During the Twitch.tv E3 demo, I noticed Rukari Austin complaining that he couldn’t lock-on while he was barrel rolling.
He was debating whether he should not use the tactic thus getting a better shot down ratio but unfortunately taking more damage allowing for a greater chance for death, or to use the barrel roll allowing him to dodge strategically and defensively, preserving his health but sacrificing precious time ultimately missing quite a lot of enemies.
This to me seems like a hindrance. Wouldn’t things be more smooth if you could still move the cursor and lock-on to enemies while barrel rolling?
If you want to get a high score, it seems like you will probably be forced to use a lot of revive gems solely because you will have drained all of your health not being able to dodge the enemies attacks. Either that or you opt to barrel roll and risk a greater chance of enemy retreat…
I don’t know if I’m going overboard here or if this is a serious issue in the games mechanics? Orta or Zwei didn’t have this problem did it?
You couldn’t lock onto enemies while moving around the enemy in Panzer Dragoon Saga either. Or even charge your attacks. There was a trade off between moving+avoiding damage and defeating the enemy faster. To get an excellent rank you needed to get the balance right. Crimson Dragon seems to require a similar balance.
All in all this video has made me much more excited about the game. They could have just made another rail shooter, but the free flight sections appear to be breaking new ground for the genre.
Remember that interview where Futatsugi stated that he would like to remake PDS as a shooter? Imagine a remake of Saga with boss battles like this.
It’s great how it opens up in free flight! And I’m loving the music. but, are there going to be micro transactions using real money, or do you just use the gems as in game currency?
On a side note IMO, I’m getting a vibe that the game will focus too heavily on upgrading and leveling up your dragon. Maybe to the point of nauseam. Having to replay levels over and over again might start to get grating and repetitive after a while. Especially if there aren’t very many.
[quote=“legaiaflame”]It’s great how it opens up in free flight! And I’m loving the music. but, are there going to be micro transactions using real money, or do you just use the gems as in game currency?
On a side note IMO, I’m getting a vibe that the game will focus too heavily on upgrading and leveling up your dragon. Maybe to the point of nauseam. Having to replay levels over and over again might start to get grating and repetitive after a while. Especially if there aren’t very many.[/quote]
Well, we’ve all played past PD games over and over for better scores and hit ratios, so the way I see it, so long as the game is actually any fun to play, I don’t see this being a problem.
Contrary to what you say though, I’m not digging the new music. Sounds like your typical half-ass orchestral crap that you get in most Western action games now. I mean, some parts sounded ok, but nothing comes close to the distinct sound of the PD games. Perhaps it sounds a little better when you haven’t got 2 guys talking over it, but I seriously hope the majority of the music is still in sync with what we got from the Crimson Dragon Side Story (which I still listen to regularly, some months later). Ah, please, I hope I can turn off that terrible American voice acting.
The game however doesn’t excite me as much as I feel it should do though. Perhaps it’s the choice of the levels they used. It seemed a bit hectic when compared to the uploaded vids of the accidental demo upload.
Couldn’t you just constantly barrel roll through the entire game then? I’ve played games where I’ve exploited similar abilities.
I know we’ve had fun replaying the past PD games and such. The thing is: we didn’t have to worry about spending hours upon hours before hand customizing and upgrading our dragon with constant move sets we have to unlock before hand. Especially when they have to be unlocked from sparingly acquired currency.
I get the feeling most of the games play time will be spent at camp doing such activities thus taking you out of the worlds atmosphere and story. And having to constantly repeat a small set of levels over and over again to do so, will get monotonous eventually. I mean the game isn’t an rpg, so spending hours doing these activities might seem detaching and out of place IF and I say IF it becomes a requirement to beat a game that is potentially as short as this.
I really don’t want to judge the game so harshly even though I may be completely wrong in the end. I just can’t shake this suspicion that this will be the case.
As far as the music goes: this is as close to PD music we are going to get, so I’m content. While the orchestrated sections may be over powering in some respects, it still contains more than enough panzer sounding vibes!
P.S. The sad part is I’m bitching about a game I’m most likely not going to play, if not for a very long time. I’ll probably end up watching a let’s play of the game which makes me very very sad… 
