Panzer Dragoon Trilogy review

[Anayo]

I wasn't able to review Orta since I don't have an XBOX.

[Breetai]

PD1 was released in 1996

No. SRPING 2005. I can distinctly remember playing it then.

I don't know, it seems pretty unlikely that a game would be released for a console that stopped being in production over 5 years earlier.

[Anayo]

I don't know, it seems pretty unlikely that a game would be released for a console that stopped being in production over 5 years earlier.

Did you mean 1995?

[Ivo]

I think I see where you are coming from regarding PDS, I disagree a bit but that is natural. There are parts where I feel you are particularly unfair though.

You are right in complaining about the graphical issues as even in the context of the era that stuff wasn't outstanding, although I feel the game still has a lot of artistic merit.

I think you really missed the point with the complaint of the 4 towns. Why do you think the game is trying to create a living, breathing world like OoT? It is trying to create a living, breathing world like PD1 and Zwei - i.e. not many humans, lots of monsters. If there were many towns it wouldn't make sense... The whole story ties into this with Craymen making some rather explicit mentions.
I think the scarcity of people makes the game a lot better, not worse (it helps "bonding" with the dragon, puts the story into a better perspective). The big city shows up in the starting CG and gets blown up by a bomb (due to Craymen, well in line with his philosophy).

The game is easy even if you hadn't done the artificial grinding that you mentioned. I think that it was intended to be easy so that anyone that wanted could experience it to the end, so in that regard I support the decision. Chrono Trigger was similarly easy and you seem to have lots of (IMO justified) praise for it. That does take a bit out of the combat system, which is very interesting - with the positioning and attacking weak points and so on you can better dispatch regular enemies and in particular save a lot of grief on bosses and mini bosses - but you really don't need to focus much on it to succeed so you may think "why bother". That was a problem for me in CT and Xenogears as well though, you didn't really need to get the interesting combos to win in those.

As for the plot, I think it would have been important for you to approach the story more in the context of the world - as you seemed to miss the point of the loneliness in the game (the "only 4 towns" thing), that may account for part of your dislike for it.

Edge goes along to meet Craymen not because he wants to help Craymen, but because Azel is not waking up and it is credible that Craymen can get that done - so Edge is somewhat forced into it. When he gets there Craymen has an easy time proving that the Empire needs to be stopped considering what happens to Zoah (also, Edge has been wondering why Azel had been following Craymen if he was just a regular villain, so he had some seeds of doubt). Therefore I don't think that stretches credibility that much.

Why exactly Edge gets so attached to Azel is a bit different considering how many times she attacks him. He was somewhat awe struck from the start of the game. Maybe he hasn't seen many girls, considering how few people are out there far from the Empire...
But you complain about the ending scene where it is again credible that by then they are attached to each other after all they gone through (of course, it is just a videogame for you, but those two have been in their world surviving together for a while by then). She is very sad (not upset) that her Dragon is killed - she comments on that - and frankly I think that is also credible as she had been (reluctantly) attacking him several times. He tried to talk her out of it and acted in self-defence.

As for the actual ending (and its weirdness) I can imagine that sort of stuff is very polarizing, as in you either love it or hate it. I thought it fit nicely into the PD universe as an ending not just to Saga, but actually to the saga of PD1, Zwei and PDS.

Chrono Trigger is altogether a better JRPG IMO, but PDS wasn't as bad for me as you make it appear. You personally didn't like it and therefore you don't recommend it which is perfectly fair.
I'm trying to provide a reasonable counter-point with justifications.

It isn't worth all that money though, that is for sure, and it isn't either the best RPG of ALL TIMES as far as I'm concerned. But it was a pretty good experience, it did not have too much of random encounters (many regions are free of them in fact), and the combat system is way more interesting than most JRPGs.



Zwei I really liked and I think the story is fine for what it is (an on-rails shooter). It isn't easy to follow, but it is sort of like Ikaruga's story as well I guess - on the background (and I think that basically you can only really understand Zwei if you played Saga). If you dislike open endings that may irk you.

I haven't played PD1 but I do think it hasn't aged well enough.

Ivo.

[Anayo]

I think you really missed the point with the complaint of the 4 towns. Why do you think the game is trying to create a living, breathing world like OoT? It is trying to create a living, breathing world like PD1 and Zwei - i.e. not many humans, lots of monsters. If there were many towns it wouldn't make sense... The whole story ties into this with Craymen making some rather explicit mentions.

I didn't like the 4 towns thing cause I really, really liked the parts where you walked around in 3D and wanted more of them. It reached a point where I actually got sick of riding the dragon and wanted to walk around more, even if it had been in dungeons, just cause that sort of experience is so rare on the Saturn.

Also, I liked OoT's towns better because the characters were more developed with actual conflicts between them (like that bully in Kokiri village), and you got to see how the inhabitants changed over time (namely when 7 years pass and you become adult link).

If loneliness was what PDS was aiming for, it didn't really accomplish that atmosphere for me, perhaps because the ruins were so cookie cutter and repetitive. I felt no “longing” for the fallen world of ancient times. I suspected the game would have benefited from more exposition about the past world and what had actually been lost, cause as it was they sort of glazed over it.

Part of it might be I had a hard time swallowing that the monsters were the real bad guys, on account of Crayman's dramatic entry in the first cut scene. That guy really stole the spotlight and focused my motivation for why I was playing. Then he turned around and said, “Oh, my motives were good all along.” (And I still don't understand why he had to kill everyone at that mine when he found Azel in the first place.) Basically I had a hard time rooting for it cause they were trying to deflect my attention from a genocidal warlord to a bunch of pesky critters my dragon can just obliterate in a few moves.

Why exactly Edge gets so attached to Azel is a bit different considering how many times she attacks him. He was somewhat awe struck from the start of the game. Maybe he hasn't seen many girls, considering how few people are out there far from the Empire...
But you complain about the ending scene where it is again credible that by then they are attached to each other after all they gone through (of course, it is just a videogame for you, but those two have been in their world surviving together for a while by then). She is very sad (not upset) that her Dragon is killed - she comments on that - and frankly I think that is also credible as she had been (reluctantly) attacking him several times. He tried to talk her out of it and acted in self-defence.

I seem to remember lots of females in PDS's towns without Edge being drawn to them. But Edge's exposure to the opposite sex is debatable since he struck me like an emotional blank slate with no real family or past prior to Crayman's appearance. (Another point where I like Zelda OoT better, since Link at least had the back story of a dying mother who entrusted him to the Kokiri, or that Kokiri bully who pushed him around a lot, or Saria who befriended him... etc.)

I think my biggest objection with Azel is that she's like a cybernetic human version of Krystal from Starfox Adventures – I can't see why she exists other than to give the male protagonist a shallow motivation to keep going, and in some vaguely defined way she interfaces with ancient technology to make it do stuff.

Azel fell short for me cause I didn't understand what Craymen was doing, and Azel was super loyal to Craymen. When you finally meet Crayman he tells you you have to protect the tower because it's important to the monsters (how, exactly, I didn't grasp). Later, Gash tells you you have to destroy the tower cause the monsters are bad. It struck me as a “Does not!” “Does too!” conflict. Meanwhile I still don't exactly understand Azel's relationship with this tower, she gets choked up when Crayman gets hurt, I didn't grasp his motives to begin with. I couldn't help but wonder, “Uh, how does Azel feel about her dead dragon?”

Things got even weirder when Grig Orig showed up and destroyed Zoah, since there was a sub-plot going on in the Zoah theocracy where that one priest wanted to take credit for your dragon protecting the village. I thought they were going somewhere with that and it seems like a cop out for the town to just get destroyed. That really evil scarred guy with the gun who accompanied Crayman seemed really cop-out as well, since after I finally find him and kill him effortlessly with my overly-leveled-up dragon, he says, “I hope revenge was enough for you!” (as if he's in any position to say that, the murdering asshole.) When the game's main “bad guy” shifted from Crayman, to Grig Orig, then to an infested Grig Orig, then some weird extra dimensional tunnel where you kill inexplicable “anti” versions of your self, I guess I just got fed up.

I felt the game did a really good job making good first impressions and making me want to know what it was leading up to, but most of the follow-ups were weird or unsatisfying. The poorly distributed exposition, mostly in the way of last-minute conversations to try and justify what was going on, didn't cut it for me. It lacked a satisfying tightening up and release of tension and a steady change and maturation in the characters.

As for the actual ending (and its weirdness) I can imagine that sort of stuff is very polarizing, as in you either love it or hate it. I thought it fit nicely into the PD universe as an ending not just to Saga, but actually to the saga of PD1, Zwei and PDS.

There's only one way that ending would have worked for me: if it was funny as hell. For example, Earthworm Jim could have gotten away with that. In PDS it felt like a gimmick where the script writer said, “Ta-da!” and expected me to be impressed.

It isn't worth all that money though, that is for sure, and it isn't either the best RPG of ALL TIMES as far as I'm concerned. But it was a pretty good experience, it did not have too much of random encounters (many regions are free of them in fact), and the combat system is way more interesting than most JRPGs.

To be honest, PDS isn't terrible. The battles were fun, albeit shallow. The dragon “morphing” effect was rad. I liked discs 1-3 and I'm glad I satisfied my curiosity by playing it. I guess it's undeserved legendary status is to be expected... when the supply and demand ratio is THAT out of whack it's hard to avoid. The game's just not a classic, but considering how hard it is to get a copy few people are ever going to find that our for themselves.

[Ivo]

Part of it might be I had a hard time swallowing that the monsters were the real bad guys, on account of Crayman's dramatic entry in the first cut scene. That guy really stole the spotlight and focused my motivation for why I was playing. Then he turned around and said, “Oh, my motives were good all along.” (And I still don't understand why he had to kill everyone at that mine when he found Azel in the first place.) Basically I had a hard time rooting for it cause they were trying to deflect my attention from a genocidal warlord to a bunch of pesky critters my dragon can just obliterate in a few moves.

I think you are taking things too black & white here. There weren't really any bad guys in PDS (maybe the Emperor), just different philosophies and people that were more "ends justify the means" than others. Craymen is IMO still a villain - he put a bomb in the capital city. That is not just military targets. The Emperor is likewise a villain (possibly worse given what we learn about the intents of either side) as he destroyed Zoah.

The monsters are just monsters, they are animals and they hunt and kill on instinct. The tower and Sestren are just doing what they were programmed to do based on what the ancients thought was better for everyone (Craymen's philosophy as well).

I think Craymen didn't really order the guys to kill everyone at the excavation site, just the other guy is a violent psycho and Craymen doesn't mind as long as the job gets done. Alternatively, its a "no loose ends" policy, no witnesses that can tell the Empire anything. I don't agree with the approach of course but in some perspective it is just being pragmatic to the extreme.

I seem to remember lots of females in PDS's towns without Edge being drawn to them.

None his approximate age, that I remember. I remember some woman in the Nomad's camp and the bartender lady in Zoah.
But that part felt a bit weird to me as well - the guy is instantly taken. Possibly for those who believe more in love at first sight or destiny or whatever. It isn't just that Azel is magically incredibly gorgeous as you don't see others acting like that (on the few times there are others near Azel).

Azel fell short for me cause I didn't understand what Craymen was doing, and Azel was super loyal to Craymen.

I think that was in great part because he was the one to wake her up. He was sort of a father figure to her, I suppose.

When you finally meet Crayman he tells you you have to protect the tower because it's important to the monsters (how, exactly, I didn't grasp).

The tower controls most of the monsters and thus keeps the human population under control. Craymen obviously doesn't trust humanity to handle themselves, he is sort of an Eco-terrorist of sorts.

Later, Gash tells you you have to destroy the tower cause the monsters are bad. It struck me as a “Does not!” “Does too!” conflict.

Gash on the other hand trusts humanity to handle themselves without intervention from the Tower and doesn't like that the humans get culled by monsters.

They don't disagree about the funcion of the tower, they disagree whether the status quo of it functioning should be maintained (Craymen) or not (Gash). The Emperor in turn wanted to take control of it (which is perhaps the worst).

Meanwhile I still don't exactly understand Azel's relationship with this tower, she gets choked up when Crayman gets hurt, I didn't grasp his motives to begin with. I couldn't help but wonder, “Uh, how does Azel feel about her dead dragon?”

She was built to control the tower (maybe as a failsafe mechanism or something).

Things got even weirder when Grig Orig showed up and destroyed Zoah, since there was a sub-plot going on in the Zoah theocracy where that one priest wanted to take credit for your dragon protecting the village. I thought they were going somewhere with that and it seems like a cop out for the town to just get destroyed.

If you talk with the priests after you protect the town first, and then some of the refugees later they develop this a bit. There is a kid that blames you for not being there to keep the town safe.

That really evil scarred guy with the gun who accompanied Crayman seemed really cop-out as well, since after I finally find him and kill him effortlessly with my overly-leveled-up dragon, he says, “I hope revenge was enough for you!” (as if he's in any position to say that, the murdering asshole.)

Yeah, that guy is a psychopath. If Craymen was actually decent, he wouldn't keep a guy like that around.

When the game's main “bad guy” shifted from Crayman, to Grig Orig, then to an infested Grig Orig, then some weird extra dimensional tunnel where you kill inexplicable “anti” versions of your self, I guess I just got fed up.

I felt the game did a really good job making good first impressions and making me want to know what it was leading up to, but most of the follow-ups were weird or unsatisfying. The poorly distributed exposition, mostly in the way of last-minute conversations to try and justify what was going on, didn't cut it for me. It lacked a satisfying tightening up and release of tension and a steady change and maturation in the characters.

As for the actual ending (and its weirdness) I can imagine that sort of stuff is very polarizing, as in you either love it or hate it. I thought it fit nicely into the PD universe as an ending not just to Saga, but actually to the saga of PD1, Zwei and PDS.

There's only one way that ending would have worked for me: if it was funny as hell. For example, Earthworm Jim could have gotten away with that. In PDS it felt like a gimmick where the script writer said, “Ta-da!” and expected me to be impressed.

The game's just not a classic, but considering how hard it is to get a copy few people are ever going to find that our for themselves.

I disagree on that, I think it is a classic and rather unique. The many others that do think it is a classic are not just deluding themselves. But you have good points and I think I made it clear that I think the game isn't the RPG to end all RPGs or anything delusional like that.
For example, IMO Chrono Trigger is a better JRPG, but is not as unique. They are both classics.

Ivo.

[CAv]

I'll have to disagree with your reviews, but you've inspired me. I'm going to write my own reviews of these games after I finish Saga. So, expect my take in the coming weeks.

[Anayo]

I'll have to disagree with your reviews, but you've inspired me. I'm going to write my own reviews of these games after I finish Saga. So, expect my take in the coming weeks.

Part of the fun of playing these games was getting to actually talk about it with other retro-gamers, since so few people have actually played it. I look forward to seeing your review and will read it when it's up.

[spiritplx]

I actually just finished PDS a few days ago. Here are my thoughts about what has already been discussed. More spoilers follow...


I agree with Ivo and many of the points he has brought up. I just want to elaborate a bit on my own interpretation, and maybe it will help the story feel a little more acceptable.

Figuring out who the bad guy(s) is(are) seems to be something that people need when playing a video game. I think the nice thing about this story is that many of your enemies are not necessarily bad. Echoing Ivo's sentiments, I believe that the Emperor is the only true "evil" person. He is wanting to use the Tower for absolute power. While Craymen and his men may seem evil, they actually believe that what they are trying to accomplish is for the better of the people. They are not trying to get absolute power for themselves.

You have to remember that Edge and his friends are merely just a group of "imperial scum" as Craymen's men see them. They are working for the Empire, and therefore they are the enemy and disposing of them is no problem. Let's equate this to a movie where Nazi's get killed. Most of the time, people cheer for this, because the Nazi ideal is evil. But not all Nazi's were evil, they were simply following orders (not trying to start another conversation, just drawing an analogy). So if we were following from Craymen's perspective the whole time, we wouldn't have blinked when they come to kill the Empire's men.

Gash could also be seen as a "bad" guy. He wants the destruction of the Tower. Who is to say that the Tower is good or bad? As mentioned before, monsters are merely animals, doing what they do. Is exterminating all the monsters in the tower a "good" thing to do? However, Gash truly believes that what he is doing is for the good of his people. So he is "good" in his true intentions, but not knowing the consequences, it is hard to say that anyone person is "good" or "bad" in this game.

Edge clearly states that he has not bought into Craymen's ideals before he heads to fight off the empire. Edge already knows that the Empire is willing to destroy whatever they want, so I believe Edge decides to fend off the Empire because he believes they are evil. Not that he is helping Craymen.

Another question that was brought up is with Edge's fascination with Azel. Edge's job is to protect the excavation site. Azel was found at his site, and therefore he feels responsible for her. Azel is the last thing he can "defend" for the sake of the site. He believes that Craymen is evil, and has brainwashed her. I believe that is why he keeps giving her a pass when she attempts to fight him. He feels that he needs to convince her that Craymen is an evil man, and that she should not fight with him.

Once he gets Azel making decisions on her own, they do start to warm up to each other. A lot of dialog is "behind the scenes", in the sense that they must have talked during the rides on the dragon, and during camp, but we don't get to see that. The game doesn't take place in a few hours (although it only takes a few hours to finish it), the characters get to know each other over several days and share some pretty important experiences with each other (which would more than likely get two people to become closer to each other).

I think we get to see the characters learning about themselves, and what they truly believe. Different factions are fighting for different outcomes, and no one knows who is truly right. At the end, Edge and Azel seem to just be interested in the truth, whatever that may be. I don't think the characters are meant to be some complex beings, but simply people that are just as confused as the player, and learning along with us.

I agree that the ending is a bit goofy, but it by no means ruins the game for me. I do find it ironic that the goal of the protagonist at the end is to give the people true freedom by destroying the being that controls the human's destinies, while at the same time he is being controlled by another being, thus restricting his true freedom.

As far as game mechanics are concerned, I think the combat was more innovative than most jRPGs. To be honest, how many jRPGs really have complex battle systems? Look at Phantasy Star. They admitted that combat was pressing the same buttons over and over, and let the player create macros. I don't think we can fault PDS for "easy" combat (due to grinding or un-originality), unless we fault all jRPGs.

Anyhow, just my thoughts on the game. These were my own interpretations of the game, and I am in no way saying that what I have stated above is absolute fact.

[Breetai]

I don't know, it seems pretty unlikely that a game would be released for a console that stopped being in production over 5 years earlier.

Did you mean 1995?

Clearly I have a math deficiency by a factor of 10.