"The absolute greatest frisbee ever released for the Saturn!"

Being a Saturn maniac, I felt obligated to purchase this game for two reasons. First, It's Panzer Dragoon. Second, my friends talked about it like it was the Second Coming. So I went out, bought the thing, booted it up and promptly exclaimed "What the heck?" The graphics in the first segment of the game are wretched, and made me wonder if perhaps I should have saved my money.

Frankly I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Basically what we have here is a weak game with a very good battle engine. I'll start with the positive and say that I haven't liked a battle engine this much since Crono Trigger. The combat sequences feel more like a game of Panzer Dragoon Zwei than say, FF Tactics. There is very little deep strategy involved, inventory plays next to no role, and there's only one person on your side. This means that you've got more time to just find a good place to shoot, and shoot til' they die.

This simplicity is an interesting approach. In fact, The RPG's I've had a problem with are the ones that are so deep and full of obscure statistics that I couldn't get into them.

Unfortunately, Panzer Dragoon Saga suffers from the opposite problem. It's so simplistic that it just isn't any fun. I complained that Final Fantasy 7 had too much plot. Panzer Dragoon Saga has next to no plot at all. At no point during the game did I have any clue what was going on. Sure, I knew who I was supposed to be shooting at and where to go, but I had no clue why. There needs to be enough story to provide a motive, or else it's not an RPG. It's just random wandering around and talking to strangers puncuated by battle sequences.

Then there are the "ground-breaking" graphics I had heard so much about. I'm sorry to say that the Graphics in PDS range from pretty good to bug-ugly. Some of the monsters are pretty cool. But during the endless "wander around town finding some guy" sequences you are forced to look at buildings with so little detail and such hideous colors that they hurt. And the people... don't get me started on the people.

Overall, I break down my time playing this game as follows: 15% in cool battle sequences, 30% flying around aimlessly in caverns that all look exactly the same, 30% flying around aimlessly in open areas, 20% wandering aimlessly around villages that caused head pains from boredom, and 5% being thoroughly confused by the story sequences.

Now you may say, "But David, surely it isn't THAT bad!" I guess from a technical standpoint you may be right. The Panzer series has good style, and the battle engine is great. But this doesn't outweigh the utter tedium of it all. I could say that the game was too short, but that would imply that I enjoyed what little gameplay it did offer. After 10 hours, I was glad to end it all and sell the darned thing.

Now for the obligatory numbers

Graphics 6 (Nice style, but poor graphics engine and monotonous dungeons)

Sound 7 (Some pleasant muzak, and the added funniness of pressing L and R to speed up or slow down the voice clips)

Playability 3 (good battle engine, but the game still sucked out my will to live)

Story 1 (Story? We were supposed to write a story? Oh well, just release it anyway.)

Buy or rent? HA! What a funny question! Look, if you are insane over Panzer Dragoon 1 and 2(I am...) you might want to consider renting this. Oh wait, nobody carries Saturn games anymore. On second thought just stay away.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 01/02/00, Updated 01/02/00