Functional remake. There's no tutorial, so review the controls.

Pros:
Enjoyable rail shooter, a rare genre today
Nostalgia
Various classic/modern settings
Challenging levels
Mouse support
Strengthens your hand

Cons:
Fairly short
Exposition dump followed by nonexistent story
Seemingly no way to remap keys for keyboard
Retail price slightly high
100 hour achievement

If you're fond of the original and/or it's on sale I would recommend this game.

I thought this would feel and look old and outdated, but it's actually pretty decent. Man, playing this takes me back to the good old days. We'd go to Shakey's to eat and play. They had the best pizza in town, and it smelled so good every time you walked in the door. They had a big screen movie room to eat in. They'd give a cup full of tokens if you brought in a good report card, and we could play for hours from that. The arcade games in those days all required only 1 token to play. As I mentioned, those were the good old days, the golden age of arcades.

Anyway, this is a rail gunner game that is pretty much a mindless shootemup. You're flying around on a dragon on a set path and you just shoot everything. It's short, and it's fun. Great for somebody like me who has a short attention span and who doesn't want to think too much to solve puzzles and stuff (because there are none!).

I got this at 75% off and I think it's worth trying out for that price. If you don't like it, then get a refund. No big deal.

One of my favorite Sega Saturn games. I would love to see Zwei, and Saga remade for PC as well.

Actually well done remake, kudos.
Now please release 2 and saga.

When Panzer Dragoon: Remake launched on Nintendo Switch over a year ago, the game wasn’t in the best shape. Numerous technical issues plagued the game, along with missing features, leading to Forever Entertainment releasing a series of patches throughout 2020. Now that the game has stabilised, we’re in a better position to look at how Panzer Dragoon: Remake holds up as a finished game.


MegaPixel Studio, who developed the game, is a relatively small studio and used the Unity engine to develop the game. The result is a game that looks good, but isn’t AAA quality, it’s something between an AAA and indie game. But if you keep your expectations with the mindset that this is smaller budget game, you can expect to play and be impressed by a modern looking version of the original Panzer Dragoon.

Panzer Dragoon: Remake has been visually recreated from the ground up, and as a result the cut scenes are now designed with in-game graphics rather than distinct pre-rendered full motion video sequences. The full game feels more cohesive without the significant change in visual quality between full motion video and in-game graphics that was present in the Saturn original.


The gameplay of Panzer Dragoon: Remake is very faithful to the original. Essentially, the standard Panzer Dragoon rail shooter gameplay and level design has been replicated almost 1:1. A year later, most of the inconsistencies have been ironed out. The result is a smooth experience that mirrors the gameplay mechanics of the original.

This time around, the difficulty level feels more even too. The original Saturn game took its difficulty from the Arcade games of its time. It’s now possible for less experienced players to play through the whole game on Easy mode, whereas the original version brought you back to the title screen at the end of Episode 4.

Overall, I’m happy how the gameplay has been implemented after its post-launch patches and refinements, but in aiming for an exact recreation, its perhaps too faithful to the original. Since the game is a remake, there was an opportunity to refine the original concept. Ultimately, it is a missed opportunity.


The game launched with the late Yoshitaka Azuma’s original orchestral score as the only option, but soon after launch a new soundtrack by Panzer Dragoon Saga composer Saori Kobayashi was added alongside the original. Yoshitaka Azuma’s iconic soundtrack is hard to surpass, but the orchestral nature of the score makes it feel apart from the rest of the series; the addition of the second score by Saori Kobayashi brings the audio in line with later games in the series. The new soundtrack fits really well, so my view is that it was a wise choice to bring Saori Kobayashi back on board. Some of the tracks, such as “The Empire: Episode 3”, even surpass the original.

The sound effects have been changed, an unfortunately these don’t make quite the same impact as the original in places, particularly the sound of the dragon’s roar. But the original voice acting is all present, along the fictional “Panzerese” language, and I appreciate this being layered on top of real time scenes.


The art direction of Panzer Dragoon: Remake is one area in which the game departs from the source material. Most noticeably, the colour palette is a lot brighter in many places than the Saturn original. If you look at the concept artwork for Panzer Dragoon, which is found in the original game’s complementary guidebook, the same earthly tones found in the 1995 game were deliberately used in the art, matching the desolation of the story’s post-apocalyptic setting. In Panzer Dragoon: Remake, the change in colours was a deliberate design choice. To Panzer Dragoon: Remake’s credit, the colours have been significantly toned down from the almost florescent dragon wings we saw in the E3 demo, and we do see some later stages where the colours feel more in-line with the original (particularly Episode 3), but from the sunny water ruins of Episode 1 to the bright orange of Episode 2’s desert, this is an area where the remake feels like a step back.

The background details of the levels have been updated too, with additional elements added to fill up the space found in the more empty Saturn levels. While the limitations of the Saturn no doubt accounted for the emptiness to some degree, the sparseness of the original level designs also added to the game world’s desolate feeling. There’s a minimalism that you’ll see in modern games such as Shadow of the Colossus and Nier Automata, but that emptiness has been deliberately overridden here, and the game loses something because of that.


Panzer Dragoon: Remake is a short game, and you can expect to beat all seven episodes in about half an hour. This length is expanded somewhat with the addition of Pandora’s Box, a hidden menu that allows players to customise the game, along with an extra “Episode 0”, but there’s only so much extra longevity that these options will provide.

However, Panzer Dragoon wasn’t remembered due to having a lengthy feature set. It’s a minimalist experience that you can expect to pick up every now and again for a quick blast through between longer games. At its core, Panzer Dragoon: Remake is a rail shooter that is about steadily improving your shot down ratio with each play through, with the goal of achieving 100% shot down ratio on every episode. There’s a nice set of achievements that will add some additional replay value too, although we could have done without the “Lifeless” achievement which requires 100 hours of gameplay from the player.


Although it had a rough launch, Panzer Dragoon: Remake has become a conservative, but solid remake of the 1995 Sega Saturn game, while taking some liberties with the art direction that fans of the classic Panzer Dragoon games may find questionable. My hope is that Forever Entertainment will take on board the criticisms regarding the art direction in the upcoming Panzer Dragoon II Zwei: Remake. But although it’s not perfect, I’m glad that Panzer Dragoon is finally back after all these years. The core of what made this series noteworthy is here; Panzer Dragoon: Remake is an experience that both new and old fans alike will be able to appreciate.

Note: this is an abridged version of my review on Panzer Dragoon Legacy[www.panzerdragoonlegacy.com].

1. Thank you for remaking Saturn games, I support !
2. Excellent remake with graphical boost !
3. PLEASE work on a Remake for Shining Force III all scenario !! , contact Camelot, or Sega or someone out there.. get this done.

This one is a very nice but pretty short game that you can beat in under 1.5 hours on normal diffculty. If you struggled with the original like me - try this one. it's much easier. some purists see it as a downer but at least you can finally progress without hours of trying again

This game is pretty faithful to the original. If you liked the classic Panzer Dragoon, you should like this. I beat it on normal in one sitting, whereas back in 1995 I couldn't make it past the 5th boss, so it's either slightly easier than the original or I got better (or both). Don't expect a long game, because you have to beat this in one sitting, but that's totally OK with me, it's just how games back then usually went.

I played with the remade soundtrack because I was already very familiar with the original, and it's solid, but the original is better. If this is your first time playing Panzer Dragoon, I recommend leaving the still incredibly godly and timeless original music, and using Classic mode for the input binding, as I find this way more intuitive for rapid firing than using triggers.

But seriously, this game is worth it for the soundtrack alone.

I don't know who's idea it was to have a "Play for 100 hours" achievement in a game that takes like an hour or so to finish but ♥♥♥♥ that guy lmao

EDIT: if you didn't played the original, maybe you will be disappointed. Be warned.

For those who don't know Panzer Dragoon:

It's an shoot'em up Arcade-style game with very peculiar game mechanics, where you mount a dragon that fires beams from it's mount. You travel to different locations where many enemies try to shoot you down. You can kill enemies aiming directly at them and shooting like crazy, or you can "target lock" multiple enemies (or parts of them) in a missile-lock-style, and a volley of beams are shot out from your dragon's mouth, homing on those targets. The right stick is to aim, the left one to move and dodge incoming attacks, and you can also rotate the camera in fixed 90 degrees angles to shoot your enemies at 360 degrees. There are small enemies and very big ones, and at the end of each stage, a boss battle.

When you finish a mission, you are awarded with credits (so if you die, you can continue at the beginning of the stage) but only if you kill a very high percentage of enemies. So no save game.

There is no RPG systems of any kind: no dragon or beam upgrades or whatever. Your character ends the game with the same powers that at the beginning.

Story is poor. Don`t expect too much from it.

Remastered graphics are really nice. So that's a hit. They also did a remake of the music. EDIT: original music is also available.

So why should you buy this game?

- You played the original (a masterpiece at that time) and want to have some nostalgia.
- You like shoot'em ups

In a nutshell, a really well made remake that it's a must for nostalgic players.