with a more lax but highly instrumental piece. It fits the overall artsy feel of this game perfectly, and also matches the studio ghibli influences that I mentioned earlier. I’m a really big fan of the soundtrack. The voice overs are a bit wonky. They aren’t translated (which is no big deal to me) but they start out in a fictional language and then switch over to Japanese. It’s pretty interesting but there are a few cases where I felt the actors weren’t all that convincing.