Panzer Dragoon: Remake

Panzer Dragoon is sort of the flagship franchise for the Sega Saturn, but since I've never owned one I have never played the games. Always been interested to try one out however, and a great opportunity with the Stadia release of the remake (available for free with Pro subscription to boot).

I wish I had the knowledge of the original to compare it to, but I feel that it probably did not age that well. Some of the mechanics in this game feel rather ancient, and I could only imagine the reason for it is that they were trying to stay true to the original game. So Panzer Dragoon is a shooting where your ride a dragon that advances automatically, the only thing you control is where you are going to shoot and your camera angle. Well you can also move a a little bit left and right and up or down, but that for some weird reason is controlled with your aim... so if you want to move right, you have to move your cursor all the way to the right and then it will start moving. I'm confused at this concept, because the game requires you to dodge stuff and it's completely unpractical and non-intuitive.

The game isn't very long. There are 6 episodes plus one final boss, and each of them takes about 5-10 minutes to complete. So after 1 hour and a few retries, you'll be done with the game. There isn't much to it, just shoot stuff and sometimes move the camera (which is only done in a 90 degree angle at a time) so you can see the enemies. The bosses aren't very imaginative, you just have to shoot them a lot and eventually they will die. I have completed the game on Normal mode and have a big feeling of "that's it?"... it feels very incomplete, but it looks like the original was also that short too. The length is one thing, but I didn't have much fun playing the game as there are no special abilities or anything of interest you can do. You just move the cursor and shoot things and repeat. Game overall was a disappointment and kind of puts me off from checking the other Panzer games.