I didn’t love Panzer Dragoon Saga the way Sega fans seem to, and by the third disc (of four), I was on the verge of hating it.
In 1998, having 10-minute FMVs at the beginning and end of every disc must have felt groundbreaking. Around 70% of all dialogue is voice-acted, with solid (Japanese) performances and motion-captured animations. But in practice, it means spending long stretches watching the game rather than playing it. At the time, this might have compared favorably to Final Fantasy VII.
Combat is interesting… at first. It uses an ATB system, with three bars that slowly fill up. When one bar is full, you can shoot your dragon’s lasers (which hit multiple targets), use your pistol (which snipes a single target), or use an item. If two bars are full, you can cast a spell. At any time, you can reposition your dragon to the front, left, rear, or right of enemies, but the bars won’t fill while you’re moving. This gives battles a puzzle-like quality. For example, positioning yourself in a certain way may open yourself up to powerful attacks, but expose an enemy's weak point. Or a swarm of bugs might soak up your dragon’s lasers, but sniping the queen with your pistol can take them all out instantly. It’s clever, but there are two big problems. First, even the quickest battles take far too long to play out. Second, the lack of enemy variety means you’ll be solving the same “combat puzzles” repeatedly. It's also a fairly easy game because of this-- every battle has a 'safe' strategy to figure out, and the defensive spells are extremely exploitable.
Environments fall into two main categories: wide-open expanses of emptiness and tunnel mazes. In both, the gameplay boils down to flying around and looking for buttons to shoot. When you've shot all the buttons, it either triggers a cutscene or opens a door to the next area where you fly around and look for buttons again. Random encounters will interrupt your progress, at which point you perform whichever series of actions you've deduced will make the battle end as quickly as possible.
Pacing is Panzer Dragoon Saga’s biggest issue. I’ve already mentioned the lengthy FMVs, extensive cutscenes, and drawn-out battles. But beyond that, the game’s overall rhythm feels uneven. At times, you’ll face four boss fights in a row: one boss immediately segues into another, followed by a cutscene, then yet another boss. Then some areas—like the final dungeon—have no random encounters at all, leaving you to navigate its maze tunnels uninterrupted for hours.
The story isn’t particularly worth diving into. It’s a fairly standard “there's an ancient superweapon the bad guys want to exploit” plotline that becomes borderline incomprehensible near the end if you aren’t familiar with the Panzer Dragoon games. That said, the game’s world has some cool vibes and the characters tend to speak in an interesting way.