Panzer Dragoon: Remake

Not much here, just barely 1.5 hours of gameplay and got most of the achievements. Whoever thought of the 100 hour achievement for this game is an idiot. Other than that it's an ok game but only if you get it super cheap 90%+ off.

Got to have been one of the most awfully designed games I've ever come across. You do 3 things in this game. 1) Move the reticle and shoot. 2) Change the camera orientation like you're playing Super Mario 64. 3) Sorry, I meant you do two things. Oh and yeah you move around and aim with the same stick which feels like ass when you try to hit enemies whilst trying to move away from enemy fire. There might've been a fix to this as I played on the default "Classic" mode. Or wait did I? Because you can't really tell what setting you have turned on. A checkmark (✓) means disabled, whilst (✖) means enabled. I'm actually unsure about that too. I don't mind simplicity but when you feel like you can't even do enough to get by, or that you get cornered despite the simplicity, it feels like something is missing. You're never taught what buttons do what, so I might've missed the dodge button, because oh god you tank a lot of projectiles. And oh brother! The excitement of getting bombarded by stuff you can hardly dodge! SO EXHILARATING!! I understand that this is a remake of the first game in a classic series that I've had my eyes on for a while. I love to see old non-mainstream games like this getting remade. Just so sad to see them being outsourced to some random Polish company who has nothing on their CV. The competence of this company could be summed up pretty well I think by the achievement "Lifeless", which is unlocked once you've got "100+" hours of playtime. This game has 7 short ass levels and takes LESS THAN AN HOUR to beat. What do you mean 100+ hours? I'm glad to know the designers on this game unlocked the "Designerless" achievement. It might look alright in the screenshots, but oh how deceiving it is. "VSYNC" my ass, screentearing my eyes apart. Gotta love the [url=https://youtu.be/onglKYSlr1Y?t=2319] earrape [/url] too that's accompanied by barrages of incoming enemy fire that only make themselves visible to you mere milliseconds before you get struck. Never have I been so tempted to refund a €2 game like in this clown fiesta's case. Thank ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ god it took longer to write this review than it took to beat the game. Not that I enjoy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on games. There's more to be said about this game, but I think I've made myself clear.

Not replayable enough to justify the $25 dollar price tag, there are other rail shooters and shmups that possess greater value. The remake in particular is too easy, you can almost max out the scores in less than half an hour on hard mode and forget about it. The game throws continues at you like its nothing but you'll be lucky if your health bar drops low enough to even change color. This game feels like it desperately wants to get itself overwith. If that doesn't concern you, then I'm sorry to disappoint you but this remake is also not as polished as the trailers would have you believe. Two of the FMV cutscenes straight up do not work and show NTSC color bars. Graphics are almost acceptable for a half-price remake by a smaller team but do not impress. More importantly there is a feeling of laziness and very little effort made to improve the presentation. There are some very simple visual bugs and oddities that should have been ironed out through testing. The framebuffer that holds screen space reflections is forced to 16:9 which means if you play on any other aspect ratio it will only capture that 16:9 area and then stretch it across the screen so the reflections are broken. The UI is cut off the screen. There is no way to unlock the framerate with VSYNC off. The game only runs at either your monitor's refresh rate or at 60FPS. My X server doesn't correctly report its refresh rate to games and so this makes it impossible for me to make the game display properly on my monitor. This sort of thing is not acceptable for a PC release post-CRT era. Animations have not been updated from the Saturn original and look like total ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ during the entire game. Render distance is way too short on the highest settings for a game that doesn't really demand that much processing power for the time it released, and there are parts of the scenery that obviously have not been changed much from their Saturn counterparts: a handful of areas look barren and lifeless or have weird architectural quirks that made sense on the Saturn but not here. Example: at the end of level 3 you are chased into a cave. Instead of using fog, a fake fog model, or a fragment shader to fade the playermodel as they fly into the cave using the depth buffer... the player just flies into a brown wall like he has noclip on. On the Saturn this was covered up by the camera angle, low detail and the fact other models were in the way so you couldn't see the jank. Also the cheat menu you unlock at the end of the game is almost impossible to open. You have to enter the code ridiculously quickly or it just doesn't work. For a moment I thought the game didn't recognize "B" on my keyboard and wanted me to right click because it just was not responding. The sound mixing is bad. The music is too quiet by default and the effects are mediocre. No other complaints... because there is nothing else in this game. This is about the quality I would expect from a five dollar iPhone app.

The original comparison: Before playing this I finished the ps2 version of the game. And let me tell you. The missing or lackluster parts of this remaster do not justify the incredible struggle of playing the original. Unlocked refresh rate (FPS) of this remake is especially good. Doing final boss in the original game with all his in you face animations that require you to dodge by shifting the dragon (and camera) up and down all the while getting shot from 8 or more points at 30 fps (or less) was insufferable. Fiddling in drivers: You'll need to fiddle with GPU driver settings for the game to have more than 60fps. Just follow PCGW instruction. What went missing in remaster: Some attacks got simplified (final boss tail attack for example), The guardian boss doesn't have parts of armor falling towards you as he dies. The remade assets while looking good sometimes lack a level of details actual modern assets should have. Imperial flying stronghold has what appears to be inserts that can serve as decks when they are horizontal, but there is no door or rails on them. And there is rather noticeable mirroring of textures present on this boss. Things like that wasn't an issues on 450p and lower for old consoles, but in 4k it's rather noticeable. The unlocked resolution and framerate together with ability to move & aim separately more than compensate for all the missing parts. The "Cheats" The extra features or "cheats" are a little cumbersome to use. But some of them are a very much a must have QOL after you beat the game first time. Like alternative weapon that does button mashing for you or increase game so it can be at least somewhat challenging since getting aforementioned QOL and the ability to use mouse or gyro to mouse makes game rather easy even on max difficulty. Achievements: If that's you thing, you can have 100% in under 2-2.5 hours. The only troublesome one is a troll one: "playing for 100 hours" that require you to do some save file editing (you can find instruction in guides or steam forums). Performance: There wasn't any noticeable stutters. I believe the game can easily do 120+ fps on anything a generation above recommended settings.

I played the original as a kid and loved the game. When playing this version I kept thinking to myself I want the old graphics. The new stile looks clean, but it just doesn't work as well. The controls don't feel as good as the original and the lock on is not as satisfying. I'd recommend trying an emulator instead of buying this. I got it on sale for $2.66, which should be the retail price imho.

Please remake Orta as well

Fun, definitely worth it on sale. I wish the ambiance/lightning were more close to the original but oh well. Wishing best of lucks to the devs in their next release.

They're calling it the worst remake of all time (me) ((i'm they))