And the crowd goes mild. There is a very good reason why I have never really reviewed the Panzer Dragoon remake officially, and that's mostly because I forgot it existed. Seriously, this remake left such a huge non-impact on me that I never really even put finger to keyboard and stamped out any real thoughts on it. There really weren't many other than it was bland, ridiculously easy and flat out pressure washed the graphics to what looked like high definition, textureless polygons. The scenery was nice, but the Dragoon looked so generic.
Panzer Dragoon, as a series, has left a huge impact because of its gameplay, its graphics, controls, enemies and vast, beautiful 32-bit terrains. It literally pushed the boundaries of what the Sega Saturn was capable of, and it's still celebrated to this day. Well, of course it is. Why else would they bother with remakes? The fact that they are making remakes for the Saturn is great, obviously, but I'm really hoping the Panzer Dragoon II remake doesn't go the same route as the first. The graphics should never be so smooth and flavorless. The grainy graphics were part of its real charm.
The Quake remakes understood this. While it isn't a perfect job, they kept the core graphics the same, while making them look sharper. They never lost their dull edge, though. It still had the mud colors because of the graphics limitations it was presented. Going full 3D forced them to make the graphics more gothic and macabre. Much like Quake, Panzer Dragoon was rough around the edges in graphics, especially when it came to their horrific and amazing looking bosses.
The next point is that, while maybe adding a difficulty meter is preferable, you should never make such a notoriously difficult game sooooooo blatantly easy. Panzer Dragoon itself is a very short game. The point is that you need to finish it in one sitting, but not at twenty minute sitting. It's made that difficult so that people can get more bang for their buck and require they try harder to beat a challenging game. Sanding off the edges of difficulty into rounded point plastic scissors barely able to cut a single construction paper is just taking away from the experience and often leaves one feeling like they could have spent their money elsewhere.
Not everything about the remake was terrible, but it certainly didn't leave an impression and it's kind of a point of pride to say that Zwei has always been my favorite entry. The setting, the bad guys, the difficulty but also the adventure just gave the game life for me. Translating that into Steam and PS5 would be awesome, but hopefully they won't tinker with an already great game too much. It's great for a reason, and if you polish it to be too shiny you may ruin the paint! Do not make it bland and please give us a few more angles to look from, then this could be an amazing remake. We're keeping our Virtua Fingers Crossed.
