Now that I've played through Panzer Dragoon Saga once, I can now see why Sega of America finally decided to bring the game to North America. If the Saturn, faced with strong competition from Sony's PlayStation, was going to go belly-up, they wanted it to go out with a bang and Team Andromeda's "Panzer Dragoon Saga", alongside Camelot's "Shining Force III" and Sonic Team's "Burning Rangers", helped them to do just that. Panzer Dragoon Saga has some very astounding visuals, which are an unorthodox mix of both the organic and the technological. Huge airships and flying battle fortresses take on a life of their own, with wing-like oars and skin-like textures that wrap tightly around the polygon models with ease. It's pretty hard to believe that a Saturn is pumping out what you see on-screen. The playable segments are held tightly together by Cinepak-compressed, Full Motion Video, which enhances the narrative in ways that the Sega Saturn hardware could never manage to do on its own, especially in real-time. And while some of the more jaded gamers in the audience out there might complain that the total polygon counts on the characters and creatures in Panzer Dragoon Saga aren't very high, whether friend or foe, each creature is animated very well, displaying a number of distinct traits and natural behaviors.

  As amazing as the graphics are, Panzer Dragoon Saga's sound effects and musical score are as good, if not better. Like many other role-playing games, Panzer Dragoon Saga has a rather large amount of written dialog. However, unlike a majority of role-playing titles on the market today, every line of dialog is spoken by the original Japanese voice actors. In other words, Sega chose to add subtitles to the existing original Japanese voice-acting, rather than redubbing all of the spoken dialog into English. Not only was this a cheaper way of translating the game, but it was also the only way to retain the title's unique feel and atmosphere. The people responsible for the translation deserve a lot of gratitude for deciding to translate all of the audio dialog with subtitles, as English voices would've undoubtedly ruined the overall experience. And even though I played both the original Panzer Dragoon and its sequel, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, I never once thought that the series' gameplay would ever benefit from a real-time role-playing interface. Nevertheless, Panzer Dragoon Saga's odd combination of a shoot 'em up and an RPG works better than I would've ever expected it to.

  The enemy encounters placed throughout Panzer Dragoon Saga happen in a very decisive manner, with battles occurring randomly in various sections of the explorable areas. When the circular navigation radar in the upper-right corner of the exploration screen turns yellow or red, it means there are enemies nearby and that you're probably going to get attacked by them at any moment. And while there is a small transition between exploration and battle scenes, it's still a relatively painless one. With little loading at all, the game transitions from the exploration mode to a white screen then, when the white screen fades, the battle comes into view as the battle music begins to play. And since the game reuses the same models for characters and backgrounds from the exploration mode in the battle mode, there is no real noticeable load time between exploring the environments and battling at all. As I said earlier, Panzer Dragoon Saga uses a real-time battle system, so you will need more than just quick wit to get out of the variety of enemy encounters in one piece; you'll need quick reflexes as well.

  That said, Panzer Dragoon Saga has a control method, which is particularly worthy of note, as it allows you to select and use the two most basic combat actions without the use of a single menu. Pressing A once during battle will bring up a first-person view of Edge's enemies, which can be targeted, and pressing A again after selecting a target will fire Edge's current gun, while pressing B will fire the dragon's homing lasers. Both Edge's gun and the dragon's homing lasers will be upgraded throughout the game, so their relative strength and effects vary. As Edge and the dragon level up and become closer, Edge gains the use of new techniques known as Berserks. These techniques have a wide variety of effects, from mass destruction to full healing. The trick is that, like other role-playing titles, Panzer Dragoon Saga regulates when you can and can't perform various action commands, such as a Berserk. At the beginning of each battle, the three blue action gauges in the lower-right corner begin to fill. These three little gauges determine what you and your dragon are capable of doing at any given time.

  For example, Berserks not only use up your dragon's "Berserk Points", or BP, but many of them require one, two or even three action gauges to activate. And because every battle plays out in real-time, you have to dodge enemy fire while waiting for your action gauges to fill, which brings us to a third factor in battle: position. In the middle of the status menu, at the bottom of the screen, is your positional radar. This little four-point circle informs you of enemy hot zones and dangerous positions to be in; it also shows where you're flying, in respect to the enemy. This is a very good thing to have when you consider the strategic maneuvers that can result. For instance, if you're battling against foes that have strong shells on their bodies, you can circle around to their rear and fire off a few shots at their soft, vulnerable underbellies. And at the end of every battle, the game rates your fighting skills and gives you either more, for excellent, or less, for close calls, experience points as a reward. Eventually, your dragon will gain special Wing Classes and become faster, more powerful, both physically and spiritually, and more durable. This opens the way to customization of your dragon, since all of his parameters can be altered at the expense of one of the others. In other words, if you raise his physical strength, his spiritual strength, which makes your Berserks more powerful, goes down the same amount; if you raise his defensive strength, his agility statistics will fall much in the same way.

  Obviously, this will lead many people to ask which form is the right type of dragon. However, each form (Physical, Spiritual, Defensive and Agile) must eventually be used at some point in the game. An enemy that relies on agility can be matched and defeated by a Defensive type of dragon, while an enemy that relies solely on brute strength can be defeated by a Spiritual type of dragon. And the best part is that your dragon's type can be altered at any time, in or out of battle, though the former does use up one action gauge. Fortunately, there are only two real problems with Panzer Dragoon Saga. The first problem to arise is that, while the game itself is very beautiful at times, the corridors and dungeon-esque areas lack a variety of textures, making the successful navigation of such enormous, labyrinthine environments more than just a little frustrating at times...

  Though, when the large size of these areas is considered, any additional details would need an equal amount of extra loading; so much more that you would quickly reconsider this minor complaint. Second, while the game comes on four CDs, it's rather short for a role-playing game; I managed to beat the entire game in less than twenty hours. However, despite these two very minor shortcomings, Panzer Dragoon Saga is still a classic, in my eyes, and one game that everybody should get a chance to play through at least once, in order to entirely understand and appreciate the astounding level of brilliance and originality. Panzer Dragoon Saga stands as a shining example of the Saturn hardware's unique strengths and, as far as I'm concerned, if you ever manage to find it in a store, don't hesitate to buy it. I almost passed up my one chance and I'm happy to say that, against my better judgment, I bought it. That alone speaks volumes more than I ever could.
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