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It really shows why they chose to have a single button press fire a whole burst of shots in the second game, though, considering how much more useful, in general, the lock-on laser is in this one.
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Jun 3, 2014 05:43
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  Here’s where the “bullet hell” part of the game begins in earnest. This stage more than any other in the entire game is more about staying alive than actually scoring kills. The idea behind that idea is that the boss of this stage is a goddamn nightmare to deal with even on normal, so you want to be going into the boss fight with a much health to expend as you can because no matter what you will be taking hits like crazy during that fight. So where the hell are we this time around?  Well, it’s a forest level, the first and only one in this game. There are parts of the other games in the series, particular Orta where actual greenery shows up, but they’re few and far between and nowhere near as expansive as this one stage here. This is also where we run face-first into the entire Imperial fleet. That cutscene that played at the end of Episode 1? That was setting the stage for this episode.  We follow the Dark Dragon out of the tunnels and emerge over this vast forest. However, the entirety of the Imperial fleet is there as well. In the skirmish with dozens of battleships, the Dark Dragon is lost by Kyle and Lagi and tears on ahead while the Empire throws its weight behind stopping the only person capable of actually thwarting Sestren’s planned global holocaust… Because the Empire in this game is a collection of panicky idiots.  We’re also, as luck would have it on the doorstep of the Imperial capital, and ergo, a stone’s throw away from the Tower, so Kyle and Lagi better kick it into high gear in the next episode or I’m going to looking at a hattrick for “LPs where the hero fails to accomplish his principle goal” between this, White Knight Chronicles and Killzone. We also get an up close and personal glimpse at some of the craft that make up the Imperial fleet itself, most of which were glimpsed in the post-Episode 1 cutscene.  First up are the airships we see with the most regularity this level: the destroyers. These guys are notable for their flatter and wider profile than the regular battleships we’ve been encountering up till now. They also has a set of fan-like thrusters on the back end of their Lift Engines. The destroyers show up all over this level and are the easiest capital ships to take out using a combination of sustained blaster fire and lock-on charges. They have only one major attack, and that’s the big fireball bursts that can easily be countered with Kyle’s blaster.  The battlecruisers from the first and third levels are back, however there’s only two of them this time around. These two are actually a little harder to take out than the because they don’t stick around in effective range of either the blaster or the lock-on shot for too long. I had a curious thing happen with one of these types of enemies during one of my playthroughs that I sadly scrapped so I don’t have any actual evidence of it happening. However, during one of my MANY failed attempts at beating the boss for this stage, a battlecruiser just randomly wandered into the boss corridor and then back out of it again. I don’t know if the game accidentally spawned it or it was a freak glitch or something, but that was the first and only time that that has ever happened to me and it was as weird as you could possibly imagine.   Next up is this… thing. I think it’s some kind of artillery ship, as those leg-like protrusions on either side of it fire off shots at you and can be blown off under sustained firepower rendering it defenceless. It’s also escorted by two destroyers, one of which you can destroy if you take out the artillery ship fast enough, the other one you can’t because it hauls rear end as soon as you take out the other two ships. This thing is also an example of more important Imperial ships having blue hulls instead of brown ones.  Case in point: this. We also encounter the Imperial flagship in this level, also glimpsed in the post-Episode 1 cutscene. It’s essentially a giant paperweight held aloft by six dunce caps. The flagship has a few attacks to it, namely it alternates between dropping burst mines in your path and sending out squadrons of fighters to kamikaze you. Taking out this thing is a major blow to the Empire, as the level pretty much ends after this thing goes down. After this they throw the boss at you in desperation. I also like the nice touch that when it falls out of the sky and hits the ground, the impact startles a flock of birds out of the trees.  And lastly, there are these things. A pair of escort ships that accompany the boss of the level. Like the flagship and the artillery ship, these ones are blue instead of brown. They’re meant to soften you up in advance of the boss and are a large part of why I hate this boss fight so much. You can only take one of them out before they run away and leave you to the mercy of the boss. And even then you need to pretty much pick one of the two and just hammer the fire button until it blow up then turn your attention to the boss. They also spawn behind you when you’re focusing on the boss that has spawned ahead of you, so they're THE MOST dickish things in this episode. And with that, here’s what WotA has to say on this stage: The Will of the Ancients posted:Episode 5   I hate this thing so much. I suppose a bullet hell level deserves a bullet hell boss, doesn’t it? You get to see how many times I eat it to this thing at the end of the video, but even that isn’t an accurate representation of things, because I scrapped another entire video featuring me blowing through another 10~ lives trying to take this thing out. The take on this level that you see in this video is the one where I finally survived. That’s mostly the reason why I seem more on-point in this level than in the others; I’d played through it so many times by that point that I knew where everything spawned at and how to kill it with minimal damage to myself. This is also the reason why you’re not going to see the final enemies shot down average screen that plays after the final boss. After a solid 45 minutes of getting demolished by this boss, I finally broke down and used the level select cheat to skip over it and get the footage for Episode 6 and Last Episode and then came back to try this one post-facto. What’s more you can see my shot-down-per-episode totals at the end of each level, so if you want to know my full LP run accuracy ratio, just add those up and average them. It’s a meaningless number anyway. Now, as for the boss itself… I don’t know how to explain this thing. In the video, we posit that this thing is so insane with its shape and overloading with weaponry that it was most likely designed by the Emperor’s 4 year-old son and then actually produced, because who’s going to argue with a toddler that have you executed if he has a temper tantrum? There’s a myriad of strategies to deal with this thing. The one I use for this video, which probably isn’t that effective, but whatever, is to dodge everything it fires at you when it circles behind you. The thing that makes this boss so hard is that 1) it launches so many projectiles at you that it’s nearly impossible to shoot them all down, and 2) it circles around you and fires everything it has at you when it’s on your 12, 3, 6, and 9 o’clock. The reason you see me try to blind dodge a lot of its projectiles when it’s not directly ahead of me is that when you change your views to see anything outside of directly ahead of you, your maneuverability is incredibly diminished and there are certain views where you can’t maneuver at all when you’re looking to the side or backwards. And this thing shoots so much poo poo at you, you pretty much need to dodge as much of it as you can. Once the three tired spinarooney cannon is taken out, it flips rear end over tea kettle and launches missiles at you. There’s two types of missiles, red and green. The red ones fly right at you at high speed so you have to dodge them very quickly. The green missiles open up like fans and approach you slowly, giving you a chance to shoot them down before they home in on you because you can’t dodge these ones. Hitting the blue brace on its “leg” is the weakpoint for this stage and then you win. gently caress this thing.   
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Dec 15, 2014 |
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Jun 9, 2014 08:06
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Fell behind a little bit, getting caught up... Stage 4 was the standout stage of the game for me - it's fast, tense, has great music, and the difficulty is ramping up. It's probably where I died the most in my initial playthroughs of the game, and it's hard to get 100% on - there's a LOT of enemies who are only briefly visible as you sweep around those corners. Stage 5... I don't remember at all. At all. I completely forgot this level existed. Maybe because the scenery isn't that interesting.
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Jun 9, 2014 14:38
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Watching it again, this level reminda me of Secret of Mana's mode 7 flight scenes when you ride Flammie the dragon around the world. Considering he is also a white dragon, I wonder if it played as another influence on Panzer dragoon here.
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Jun 9, 2014 17:32
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A five-barreled revolver as the final component. I suppose there isn't anything restricting revolvers to some number of chambers, but five still seems weird.
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Jun 19, 2014 18:49
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Glazius posted:A five-barreled revolver as the final component. Five round revolvers aren't that odd in certain countries. IIRC, that's what normal officers carry in Japan, since most of the time, cops over there don't run into the kind of trouble that LAPD keeps riot gear around for.
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Jun 19, 2014 19:53
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 Well here we are, the last proper Episode of the game. Hard to believe the LP’s nearly over, huh?  Now this is where the game flies headlong in to  territory in terms of horrifying poo poo happening just off screen.This level opens with a cutscene.      Sestren detects the Dark Dragon approaching the Tower and activates all the dormant Pure Types in and around the Tower. The Pure Types spring into action and quickly overwhelm the Imperial detachment stationed around the Tower itself. With the Tower perimeter secure and readied for the Dark Dragon’s arrival, the Pure Types fan out and begin attacking the nearby Imperial Capital.  This is where Kyle and Lagi enter the picture, in the midst of a massive off-screen holocaust of innocent Imperial citizens dying in droves as the capital is blown up by bio horrors. It’s the combination of this and what happens in the ending cinematic that essentially cripple the Empire for the rest of the series until Edge, Azel and Lagi deliver the deathblow to it in Panzer Dragoon Saga. Then a new dynasty arises from its ashes in Panzer Dragoon Orta and proclaims itself the “New Empire”… and goes right back to work doing the same poo poo that got the Old Empire in trouble: namely digging up ancient ruins filled with existential horrors and experimenting with things beyond their understanding. Would it shock you if I said the New Empire collapses because something they unearthed backfires and blows up their new capital? Because that’s what happens at the end of Orta.  Anyway, everything about this level is about keying you up for the endgame which is what’s coming up next time. The level is one giant running battle between the Dark Dragon and the Pure Types, and Kyle and Lagi with the Empire haplessly caught in the middle. The Dark Dragon weaves in and out of the stage, but while it’s targetable, it’s also invincible. All you can really do to it is shoot down its seeker missiles and avoid the potshots from its drone. The level is very fast paced, you are constantly getting shot at, and the music is very high tempo’d and emphatic as well. The track is even called “The Imperial District Goes Up In Flames,” so that right there confirms that we’re flying through a massive slaughter that we don’t see because Still, I can see why after Panzer Dragoon Kyle just disappears from the series and is never referenced again. Being forced to fly through a senseless genocide and being powerless to stop it in one way or another would really weigh on a guy who was used to living in a yurt and foraging in a desert without any greater concerns than not starving to death before this all began. …That or he was a throwaway cipher who never actually says anything and is easily overshadowed by the protagonists in the series with actual personalities. Take your pick.  One last thing: I love how as you get into the tighter corridors of the level you actually start flying through peoples’ clotheslines. That’s a nice unexpected touch and helps make this place seem lived in, even though we don’t encounter a single other physical human being in the entire game. I also like to imagine Kyle and Lagi zipping through one of these stretches and either Kyle being literally clotheslined off of Lagi, or having him emerge with someone’s bra on his head Looney Tunes-style or something. Because if anything is the perfect accent to a supposedly serious and horrifying event, it’s obtuse comedy. Don’t believe me, just ask George Lucas! [Insert Star Wars Prequel joke here] And now here’s WotA’s summary of the stage: The Will of the Ancients posted:EPISODE 6   Like I say in the video, this thing… whatever it is, is not the boss of this level. You don’t need to beat it to move on to Last Episode, the game just moves on as soon as you clear the stage. For the longest time, I thought this thing was invincible like the Dark Dragon was in this stage, but lo and behold, I discovered through a combination of the invincibility and extra weapon cheats that you can actually kill this thing. It’s just incredibly hard to do because it has such a high hit point threshold. I think these things are supposed to be the Pure Type equivalent of an Imperial battleship. They’re practically living lift engines that look like floating heads that shoot plasma blasts at you. It’s a shame these things only appear for this level and the preceding cutscene because they look so drat badass.     Characters Azel (A human-like drone created by the Ancients, rider of the Atolm Dragon, awakened by Imperial traitor Crayman, aided the mercenary Edge in defeating both the Empire and Sestren. Mother of Orta) Edge (A human mercenary formerly employed by the Empire, host of the Divine Visitor, rider of the Heresy Dragon, fought against the Empire and Sestren in Panzer Dragoon Saga. Father of Orta) Orta (The first and only human-drone hybrid. Child of Edge and Azel, held hostage by the New Empire for most of her life, fought against the Empire and the evil drone Abad with the help of another incarnation the dragon ridden by her father) Locations Imperial Capital (Seaside seat of power of the Old Empire, a sprawling canal city of over 100,000 inhabitants) Politics The Old Empire (The incarnation of the Empire seeing Panzer Dragoons Eins (ie: this one!), Zwei, and Saga. Dissolved after the events of Saga) The New Empire (Successor state to the Old Empire, re-established under the Eighth Emperor. This incarnation of the Empire is seen during Panzer Dragoon Orta. Dissolved after the events of Orta for being too stupid to take a loving hint already) nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Dec 15, 2014 |
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Jun 21, 2014 10:20
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Sheesh--forgotten how short that last segment was. They probably shouldv'e just stuck the Dark Dragon fight in with it. Though I suppose they broke that up separately so that they could give you full health again before the battle.
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Jun 29, 2014 00:28
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Poor Imperials. At least the biohorrors chased us out to sea, right?
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Jul 7, 2014 01:33
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Ha, I dunno. I figure whatever bio-horrors we didn't kill are still back there slogging it out with whatever remnants of the Imperial Army are still around. You'll see, but it's just us and the Dark Dragon out there. We leave the Capital City to its fate. That's a bit dark though, so here's a video to cheer you up. I figured it was vaguely relevant considering we all kept referencing the drat game.
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Jul 7, 2014 05:10
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Wow guys this is a great LP. I just watched all the videos. I've heard a lot about this game, it's interesting to see it played out. So I guess just one more main video for this story. Will there be another video showing off the weapons in cheat mode?
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Jul 7, 2014 06:20
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That is correct. There's enough cheats and minor extra stuff that we were able to squeeze an extra video out of it. There's a surprising amount of extra weapons hidden behind cheats.
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Jul 7, 2014 06:22
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Ignore this. I accidentally uploaded the videos without commentary. Opps. They'll be up for real in a shot bit. Watch this space. Also: 
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Aug 4, 2014 |
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Aug 4, 2014 04:37
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Mistakes like this are inacceptable, crow! I thought we were professionals.
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Aug 4, 2014 06:02
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 So here we are with the Last Episode. The home stretch. This level is simply one giant boss fight, the final showdown with the Dark Dragon, now powered up into a beast of civilization destroying power thanks to Sestren and the Tower.    After chasing the Dark Dragon across the entire continent and even through the Imperial Capital, Kyle and Lagi finally reach the Tower. Unfortunately, the Dark Dragon reaches it first, allowing Sestren to accelerate its evolution, increasing its power a thousand fold and encasing it in a colossal suit of Pure Type armour. Now, the only thing standing between it and the annihilation of mankind are an obscure young hunter from the wastelands and a small armoured dragon. If they fail, the world is toast. The Will of the Ancients posted:Last Episode   The Mega Dark Dragon, for lack of a better term, is pretty much everything you’d want in a rail shooter final boss. It has an expansive attack pattern, it packs perhaps the strongest punch of all the bosses in the game (outside of Episode 5’s bullshit boss), and it’s pretty tough to whittle down.  It’s first attack is a retread of the orange energy wave attack it threw at us in Episode 2. However, this time it’s both wilder and more rapid than it was last time, meaning your chances of dodging every hit are greatly diminished unless you’re really on the ball.   It also has a charged plasma blast that it will throw at you. This one does bullshit stupid damage to you if it hits and it has like three waves to it, but there are some mitigating factors to it that swing things to your advantage. It takes some time to charge up, and while it’s charging the MDD basically becomes inert, giving you a nice opportunity to pound it with hits. It’s also fairly easy to dodge all of its hits if you’re quick enough to do so.   The MDD will also fire off its homing missiles at you again. Just like in Episode 6, it fires off volleys of four at you. This time around, however, the speed at which they close in on you is amped up, so you need to be quick at shooting them all down.  It also launches a stream of little kamikaze Pure Type enemies at you. These little bastards can be picked off no problem with Kyle’s blaster before they get anywhere close to you, but the damage they do if they crash into Lagi can really add up quickly.  It also uses its newly snake-like body as a weapon itself. If you hit its tail, you will take damage. It will also whip its whole body around and try to swat you with its tail for pretty heavy damage.  And lastly, this one is more of a passive feature, but it’s something to keep in the back of your mind. The MDD has eight little drones that fly around its head in an X-shape. They’re there as cover to eat up your lock on attacks, because the more shots they absorb, the less damage you do to the Dark Dragon itself. So you need to thread the needle when you’re locking onto the Dragon, focusing on its head exclusively. That’s because if you hit the drones they start to glow as a warning, and if you hit them too many times they explode in a shotgun pattern and their attacks are very hard to dodge. The best way to not take any damage from these little bastards is actually to fly into the center of their attack because the bolts fan out in a cone shape, so the centre of the attack is actually empty. It’s a bit of a strategic trade-off with these guys, because the more of them you take out, the clearer shot you have at the double D itself. However, the more of them you take out, the more at risk you put yourself for taking damage from them. And, even if you do take all of them out, the Dark Dragon will regenerate all eight of them eventually, leaving you back at square one.  This episode is also where the only major difference between difficulties comes into play. If you’ve played the game on Hard Mode and managed to get to this level, there’s actually a second stage to this fight. After beating the Mega Dark Dragon, instead of it dying like it does on Normal Mode, you then have to fight the regular Dark Dragon one final time. The final throwdown with the Dark Dragon in Hard Mode is a bit of a retread of first confrontation with it in Episode 2. It fires its energy wave off, it launches its homing missiles, and its pilot drone will take potshots at you with its own blaster. The only new element to this fight is this:  In a last desperate bid to be a complete rear end in a top hat to the player, the Dark Dragon will spam a defensive bubble that not only renders it temporarily invincible even to Kyle’s blaster, but also prevents you from even locking on to it until it comes down.    Once you defeat its second form, you have well and truly beaten Panzer Dragoon, so enjoy the bastard’s ear-rending death scream and set the controller down to watch the ending movie and credits and think about whether or not begging your parents to buy you a Sega Saturn console really was worth it after all.  So let’s do that then.  Lagi flies into the heart of the Tower, and just like we saw in the opening, it too has a very enamel-like aesthetic to it, like all Ancient Age technology we've encountered thus far.  Kyle is quite taken aback by it all, not quite sure what to do next. Although the Dark Dragon has been felled, stopping the tower is a whole other problem. Stopping Sestren? poo poo, we're not touching that one till Panzer Dragoon Saga.  Lagi, however, seems to know exactly what to do in this situation. This was his mission after all, Kyle just kind of crashed it because the Sky Rider sucked at being a sky rider.  He projects an energy field around Kyle, lifting him off of his neck and holding him aloft as he files on without him.  With Kyle safe from what's about to happen, Lagi begins to charge up his attack. This is the same kind of lock-on attack that you use in-game.   Meanwhile, Kyle's all like "dude,  ?" And Lagi's all "  " And then EXPLOSION!   Lagi's attack causes the Tower to explode in a flash of hot plasma death.  The tower blowing up like this destroys a third of the Imperial Capital mere miles away. I'm not making this up either. Lagi just hosed the Empire over something fierce and just murdered thousands of innocent civilians, many of whom were still running and hiding from the rampaging Pure Types from Episode 6. Again, I'm 2-for-2 in LPing games involving dragons and massive unintentional loss of life.  Meanwhile, on a desolate shore somewhere.  Kyle survived the explosion and destruction of the Tower thanks to Lagi's shield. Though how did he get here from the Tower?    Aww. Look at that, Lagi saved him and brought him back to dry land after all. And then just abandoned him there.  Lagi's a dick.  From there the game's credits roll and we get to see pieces of the game's artwork interspersed with the credits, which much like the game itself tell a larger story through visuals rather than words or actions.  For example, we get to see a humanizing moment between Kyle and Lagi as they stop for a rest one night at some point along their journey. Kyle keeps watch over Lagi while the dragon sleeps.  A rendering of one of the many confrontations between Kyle and Lagi and the Dark Dragon.  And here's what the Imperial Capital was supposed to look like on a system that could have properly handled Team Andromeda's ambition.  And here is the last "recorded" image of Kyle in the Panzer Dragoon canon. From here, the young hunter disappears into obscurity, supplanted in the consciousness of PD aficionados by the likes of Lundi, Edge, and Orta, who would headline the subsequent three games in the series. WotA has an article written by Geoffrey Duke which postulates, however, that a character from Panzer Dragoon Saga named Radgam is actually Kyle Fluge living under an assumed name in Zoah Village. The evidence Duke cites is that Radgam identifies himself (and Edge) as a Hunter, and that has an Ancient Age blaster mounted on the wall in his house that looks identical to Kyle's blaster from this game. He's also an old man when you find him, which matches up roughly with the amount of time that passes between Eins and Saga. Much like a lot of elements in the Panzer Dragoon universe, however, there's no official corroborating evidence to confirm or debunk this theory, so you're welcome to assume whatever the hell you want about Kyle's fate after this point in the series. The Will of the Ancients posted:Ending Bullshit. He got dumped. Stop trying to dress it up. Here's one final batch of artwork for the LP, including a few annotated maps of where we've been over the course of this adventure.     Characters Radgam (An aged Hunter from the town of Zoah. Warned Edge not to trust the Seekers. May or may not be Kyle Fluge living under an alias) And it's also at this point where we bid farwell to TravelLog in the commentary. Blind Sally will be back with me for the Cheats and Secrets video, however, which is coming as soon as I get off my lazy rear end and do one last bit of footage capture. Thank you, TravelLog. I promise that I'll eventually have you on to comment on an actual RPG eventually instead of railshooters and FPSes. nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Jan 8, 2015 |
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Aug 4, 2014 06:35
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I dunno how I feel about you using "double D" as a nickname to refer to the Dark Dragon.
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Aug 4, 2014 07:48
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 And here we go with the last video of the LP: the cheat run post-mortem. This video is going to be a herky-jerky run through of all the various cheats and secrets hidden away in Panzer Dragoon. I’ll list all them here including their cheat codes and what they do, but to see them in action, you should check out the video.   #1 | View Hard Mode Ending Code: Up Up Down Up Left Left Right Left Down Down Up Down Right Right Left Right What it does: Plays the special Hard Mode epilogue without having to beat the game on Hard to see it. This isn’t a plot epilogue, it’s a little screen that shows you the cheat to unlock Wizard Mode.  #2 | Stage Select Code: Press Start on the title screen, then Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right X Y Z What it does: Isn’t it obvious? This code lets you pick whatever level you want and start the game from there. Panzer Dragoon came from the days before progress saves, so you’d have to play the game all in one go if you wanted to beat it legit. Later Panzer Dragoons like Saga and Orta would let you save and continue from where you left off, however.  #3 | The “Polygon Babe” What it is: If you use either the Stage Select or Unlimited Continues cheat, when you end your game instead of the SEGA logo man appearing, a girl in a red jumpsuit reminiscent of a character from the original Virtua Fighter on the 32X jumps in and turns into the SEGA logo instead. It’s nothing more than fan service. #4 | Unlimited Continues / Extra Weapons Code: Press Start on the title screen, then press Up X Right Y Down Z Left Y Up X What it does: This is a three-fold code. As you know already it spawns the Polygon Babe on the game over screen, but it also allows you to use unlimited continues and take as many tries as you need to get through the game. It also allows you the use of extra weapon combinations. You’ll recall I mentioned this in the very first level, well, here it is in play here. This is was in many ways the test bed for the dragon transformation mechanic featured in the subsequent Panzer Dragoon games, most notably Saga and Orta. In those games, your dragon has three forms to it which you can shift between at will. The first one is the standard form, the one most like the dragon in this game. It’s a middle of the road model. The second one is a heavy weapons one, which is slower and harder to maneuver, but has a selection of high-powered weapons designed to do vast damage to bosses. And the third is a light mode that’s very quick and agile and has a rapid fire weapon, but it does crap damage and it has zero durability to it.   #4A | Weapon Selection 1 Code: Press and hold B at the episode title card What it does: Kyle’s blaster is more powerful than normal. Lagi’s lock-on shot is now purple-blue and is quicker to lock on to enemies than normal. Lock-ons are denoted by multi-coloured orbs circling around Lagi.  #4B | Weapon Selection 2 Code: Press and hold C at the episode title card What it does: Kyle’s blaster is more powerful than normal, but not as powerful as the B option one. Lagi’s lock-on shot is now bright blue and has the easiest to lock on of all the weapon choices, and is the most powerful too.  #4C | Weapon Selection 3 Code: Press and hold Y at the episode title card What it does: Kyle’s blaster is now a multi-coloured rapid fire machine gun that’s more powerful than most other weapon options. Lagi’s lock-on shot remains at regular strength.  #4D | Weapon Selection 4 Code: Press and hold Z at the episode title card What it does: Kyle’s blaster is now aqua green in colour and is the most powerful single weapon in the game. Lagi’s lock-on shot is now purple-blue and is slightly more powerful than normal.  #5 | Dragon Only Mode Code: Enter the Unlimited Continues / Extra Weapons code then press Left Left Right Right Up Down Up Down L R What it does: Kyle’s model is removed from the game and only Lagi appears on screen. However, because Kyle isn’t there, you can’t use his blaster attack either, so only lock-ons work now.  #6 | Invincibility Mode Code: Press Start on the title screen, then press L L R R Up Down Left Right What it does: Makes you invincible to all attacks in the game. HOWEVER, if you use this cheat, the ending cinematic will not play when you beat Last Episode. FYI.   #7 | Episode 0 Code: Press Start on the title screen, then press Up Up Up Down Down Down Left Right Left Right Left Right L R What it does: Allows you to play through the “target practice” level, Episode 0—a cloudy void where enemies from each level of the game aside from Last Episode appear in waves for you to shoot down. Your health will continuously drain as you fly through the level, so you have until you die to rack up the highest score you can… which isn’t recorded anywhere nor does it unlock anything. If you play Episode 0 with invincibility on, then the level will play indefinitely until you turn off the Sega Saturn. #8 | Wizard Mode Code: Press Start on the title screen, then press L R L R Up Down Up Down Left Right What it does: Snidely described as “modern framerate mode,” Wizard Mode speeds the game up to 1.5x speed. Episode 0 naturally plays in Wizard Mode. Okay, this next one is a little complex:     #9 | Space Harrier Mode Code: Step 1) Turn off the Saturn, open the CD door and turn it back on again. Step 2) Find the Language Settings feature on the Saturn control deck and set the Saturn’s internal language to German (Deutsch). Step 3) Load the game to the start menu and press Up X Right X Down X Left X Up Y Z What it does: You play as Kyle alone sans Lagi. It looks absolutely hilarious. Unlike Dragon Only Mode, however, you can use both Kyle’s blaster and Lagi’s lock-on attacks, even though Lagi isn’t on screen.  This cheat is a two-fold inside joke of sorts for Sega. First and most obviously, the name of the cheat is a reference to Sega’s jetpack rail shooter Space Harrier, which this mode is very reminiscent of. The second one is that—for whatever reason—the Saturn’s system language needs to be set to German to get this cheat to run. This may be an inside joke on Team Andromeda’s part, as Panzer Dragoon games tend to have either German names like Panzer Dragoon Zwei (Two), or German production codenames (Orta, for example, was referred to initially as Panzer Dragoon Vier (Four), and at the end of its game credits the title card that shows up says Panzer Dragoon Vier rather than Panzer Dragoon Orta). And that’s saying nothing of the fact that the series’ title is also derived from German. “Panzer” is a German loanword meaning “armour,” by the way.   #10 | Rolling Mode Code: Press Start on the title screen, then press Up Right Down Left four times in a row. (IE: like a rolling pattern) What it does: Ostensibly it causes Lagi to roll when you tap left or right on the D-pad twice, but all I got him to do in the video was just pitch rapidly to one side of the screen or the other. I don’t know if I hosed it up or not, nor do I really care because it’s the end of the LP.   #11 | Clean Pause Menu Code: Press X Y and Z when paused in a level What it does: Clears away the big flashing “PAUSE” in the middle of the screen. There’s not much point to this, but it does allow you to stage some decent gameplay screenshots, I suppose.  CHEATS NOT SHOWN IN THIS VIDEO #12 | Smart Bomb Code: With Rolling Mode activated, enter a roll, hold down any fire button and then release. What it does: Apparently this technique will auto-lock on to every enemy on screen and then destroy all of them at once when you release the fire button. It’s not shown off in the video because I couldn’t get rolling mode working properly, thus I couldn’t get the Smart Bomb to work. #12 | View Normal Mode Ending Code: Press Start on the title screen, then press Up Up Down Up Right Right Left Right Down Down Up Down Left Left Right Left What it does: Allows you to view the game’s ending cinematic without having to do that whole pesky “playing the drat game” thing. It’s not in the video because we’ve already seen the ending cinematic, so there’s no point in watching it a second time. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was Panzer Dragoon in its more-or-less entirety. I’d like to thank everyone who stuck it out with me for your support, as well as give special thanks to Blind Sally and TravelLog for coming with me on this journey. I may one day get around to LPing Panzer Dragoon Zwei and/or Orta to fill the gap in the LP Archive, but for now, you’ll just have to wait and see. Thanks again, and see you out there. 
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Aug 5, 2014 05:30
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Okay, gotta ask; is Panzer Dragoon Saga worth the exorbitant amount of money it costs?
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Aug 6, 2014 01:18
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azren posted:Okay, gotta ask; is Panzer Dragoon Saga worth the exorbitant amount of money it costs? Depends on what your definition of "worth it" is. By all accounts, it's a really good game, so there's a point in its favour, but its not some kind of lost masterpiece that will make your life better if you manage to get your hands on it. Yet, if you're any kind of rare game collector, it's definitely a feather in your cap to say "I own a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga". And relatively speaking, at $400 it's not that expensive compared to dropping $1200+ on a like a old school Galaga cabinet machine or whatever. Would I do it myself? I don't really have the loose cash to try it at the moment, but I am incredibly tempted to do it every time I go on Ebay and see the same ten copies of it constantly being relisted every month. Just to say "I own a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga  ". Then I remind myself it's just a drat video game and I can't eat a video game, so my money naturally goes other places.The only reason its so expensive is because there are so few copies of it to go around. Were it not for that, it would probably be about $80 in a thrift store at its most expensive. All that said, Twxabfn's LP of it is probably enough for most people to get the gist of it without shelling out $400 for the whole drat game. nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 08:12 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 08:10
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azren posted:Okay, gotta ask; is Panzer Dragoon Saga worth the exorbitant amount of money it costs? No game is. crow, stop looking at ebay listings for the drat thing!
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Aug 6, 2014 08:22
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It's a really enjoyable game with a fun, unique battle system and a good story, but worth $400, no. I picked mine up years ago when the Saturn was dying for about £20 (about $30-35 right now). My copy right now isn't in great condition (discs are fairly messy but no big scratches, manual a bit creased, and the card box was missing when I bought it), but I wasn't really concerned with the resell value at the time (I passed on a copy of Radiant Silvergun as well, look at me, what a mug).
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Aug 6, 2014 14:56
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Hey this was a great LP, thanks for putting it together guys. I watched all the videos  Kind of surprising that so much was available via cheats and the game itself is very bare-bones. I wonder if there wasn't time to implement having the extra weapons in the game, or if these are just hold-overs as the game was being built. Also, what is the deal with the German naming of the games? Was Moebius or someone on the development team German? The game takes a lot of influence from Dune and that novel has lots of Arab influences. It's pretty obscure that you have to set the Saturn to German Language mode to get a cheat.
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Aug 7, 2014 03:27
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I dunno about other people on the dev team, but Mœbius is assuredly French (real name: Jean Henri Gaston Giraud).
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Aug 7, 2014 03:30
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I don't really know where the heavy German influence came from, to be honest. And yes, Mœbius is French, but he wasn't an actual member of the design team, just someone who's artwork inspired the visual design of the game and whom Team Andromeda later contracted to design their cover artwork. As for the extra weapons, I think it was just a matter of implementation limits. They probably wanted to have some kind of expansive arsenal or upgrade system in place and just dummied it out either to streamline the game or because they couldn't get it to work properly. But if you play any of the later Panzer Dragoons you can clearly see that they kept working on the idea until they finally could implement it properly. Also, I just figured out what the hell "Rolling Mode" is supposed to be. Apparently when you're at or below 25% health (ie: in the red on your life bar), you can double tap left or right on the Saturn controller's d-pad and the dragon will roll across the screen and you'll automatically lock on to all the enemies on screen if you're holding down the fire button. Rolling Mode allows you to do this technique regardless of your health status. The Will of the Ancients describes it as a very rough prototype to what would become the player-triggered "berserk" attacks of Saga and Orta. Nigh on 20 years since I first played the game and one LP later and I'm still learning things about it...
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Aug 7, 2014 05:18
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I know that they went with the name Panzer Dragoon because Armored Dragon just doesn't sound fancy enough for the Dev team so they decided to go German to make it sound fancier or something like that.
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Aug 7, 2014 06:41
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David D. Davidson posted:I know that they went with the name Panzer Dragoon because Armored Dragon just doesn't sound fancy enough for the Dev team so they decided to go German to make it sound fancier or something like that. A "dragoon" is also a mounted soldier who is capable of fighting both mounted and dismounted!
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Aug 7, 2014 22:45
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It's interesting that a lot of those secrets seem like they might have been powerups early in development but, like, they couldn't figure out how to award them or something.
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Aug 12, 2014 00:47
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It was my pleasure to take part in this truly WTF rail-shooter. From bizarre child's spinning top toys turned battleships of doom, to a total lack of barrel-roll integration technology, I had fun.
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Aug 13, 2014 08:06
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Beautiful Update, Man. Peace.
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Sep 8, 2014 21:24
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Blatant archive prep bump. Blame Geop. And Baldruk. And Ralp. Please accept this animated gif of Dash Rendar being a smug git by BMS as recompense: If nothing else, now you can relive the magic of the entire LP all over again from start to finish. It shouldn't take more than half an hour if you don't watch the cheat video.
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Oct 9, 2014 10:53
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 14:33 |
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 It's...it's...a monstrosity. Oh god kill it with fire.
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Oct 11, 2014 00:44
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