Collection essentials #316: Panzer Dragoon (Saturn)

Here we have an early Saturn game that was one of the launch titles for the surprise North American launch in May of 1995. It’s the start of a new series developed by Sega’s Team Andromeda. 

Panzer Dragoon takes place in a post-apocalyptic future, after a series of genetically altered creatures turned on those who made them into weapons and nearly wiped out the whole human race. In the events of the game, a group of imperials have found a tower that houses powerful weapons that were used to fight off those creatures in the past. Well…the imperials are up to no good. You play as a hunter who notices that the imperials are up to something. While investigating, our main character finds a dragon rider who is killed by a rival dragon, and as he dies he warns of what may happen if the imperials get their way. And so, you team up with the unfortunate fellow’s dragon to go try and stop those darn imperials.

This is one of those examples of a game that was made only for home consoles, but was designed like an arcade game. On the normal difficulty, you have three continues to get through six levels, and since it’s not an arcade game you can’t insert a quarter to get more continues! 

The game is a 3D rail shooter. What this means is that you can freely aim and shoot, but you cannot actually move the character you’re controlling as their movement is automatic. Instead, you control an aiming reticle and try to shoot down any enemy that comes in your path. You have two types of shots, a gunshot from the rider’s gun by tapping the shot button which can be used to inflict damage or shoot down enemy bullets (which is important because you can’t dodge) and a homing laser from the dragon’s mouth done by holding down the shot button to lock onto a number of enemies that touch the reticle that will get zapped once you let go of the button. And what spices things up is the fact that any time during the game you can look in one of four directions all around you. There is a radar that shows you where enemies are, so you will very often have to keep switching your viewpoint to make sure you’re shooting down all the enemies and their bullets!

Panzer Dragoon boasts quality presentation values, such as graphics that were good for the time (especially the cutscenes at the start and end of the game), voice acting in a made-up language that fans call “Panzerese”, and some gorgeous music. This game wasn’t quite the big mind-blowing next-generation showstopper like Sega might have hoped, though, and it’s not too hard to see why. The game is very difficult in a way that likely would be off-putting to many games that don’t have the patience to develop their skills to the point of beating it. And the gameplay, while not bad, feels just a bit lacking. Ever since I first played this game, I’ve just felt like it was a little too simple and that there could have used some more moves or gameplay elements. Luckily, sequels were to come.

Panzer Dragoon was one of the games that came with the original Saturn I bought over 20 years ago now. I have never put in the effort to actually beat it, but I do have interest in doing so at some point. Due to being an iconic early Saturn title that spawned an often-overlooked Sega series, it deserves to be an essential in my collection.