A hunter named Keil Fluge becomes the new rider of a Blue dragon and sets out to take down a black Prototype Dragon before it can activate an ancient tower.
Panzer Dragoon is probably known best for its world design and color palette inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Frank Herbert's Dune. It's a masterful blend of fantasy and science fiction styled in the unique appearance of Jean Giraud's (Moebius) art.
Panzer Dragoon is an on-rails shooter with a pretty simple control scheme. The dragon rider fires single shots with his weapon, or the player can scan and tag groups of enemies using the analog stick, taking them out in a barrage of fire with the Blue dragon's breath weapon.
The dragon can be moved around the screen to dodge enemy fire, but there aren't any options to speed up or slow down, and enemies come from all sides. The left and right trigger buttons are used to manually swivel the camera around the dragon, and a radar in the top-right corner of the screen helps to highlight enemy locations.
Each area is completely unique in appearance: flooded ruins, hive-like desert structures, mist engulfed canyons, claustrophobic sci-fi rooms, jungle, and a smog filled capital. More detail was added to the environments while still clearly trying to capture the look and spirit of the original, such as retaining the drawn out shadows of the flooded ruins. Other-times things looked a little muddy, a deliberate attempt at mimicking the original's terrible draw distance by reducing clarity.
There are seven levels that last about five to ten minutes each, and can be pretty unforgiving. The player is given a limited number of credits (lives) at the start of a new game, earning more by performing well in each level. If the player dies to a boss, the level has to be restarted from the beginning, costing a credit. Once all credits have been exhausted, the session terminates and an entirely new game has to be started.
The remake stays steadfastly loyal to the source material. The aesthetics, level design, tone and feel, all hearken back to another era. A part of me can't help but wish more had been done with the remake - new levels or a completely new take on the original concept. Another part of me is glad they didn't. Despite feeling bare-bones, it's still a remarkably fun game.
Review based on version 1.4.
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