Panzer Dragoon Remake

◉◉maru

exodus That’s not great for the rest of us who might possibly be pitching things to Sega.

It might just be a coincidence but I am not completely surprised European companies (Lizardcube, Dotemu, Forever) have seemingly fared better at pitching projects given that their point of entry is probably Sega of Europe, which must have been given a lot of freedom to “try stuff” following the excellent business results of their PC-driven projects. The Remaster of Shenmue I&II was also handled by a European studio.

Also, not that it would be a problem for a mightily connected company such as Necrosoft AktieBolag, but all of these studios have had past experience with Japanese companies before so I guess this was reassuring to Sega, from a project management perspective?
(I mean, I am not sure why the outcome of the Fear Effect projects would make another company optimistic about a collaboration but YMMV.)
((That being said, it would be funny if the Square-Enix Collective initiative somehow led to the return of Panzer Dragoon in mainstream video game culture. Not what I expected from those sarcastic jokes about Gex coming back.))

Anyway, deep down we all know the only decent outcome would have been M2 finally properly addressing the challenge of official SegaSaturn emulation for commercial use in future Sega Ages releases. Every day that passes without them tackling this crucial issue, or licensing out the progress from the YabaSanshiro dude and work on their own version of that emulator, is a ticking bomb towards more disappointing re-releases from enthusiastic teams that cared but did not have all the tools or skill or necessary budget available to properly re-release these games.

James-

◉◉maru Saturn Emulation is a wild beast, but I would have loved to see M2 take a crack at it. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and it will happen yet. One of my dream projects is to poke around the yabause code and see what I can do, but I sure don’t have the time (or probably the skills, at least not without a ton of study and work) to make that dream a reality at the moment.
I was pretty disappointed by the lack of an option to switch between the original visuals and the pretty new one (Another World and NiGHTS set the bar pretty high for me expectations on that (even if NiGHTS HD is also a good example of a remake that doesn’t play as well as the original)). The new visuals do some great things at times, but they don’t nail the same atmosphere at all.

exodus

HMMMM I think all the existing folks went through sega japan!? But I’m not sure, maybe they went through SoE. But power shifts put more leverage in the hands of SoA anyway now. well, maybe I’ll take to email to strategize with you anyway :o

gsk

A lot of recent stuff—these Forever deals, Shenmie I&II, SOR4, etc—absolutely went through SoE.

SoA is Sonic brand management and Atlus, more or less, but it’s not straightforward as some of SoA’s people are located in the UK and vice-versa for really silly reasons.

Fishie

Way back the intro for Panzer Zwei choked me up. Momma dragon looking at you with sadness thinking you are there to kill her mutated offspring. Powerfull stuff.

robinhoodie

Somewhat related, but I just beat Sayona Wild Hearts and that game is loaded with Panzer / Rez DNA. It really made me reflect on the joy of Panzer Dragoon being it’s arcade thrill ride experience. SWH def feels like a nice modern update to that formula but with aesthetics covering up for lack of production value. I wonder if Panzer Remake is somewhat shackled by having to try to express what we all imaged that Saturn game looked like on a small budget rather than creating its own aesthetic with the Panzer game play. So I dunno. New Panzer story seams a bit much, but maybe like Cel Shaded Panzer Dragoon or something?

exodus

I think if it were me I’d be looking at like… phantom dust. an evolution of the style while still feeling snappy and responsive. Ultimately I’d get used to however it looked so long as enemies were easily identifiable and it felt good to play.

robinhoodie

exodus Phantom Dust is definitely one of those games that aesthetically I place in the “OG Xbox is in someway Dreamcast 2” line of thinking.

But yeah, every critique I’ve seen of the remake comes down to the snappy-ness. I kinda really want to see how this game plays on a more powerful system. You wouldn’t think its taxing the Switch that hard. But the deeper into the system’s life span we go, the more hesitant I am to assume that if a game is running on the Switch that the experience is at all close to what it is on other consoles (Bloodstained cough cough)

James-

robinhoodie From what I’ve seen, the remake issues aren’t tied to any strain it’s placing on the system - it just doesn’t seem like the best design calls were made in a few spots.

It’s nice that it’s so faithful to the original, but I really wish they had took the opportunity to improve on things a little. PD would seriously benefit from some quality of life improvements that PDII had.

exodus

Yeah… I guess they’re addressing it in a patch, so we’ll see! But again, I’ve been afraid to buy it, so I guess I won’t be the one who sees :P

gsk

It’s not faithful, and that’s the problem—like, the discussions about whether the original game’s systems were dated or could/should have been updated are irrelevant because they didn’t accurately recreate the controls to begin with.

James-

gsk sorry, should definitely have phrased that as “attempting to be faithful.” You’re absolutely right, they missed the mark pretty dang hard.
I’m assuming that the coming update is an effort to go from the current mess to something that is actually accurate, but at this point, who knows?

Renfrew

From what I’ve seen of it, it just looks too busy. There’s a real beauty in the starkness of the dead yet regenerating world of the original. As others have said, the original games really did use the limitations a d peculiarities of the Saturn to make something special, and I kind of feel like the lack of limitations now make it a completely different beast.

James-

Renfrew As others have said, the original games really did use the limitations a d peculiarities of the Saturn to make something special, and I kind of feel like the lack of limitations now make it a completely different beast.

This is a thing for a lot of titles for me. I just spent some time this evening playing a handful of PS1 demos on an OPM demo disc, and there’s something really charming about that era of graphics that gets completely lost when updating it. The Panzer Dragoon series goes double for this - they made that hardware sing and created games with an incredibly distinct look and feel, and the remake just does not hit that look or feel at all…

◉◉maru That is a really exciting list of updates, hopefully not too distant in the future.

◉◉maru

Another substantial update coming.

HD Rumble

60FPS is added

Input lag reduced/rotation improved

Gyro controls

Sound effects are reworked

Several face button to fire/lock

Auto lock system as an option

Episode 0 added

New game mode (performance?)

New gameplay options

New cheat codes

Options accessible from pause menu

Dragon animation reworked

Game language based on console language at first launch

Secret menu called Pandora Box in Remake now accessible once the game is beaten regardless of difficulty

There is no release date for patch V1.3 due to current COVID situation.

kappuru

This game feels like one of those videos where someone’s loaded like, a dozen mods into Skyrim and the trees look super nice but everything else is kind of a shitshow. I know Everyone Has Got A Take these days, and I don’t want to be negative, but I don’t have a lot of faith given that none of these death by a thousand cuts issues were noticed during development.

exodus

Yeah, once again when doing remakes, if the source was stylized, you have to either stylize in a new way, or sharpen up what’s there - if you wind up trying to modernize things or make them more realistic you’ll lose the script a bit.

I ammmm curious about the patch, but at this point, though I hate to say it, I want to wait for a sale.

◉◉maru

Patch 1.3 is out in the West.

exodus

@shane pointed out that that they talk about 60 fps performance mode in a 30fps video so you can’t tell if it’s true. does not inspire confidence yet!

◉◉maru

I am not video editing-savvy enough but my understanding is that it’s never simple to mix 30fps footage and 60fps footage in the same video? Please correct me if I am wrong. Here is a recording of the 60fps mode.

Also here is a good summary/review of the patch highlighting some less obvious changes and remaining issues.

About his last point, I don’t think the goal of adding gyro is to play in handheld mode but rather to aim better when playing with the Joy-Con grip (i.e. separated from the console) or Pro Controller. At least, I hope that’s what they were going for.

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