Collection essentials #318: Panzer Dragoon Saga (Saturn)

Sega had big plans for the third Panzer Dragoon game. It started development at the same time as Panzer Dragoon II, but was intended to be something much different and more ambitious than those other two games. The plan for Panzer Dragoon Saga was to take the intriguing world created by the first two games, some of the series’ gameplay elements, and use those concepts to create a cutting-edge, totally unique turn-based JRPG. An absolutely brilliant idea for a video game. 

Our main character of this game is named Edge, and at the start of the game he’s working for those darn imperials at an excavation site which guards relics from long-past civilization which was victim to the events that led to the series’ post-apocalyptic setting. As a monster at the site causes a ruckus, Edge fights it, and then accidentally discovers a slab in which seems to rest a real, unconscious, mysterious young woman. Soon thereafter, the empire’s “Black Fleet” comes to take the girl away and kills most of the people there. Edge gets shot and falls a ways, but somehow survives. Running into danger trying to escape, he is saved by a dragon, who becomes his companion as he sets out to thwart whatever those darn imperials are up to and figure out the deal with that excavated woman.

Playing Panzer Dragoon Saga now, it may not be very obvious, but this was a very ambitious and technologically impressive game for its time. All the characters and environments are fully rendered in 3D, and pretty much all contemporary JRPGs had at least some graphics that were either two-dimensional or pre-rendered images. Most of the dialogue of the game is voiced, and the game very often tells its story through FMV cutscenes with nicer visuals than the console’s in-game graphics, and neither of those things were ever done to the same extent as Panzer Dragoon Saga when it came out. That’s why the game is four discs long, because all the FMVs and voice work took up so much disc space.

While the game doesn’t boast the largest world to explore in the genre even in its time, it certainly does a good job of bringing the world of the Panzer Dragoon series to life in a bigger way than was possible before. And there are many clever nods to things from the previous two games that observant fans will appreciate. The characters and story are certainly not among the best of the best in the genre, though it does have an ending that stands out with something that I’ve never seen in any other RPG.

Gameplay in Panzer Dragoon Saga mainly involves flying around freely on your dragon, moving to where the story demands, finding goodies and fighting enemies along the way. The game has “random battles” like in many other JRPGs, when you will be whisked away to a separate battle screen where turn-based combat will occur. But the game uses a sort of “active time” battle system that makes it not “feel” as much like a turn-based game. In other words, as time passes, Edge and his dragon have three action gauges that will quickly fill up. When one of the gauges is filled, Edge or his dragon can take an action which will consume one full gauge. This can be firing with your gun or shooting groups of enemies with the dragon’s homing laser like in the other Panzer Dragoon games, or it can be using an item or a special technique. And regardless of how much of the gauges have filled, Edge and the dragon can fly as often as they want around the enemy, into one of four areas to each of the four cardinal directions. Positioning matters a lot because enemies will often target certain areas with strong attacks that you’ll want to dodge. 

Outside of battle, the player has the ability to customize their dragon. You can change which stats the dragon specializes in, which also means it will be weak in certain other stats. And the way the dragon is customized affects how it will grow and which techniques it will get. There are also areas such as towns that Edge explores on foot where he can do things like talk to people and buy items, and no combat happens in those areas. 

Panzer Dragoon Saga has an awful lot going for it, but it’s also got some significant flaws that hold it back. The biggest problem in my opinion is that the game is REALLY darn easy. Not that an RPG has to be hard to be fun, but when a game is so easy that it makes most of the player’s choices feel unimportant, you’ve got a problem. Being able to customize your dragon is really cool and all, but so what if you’re going to just win no matter what without all that much thought? The map design falters a bit later in the game with areas that are a little too big without being interesting enough to warrant their size. The game is also very short by RPG standards, coming in at about half the run time of what would be considered normal for a JRPG. This isn’t a game with a huge amount of area to explore. So I don’t count PDS among the tippity-top of the best JRPGs or best Saturn games, unfortunately.

Sega new RPGs were important and were really hoping PDS would provide the big splash they needed to compete with RPGs on rival platformers. But unfortunately the game had a troubled development cycle and got delayed to a 1998 release, past the window where it could have really made a big impact. By then, the Saturn had fallen too far behind, especially in American and Europe where the console was literally on its very last legs. The game certainly garnered a very positive reputation among those who did take notice, but sadly the game didn’t get the widespread recognition it perhaps deserved. Not only that, but the game’s source code was lost, meaning that Sega has been unable to port it to any future consoles, so the only way to bring the game back would have to be a remake from the ground up. And that may never happen.

As for my own experience, I grabbed Panzer Dragoon Saga off eBay the first year I got my Saturn, in 2004. I’ve played through the game twice, not long after I bought it and then again in 2015. I feel like a third playthrough may happen in the future, as I’d like to properly play the first two Panzer Dragoon games leading up to it (which I didn’t before) and fully absorb the story and world. It’s a game that I can’t help but feel could have been better, but still one that I think is super cool, and there’s truly nothing else like it.