7th May 2009, 6:21 PM
Saturn
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Panzer Dragoon
Guild Wars has been taking up almost all of my gaming time of course these past few weeks, but I played this one some today, and actually beat it! I got one game over, then started again and... finished. I had no credits remaining and low health at the end of the final boss fight, but I won... :)
Exceptional game, of course. Now that I've beaten it though I do have a few complaints... first, the lack of saving (all the goodies are simply accessed by cheat codes, not unlocking them by play). That's annoying. Second, length. It's a somewhat short game, with really just six levels... the seventh is just a boss (and not even a multi-phase boss either!), and the sixth has no boss, so basically they just took the boss of level 6 and made it its own level. The levels aren't as hard as PD Orta levels, either... I only didn't beat it sooner because of the lack of saving and limited continues. And there's only one route through the game, so replay value is limited, gameplay-wise...
Also, the ending cutscene is short, just like all the others after the intro. I wasn't expecting something like the 8 or 10 minute long intro, but a bit more might have been nice... still, it ended the game well, and the credits were very nicely done. :)
But yeah... the art design is truly exceptional, among the best ever, and the music is some of gaming's all-time greatest... for a launch title on such challenging hardware, the game looks stunning. It's a really, really good game, only brought down by the somewhat short length. Oh well... there's always Zwei (also with seven levels), or ten-level Orta, which (at Normal difficulty) is a much longer and more challenging game than this... I might give PD a slight edge in art design and music, though, which is saying a lot with how amazing Orta looks. This game just gets it right. So yeah, amazing, amazing game, I want Zwei now. :)
Oh, despite what I said, the levels 3, 4, and 5 bosses were somewhat tough, probably harder than the last boss (given that I beat the last boss the first time I fought it, while all of those killed me several times before i figured them out...). I only just barely got past the level 5 boss, and even then it was thanks to the turbo switch on the Mission Stick... on the fastest speed, this thing shoots many times faster than any human could ever click the button. Very, very useful on a couple of bosses... I mostly didn't use it, but on the level 4 and 5 bosses, I did some. It makes a huge difference, they'd be even harder without it (particularly level 4's).
--
Panzer Dragoon
Guild Wars has been taking up almost all of my gaming time of course these past few weeks, but I played this one some today, and actually beat it! I got one game over, then started again and... finished. I had no credits remaining and low health at the end of the final boss fight, but I won... :)
Exceptional game, of course. Now that I've beaten it though I do have a few complaints... first, the lack of saving (all the goodies are simply accessed by cheat codes, not unlocking them by play). That's annoying. Second, length. It's a somewhat short game, with really just six levels... the seventh is just a boss (and not even a multi-phase boss either!), and the sixth has no boss, so basically they just took the boss of level 6 and made it its own level. The levels aren't as hard as PD Orta levels, either... I only didn't beat it sooner because of the lack of saving and limited continues. And there's only one route through the game, so replay value is limited, gameplay-wise...
Also, the ending cutscene is short, just like all the others after the intro. I wasn't expecting something like the 8 or 10 minute long intro, but a bit more might have been nice... still, it ended the game well, and the credits were very nicely done. :)
But yeah... the art design is truly exceptional, among the best ever, and the music is some of gaming's all-time greatest... for a launch title on such challenging hardware, the game looks stunning. It's a really, really good game, only brought down by the somewhat short length. Oh well... there's always Zwei (also with seven levels), or ten-level Orta, which (at Normal difficulty) is a much longer and more challenging game than this... I might give PD a slight edge in art design and music, though, which is saying a lot with how amazing Orta looks. This game just gets it right. So yeah, amazing, amazing game, I want Zwei now. :)
Oh, despite what I said, the levels 3, 4, and 5 bosses were somewhat tough, probably harder than the last boss (given that I beat the last boss the first time I fought it, while all of those killed me several times before i figured them out...). I only just barely got past the level 5 boss, and even then it was thanks to the turbo switch on the Mission Stick... on the fastest speed, this thing shoots many times faster than any human could ever click the button. Very, very useful on a couple of bosses... I mostly didn't use it, but on the level 4 and 5 bosses, I did some. It makes a huge difference, they'd be even harder without it (particularly level 4's).