Though pretty niche, the Panzer Dragoon series has generally been able to maintain a strong cult following over the years. One of the standout entries for the franchise arrived 20 years ago on January 29, 1998, with Panzer Dragoon Saga, a game that broke a lot of the rules the series had set for itself previously.
While previous Panzer Dragoon games had been on-rail shooters, Saga instead was a roleplaying game that featured random encounters, a turn-based battle system and free exploration. Players are put in control of Edge, a mercenary who flies on a dragon. Edge discovers a girl in an archeological site and is attacked by the Black Fleet, who take the girl and kill Edge’s friends. Edge swears revenge and starts tracking down the Black Fleet. He eventually meets the girl again – her name is Azel, and she’s a bioengineered being who was created in order to interact with ancient technology. Eventually, Edge must rescue Azel from those who would take advantage of her abilities, and the two of them must protect their world from the ancient tech that would do it harm.
Saga actually entered development alongside the sequel to the original Panzer Dragoon, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, in 1995. While Zwei released in 1996 and featured the same gameplay as the original, Saga required much more time to work the world into a roleplaying game. With full three-dimensional environments and a lot of voice acting, it was a standout for RPGs at the time; the game’s script ended up being more than 1,500 pages long.
The game was widely acclaimed upon its release, with much of the praise going to the battle system and the stories, as well as the graphic presentation of the game. Unfortunately, due to the fact that Saga released on the wildly unpopular Sega Saturn console, it didn’t sell particularly well – though it is the most critically well-received game for that system. The game has never been rereleased, and with the source code having long been lost, ports are difficult if not impossible. As a spectacular roleplaying game for a doomed console, Panzer Dragoon Saga regularly demands high prices online, with copies selling for well over $400 or more.
