Highwind just finished Panzer Dragoon Saga
Holy cow. I GET IT.
I don’t know where to begin.
The style and atmosphere of the game are incredible. It’s like HR Giger, Ancient Egyptians and the Japanese got together to create a desolate – alien – dying world.
That said – good god the graphics are terrible. I mean – wow. No wonder the Saturn flopped. Everything is so chunky and choppy and blurry it’s insane. The draw distance is really bad. The fact that the concept art, style and visual design are so incredible makes the horrendous graphics that much more depressing. I can’t imagine how great this game would look even on a PS2.
The music is astoundingly fitting with the universe. Its very brooding – often minimalistic – but sometimes bombastic when the time is right. Definitely up there in my opinion with best music ever in an RPG. Top 5 for sure.
I love how few random encounters there are. I’m not even sure if there ARE random encounters or if all of the battles are somehow triggered precisely on your progress. But this makes flying around and just exploring the areas really enjoyable. You level up naturally – no need for useless grinding. You get more powerful simply as you progress through the game – and there’s no nonsense otherwise.
The battle system is great and it is absolutely INSANE that no one has tweaked or simply ripped it off. The battles are much more like puzzles than simply mashing on the attack button. You actually have to THINK and engage in how to take down the enemies and it’s all the more rewarding when you do.
The story is cliche but I like it. I’m a sucker for it. Ancient mysterious powerful girl – fight to regain human freewill – blah blah. It works – I’m down with it every time, apparently.
EVERYTHING is in Japanese – the whole game is in subtitles and even the end game credits are all in kanji. Wat. Did SEGA even try to localize this game whatsoever? I have no idea why they even printed the 30k copies that they did in the US. Really weird.
Oh guess what guys? FLYING ON A DRAGON IS AWESOME. Why are there not more RPGs where you get to fly around on a dragon? Can someone fix this immediately? Thanks.
It’s also a great length. 12-14 hours long. Can we get more RPGs this length – instead of uselessly padding them to 40-100 hours?
In summation – I loved it. The art style, battle system, atmosphere and music are so unique it’s incredibly memorable and enjoyable. I would love to commission an artist for some paintings based on the art. It’s that good.
It’s craaaaaaazy that these innovations are just seemingly lost and ignored. Why are JRPGS still cranking out the same tired Dragon Quest mechanics when innovations like Panzer Dragoon Saga existed FIFTEEN years ago. Sad.
Is it worth the $300-$450 its going for now? I don’t know. That’s up to the buyer – I guess. I recently paid $120 for a Fleetwood Mac concert I didn’t want to go to for my brother’s birthday. So whatever. olol.
