I’ve been a fan of the Panzer Dragoon series for a long time. The first one I ever played was Panzer Dragoon Zwei, it was released in 1996 when I was 8 years old, and i loved it. I immediately bought the original Panzer Dragoon after finishing Zwei. When Saga came out, I was turned off that it had a different style of gameplay and I did not get it. Now I am 16, and I saw Panzer Dragoon Orta on a store shelf, I bought it, and loved it, and now I realize that there is a story to all these games, soemthing that I didnt realize when I was 8 years old.
Here is my problem, I love PD games for their gameplay, and I am intrigued by the story in PD orta, but i can’t go back and play saga to fully understand the story because I am a janitor and make 6 dollars an hour, and I am not willing to save up for a 300 dollar game, so can someone recap the PD storyline for me? so I may understand what the hell is going on in orta??
thanks
Lance’s story synopsis of the entire Saturn Panzer Dragoon trilogy which can be read here should provide you with all the answers you need. Well, the games never answered all of our questions, but they gave us a glimpse into the truth surrounding the downfall of the ancients.
Unfortunately for us, the English translations of all three Saturn Panzer games are rather questionable…
the average price for PDS is $80-$100 and finding it for $60 is not unheard of.
PDS actually has a pretty cool battle system, though i do agree- i enjoyed the shooters much more gameplay-wise.
lance’s summary is quite informative, but i think getting the actual game is still worth pursuing.
Though Panzer Dragoon Ein and Panzer Dragoon Zwei were certainly more interactive than PDS, they certainly gave no clues about the true nature of the Panzer Dragoon universe. Panzer Dragoon Saga was mainly all about plot; it was a tour guide through one of the most imaginative worlds ever devised, whether it be videogame or novel.
I am a major Panzer Dragoon fan - but I would not be a fan if it were not for Panzer Dragoon Saga. PDS raised the watermark for RPGs so much, that even to this day, it has yet to be equaled.
So should you get PDS? The answer is a resounding YES.
…If you can find it for a reasonable price sure… And you can’t. So if you are short on $ it’s not gonna be worth it to you, it’s a great game but no game is worth spending money that you need for other things (like rend, food, electricity etc)…
Geoffrey, don’t forget that Orta was created with the english translations in mind therefor they aren’t questionable anymore, the japanese ones are 
Schwabby876, do what Geoffrey said, keep in mind though that it’s a kinda rough overview, it should be more than enough to understand most things though.
i always thought the shooters set up the mystery and then saga broke it down. we didn’t know what towers were, we didn’t know what the dragon was, we didn’t know anyone’s intentions, then saga laid it all out.
that’s one of the reasons i want the next game to be a shooter, they started up a lot of ideas but they should be developed before beig unravelled. the cradle(s), drones, orta, the worm rider’s symbiotic relationship with all those mutant types, the current status and purpose of the sestren… i’d want them to be expanded upon in another shooter, AND THEN have that era wrapped up in another RPG.
Perhaps we should treat them as equally questionable versions of the same story? After all, what is a story but one (or many) person’s version of a series of events… not necessarily the one true tale.
When a story is told, a lot of what you hear is based on the interpretation of the story teller. Maybe the two different versions of the Panzer Dragoon story were told by two different people in the game world? We know that the Japanese version of Panzer Dragoon Orta was told by the dragon, so perhaps the whole series is too (even if though it would be an anonymous narrator). The way the narrator of each version remembered the story would depict how the story was told.
But only Orta has a narrator…
Well I suppose Zwei does too but that’s the main character telling his tale, not an external character…
PD1, PDZ and PDS did all contain a bit of general narration too, such as the “Thousands of years have passed since the fall of the Ancient Age…” prologues. That could indicate they were meant to be the memories of a storyteller or narrator also, although the body of PDZ was narrated by Lundi, of course.
Schwabby876, I’d say those summaries of the PD storylines might be a help to you, but I warn you to only read them if you’ve got no intention of playing Panzer Dragoon Saga. I wrote those pages to show how the plots of the games tied together, and as such they’re practically made of spoliers; they’re hopefully a good background to the Panzer Dragoon Orta story, though.
Of course, the ancients were never said to be human even though it is implied. I loved the idea of human beings being subdued by their own creations – the idea of the current human survivors being hunted by biological monstrosities created by their ancestors. You could say that humankind is being haunted by their past. Is this even remotely true now?
The English translations of the Saturn Panzer games are still questionable to say the least.
