Panzer Dragoon: Remake

The sequel is just so much better as a game imo, and I would pay more for it as DLC in the same engine or something. More PC options would always be good of course, and Saga would be the obvious go to given how insanely expensive and iffy to emulate it is, but I have heardr the source code is lost to time, so it'd have to be rebuilt or de-compiled. Oh lord can you imagine? lol Anyway, this is great for a sale price, but it would be an amazing package if it included Zwei. Lemme pay you more Sega/MegaPixel/Forever Entertainment!

Pure mid to late 90s arcade rail shooter, updated for modern systems with upgraded looks. I played it last night for my twitch stream and was expecting something longer, but then again I didn't know it was going to be a pure arcade game. Even the lives you have are called credits, which you can win more when you finish a level, depending on how well you played. I played with the mouse and kb while there are more options. You control the camera angle for shooting with the mouse, but you HAVE to use the keyboard too to swap around the four quadrants, forwards, backwards, left and right. Think of it as picking different turrets only that you have one person. There is a radar helping you showing you where the enemies are and even the danger level of them, with red being the higher. The enemy shoots you and you can shoot the enemy missiles down, if you want to eventually defeat the whole game. You see the actual movement of your flying dragon is very limited. It is an on rail shooter after all. You can avoid some enemies, obstacles, missiles, but for the most part you are a sitting duck than a flying dragon. I am not complaining, just explaining how it plays. Each credit you have is good for one life and you can't replenish your health. You earn more credits as you play. I managed to defeat the game on my first go, at normal difficulty. It felt the right amount of challenge, as soon as you learn the game. To shoot the enemies you have two ways of shooting, one click for each shot, or hold the fire button to lock on targets and release to shoot them with homing missiles at the same time. Most targets can be done with the easier way (lock), but enemy missiles and at least one boss, you have to use the click per shot way. It's not easy, but it is not very hard either. The game is very well balanced and totally worth buying IMO, even though the length of a single "campaign" is around an hour length. Here is my stream, uploaded on yt. https://youtu.be/IknCOJyBTiY

Got it today on the sales and feel it was a pretty great bargain. The game looks quite beautiful and the gameplay is decent but use keyboard and mouse is my advice. Normally i would opt for controller for this kind of game but the keyboard and mouse definitely felt better.

Never played the original, I've seen some gameplay of it though, and this is more or less a 1 to 1 remake of the original, generally the same game with better graphics and smoother gameplay. (Make sure to set the control setting to modern in options so you can move independently of aiming/shooting, I didn't realize the default mode was classic controls, so I mostly just used the mouse to do everything my first playthrough, although it did get the job done.) This game is pretty linear, even for a rail shooter, but what's there is good. I still think Star Fox 64 is the prime example of how to do a 3D schmup/rail shooter, what with branching paths and all, as well as some other elements. PD came out quite a while before SF64 so I'll definitely cut it some slack for being a bit basic, it's still a fun game.

Overall this game is MILES above the original switch remake. With the ability to super sample and play above 1080P the game can even look decent. However this is really at best a reskin of the 25+ year old Saturn game. The modern controls aren't precise enough, the lives system really doesn't work in a modern era game. The story is as ever confusing. There simply wasn't enough QOL of updates for this game to make it worth a full price purchase. The game is at best 2 hours long. If you can get this game during the winter sale or such for less then 5 bucks, Id say its worth it. Otherwise don't bother.