The last time I played through PDS was sometime last year, and I’m looking for an excuse to bring my Saturn out of retirement. I’m thinking of going for a speed-run through the game, but before I do I thought I’d check if anyone’s zoomed through it before. I’ve always tried to go for a high completion rating in the past, but that cranks the in-game clock up to some pretty non-outstanding times; if I ignore all the optional stuff and side-quests though, what should a good time look like?
Maybe if you go overkill on the berserks, you could probably beat it in 9 hours.
I hammered through it with getting 100% of the enemies, getting the Tobitamas and the solo wing, finishing it in 10 hours 2 minutes. I was level 42 or something.
10 hours? Seems a little long…I could’ve sworn that I’ve beaten it in around 6 hours before (though that’s skipping all the cutscenes and not getting 100% of the map data, but then again I wasn’t really an expert at the game, either).
Yeah, earning all the 100% ratings by the end of the game can take up some serious extra time. Those GiriGiri save-game files I made for the site actually ended up going over 16 hours - admittedly I wasn’t trying to be fast with them though, and I did a lot of experimenting along the way to see if I could find anything I’d missed on previous play-throughs.
Anyhow, my current progress on the speed-run is 0 hours, 00 minutes. I’ve unpacked the Saturn, but I keep getting distraced by other Saturn games. I’ll let you know how well or how utterly lame it turns out, though.
He’s playing so fast that time has no grasp on him!
Well I wouldn’t say I’m that good, 
but I did manage to reach the end of the game in 4 hours 44 minutes, with a Level 49 dragon. If anyone else ever feels random enough to try a speed-run, I’m pretty sure it could be done in 4 hours 30 though, as I made a boatload of minor slip-ups along the way. My end-of-game stats only looked slightly odd, too:
Dragon model: Arm Wing
Distance travelled: 311.5km
Map areas covered: 38.4%
Stuff destroyed: 1.0%
Enemies found: 83.6%
Bonding-with-dragon points: 0
4 hours and 44 minutes… wow!
How did you manage to level up your dragon so quickly in that time? I assume you went quite heavy on the berserk attacks, but even so…
I’m tempted to give this a try at some point.
Not as much as you might think; I’ve found that a lot of the time it’s as efficient to use your gun and lasers on enemies, especially bosses or other large enemies that have weak points to aim for. As for getting the dragon up to that level, I managed to get an “Excellent” grade for most battles, and for pretty much every boss battle. Once you know what you’re doing it’s not so hard, and of course it has a knock-on effect; if doing well in one battle levels you up, it’s easier to get an “Excellent” for the next battle, and so on…
the gam ecan be beat very quickly in deed, i had about 6 hours or so with a 99.7 or so complet rating, the damn maps in the tower were what screwed me over, i gav eup on tryign to cover it so i left an dbeat the game, but yeah 6 hours tops for a near 100%, but then again, i played that gam eso many time si could practically dream it out in detail
I only misse the Golia Tracker…or was it the Hunter?
Never could keep those two straight…
Hey all! I don’t know if anyone will ever read this, but I recently borrowed this game from a friend, and after completing it for the first time, saw all the replay value in it, along with the potential for a speed-run.
But yeah, wow 4:44 is an incredible time, I thought I played the game perfectly but already see one improvement I could have made.
On my actual speed-run attempt, I barely collected any items at all, in the end, I only needed maybe three or four items to replenish BP while fighting Sestren; along with one or two to cure the “pain” status from one particular boss in the game.
I tried to manipulate my dragon’s type in order to get Excellent status in fights as quickly as possible, which meant almost always 200 points to attack and agility, only once switching to get the shield berserk early for an unavoidable enemy along the way.
Well anyway here are my clear game statistics for my three completions, I hope that posting this sparks someone’s interest in playing this absolutely perfect game.
15:32 - 2nd completion of the game, but my first “real” completion, while completing literally every side-quest, and levelling my dragon to the max with the baby dragon along the way. Almost an excellent on every enemy, and almost every enemy fought.
8:06 - 3rd completion, and what I would call my first speed-run of the game. I followed the only side-quest throught that I felt was important, collecting all the D-units, I managed to collect all but two while cruising the game as quickly as possible, and went back for the last two right before Sestren. I fought every enemy in every area; which meant some hunting time, and got an Excellent for every enemy fought. I also levelled up a bit fighting rare enemies, this proved to only be disavdantageous as far as time was concerned, and unneccessary really in the end.
4:56 - 4th completion, and my first pure speed-run, not caring about getting Excellent statuses for the ends of battles. I literally zipped from save point to save point as quickly as possible, only skipping a few where moving the storyline further was easy, and a save point came there naturally (it takes time to go to camp and save all the time). The only time I didn’t move along the optimal path is where I got caught by one laser trap in the Tower, it resulted in two fights, which really only added maybe a minute or so to my time.
So, thanks to all who might read this one day, and happy playing!