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Panzer Dragoon: Remake review
Meh
by Mike Kario

I played the pc version remake of panzer dragoon on normal difficulty. The game does a very poor job of teaching the player how to control the game. For the first level, there were fire rocks hurled at me from behind and there was no way to hit them. Then i realized im missing something. I took a look at the control menus and saw that you have to pan the camera around by pressing an actual button. For the eniter first level, i thought i was stuck looking at the front of my dragon instead of 360 degrees. I also had no clue about the lock-on missile technique which is a HUGE part of the game until I looked at the controls in the menu. I didn’t even notice the radar at the top right until a few levels in which helped a lot after i used it to see enemies. The sounds of this game is very generic and boring. The exception is the end game credits have an interestingly cool sounding synth-rock music. Everytime your dragon gets hurt, it sounds like one of those generic bald eagle sounds you always hear in movies and games. The same battle theme music plays on a loop in every single level. The gameplay graphics are decent. Being a remake, you can see the upclose scaly skin of the dragons. The mechs and the lazers that shoot out of them look decent. I did like the different landscape of the levels from desert to forest to city to caves. The cutscenes in between the levels were definitely dated and the animation was definitely just upscaled, not remade. It was a blast from the past seeing these old style graphics. One thing I hated is how when you finish a level with very low health, the next level you only are given half of your life back. There is no way to replenish your life besides dying, using one of your credits. Oh yeah, this game calls your lives credits for some reason. But I did like the game rewards you with lives the more guys you shoot down. With over 90% of things dead, you get 2 extra lives and with over 80% of things dead, you get an extra life. The biggest downfall of this game is how simple it is. Basically Shoot stuff down with your homing missles and dodge the things coming at you. Pan around the camera using you radar to see the enemies on your sides and behind. The levels are very short and the game only lasts 2-3 hours. The boss battles are by far the best part of the game. They have a ton of HP compared to normal enemies, they have interesting shapes, and they shoot you from around your dragon where you have to dodge missiles and lazers. Some of them are fast or have a little weak spot so you have to be careful. The boss battles were OK but not hard at all on normal difficulty. The story is very forgettable and too vague. You are raiding a desert with friends and suddenly you are attacked by a giant monster that suddenly dies from rocks. An alien with a dragon comes to you and dies and asks you to take over his dragon to shoot down a purple dragon. It’s trying to get to a temple. As you are chasing this another dragon, an army of aliens are trying to kill you with their mechs and air ships. You leave your friends behind in the desert because reasons. I don’t think i’ll ever play this game again. There’s not enough incentive to replay it because the gameplay is too simple to be interesting after you know the ending. And there’s nothing really to unlock besides getting a better accuracy score at the end of the level oif you care about that kind of stuff. Overall I give this game 6/10.