Sestren’s just been blasted to heck (again) and you sigh in dispair as you realise the greatest game ever has the most dissappointing final boss ever.
Suddenly, the screen goes black and a cut-scene you’ve never seen before begins, then you’re launched into a final, awesome boss which suits Panzer Dragoon Saga.
The question is, what happens in the cut-scene and what is the boss like?
Sestren reforms into Sestren Extrais (Well you think of a better name =p) and is 10x harder. Sestren was the perfect boss for Saga, and one that does it justice. The difficulty level just needed to be higher.
Bah! I say. Bah!
Ok, I’ll post my version.
After defeating Sestren, Edge and the Dragon begin the next cut-scene, up-to the point where the screen goes black, and the player has to press start. When the player does, a huge flare erupts from off screen and the camera pans around to behind Edge. We see Lagi fly under Edge once more because it doesn’t seem to be over yet.
The heartbeat music begins anew as the parts of Sestren which flew off start to slowly reform. Lagi realises what is happening and attacks Sestren with laser after laser, knocking bits off but only slowing him down.
Realising that he’s out of his depth, Lagi backs off a bit, Edge wondering what to do (out loud). Then we hear the voice of Sestren once more:
“Fools…Did you really think you could beat me here? In my own dimension?! maniacal laugh Well, you’ve failed. I’m still alive, and while you are too, you won’t be for long! Prepare to face the nightmare of the people of this planet!”
A tirade of FMV begins now. We see the Dark Dragon flying towards the tower from PD1. A flash.
We see the Guardian Dragon (the one with the shiny wings, not the metal one) flying around. A flash.
We see Atolm with the Hell Storm cannon. A flash.
We see the Anti-Dragons in rapid succession. A flash.
Back in the Astral realm, green dust starts flowing into Sestren from all directions. Another maniacal laugh starts, and the screen goes to white as the final battle begins.
Using the power of the old dragons, Sestren has changed his body into a huge dragon shape, with recognisable parts from all the dragons in the previous FMV, including Atolm’s Hell Storm Cannon. The player craps him/herself as this dragon continues to grow in size. The letterbox screen dissappears and the fight begins.
Armed with lasers (Guardian Dragon), a forcefield (Dark Dragon), Hell Storm and the orbs (Atolm), plus Lagi’s full collection of berserks (anti-dragons), Sestren is now one very tough cookie to beat. The mini-dragon, Sestren’s weakpoint, is inside the main beast, so there’s no easy way of doing it, especially as more than one attack to the same side, even berserks, will just bounce off the forcefield.
The player struggles in this conflict as he not only has to dish out the damage, he must keep track of his own HP and BP. Sestren can fire Status Change whenever he wishes, meaning that shields, orbs, full-gauge spells are a waste of time really, but you have to use them to protect yourself from the massive attacks that are heading your way. Hell Storm, Berserker Rage, Dark Dragon Phoenix…blocking these, and attacking, would surely be the true boss that Saga deserves.
Any good?
Considering the abstract nature of Sestren, I was left…lukewarm.
The design of the boss fits, and considering you didn’t exactly wipe Sestren off the Astral Plane, I’m not sure how to comment on the difficulty (although it should have been a bit harder in my opinion); the boss suited the needs of the story.
Since this was a primarily cinema based game (take that Parasite Eve!), it fit the flow of the plot, despite its trademark ambiguity.
Umm… I dunno about a final boss except that it had to be waaayy harder, but i this would as heck be mine:
The cutscenes play, the credits roll, I turn off my Saturn, turn on the news, and discover that Sega has thrown together approximately eight thousand six hundred and fifty eight Panzer Dragoon RPGs for every console, each matching Saga in holy goodness. Then I buy and play them until my eyes fall out.
Sestren is a slave and I don’t think “it” would talk like in your dialogue Arcie… (however maybe it did, I don’t really remember how it talked…it just sounds a bit overkill on the ego the way you said it) other than that it’s fitting enough 
I’d just like the sestren we fought except tougher tho… And the anti-dragons before sestren could have been made tougher as well, they basically died with one berserker rage… and I hadn’t spent time trying to level up, I just played through the game normally…
I don’t think the problem was so much the boss but rather the whole battle system…while it was great it didn’t emphasize at ALL on defence and/or healing except just in attack power so basically your defence was to kill the enemies fast rather than have to use healing at times… I hope for the next RPG we can see some more defensive and healing items/berserks and some tougher battles. Maybe you could even have independent gauges for the dragon and rider to add some more strategy to it… and the rider could have a few kinds of skills too… and maybe combination attacks when both dragon’s and rider’s gauges are full to a point… just various things to give you more options in the battles without losing the feel of the system from the original game I suppose. That way they could also have combat on foot since the rider has attacks and skills himself as well…
yeah, that a good idea! kool, I like that. That last boss thing right up near the beginning sounds like a challenge…but sounds a bit way to hard if ya cant attack him and inflict damage upon him?!?
That was the one thing I was fantasising about in PDS. I was desperately hoping for an on foot gun battle, most probably in Zoah. I guess the one thing that prevented that was the emphasis on positioning around the enemy, it would look a wee bit silly to have Edge running circles around people. Ah well.
that sounds like every other boss there has ever been in every other videogame ever 
i thought PDS’s combat was a nice change, somewhat unique, but also extremely repetative in the sense of it basically being about knowing the attack patterns and staying in the green area. there just wasn’t enough they could really do with the combat to make it any more intense. sure they can go grig orig style and have a routine attack that has no safety zone, but that just makes it harder, not less repetative.
sestren exis was great for PDS, but i would have really been disappointed if it was the final boss for one of the shooters. but i still loved seeing all the decayed/corrupted guardians being drudged out of the depths to attack you
That’s an awesome idea from a gameplay standpoint, though it doesn’t quite fit with the continuity of the games. I think one of the reasons it’s much easier to suspend your disbelief while playing PDS, rather than, say, Final Fantasy, is that the human character is just a guy with a really powerful gun in terms of combat prowess. The dragon, which everyone acknowledges as being extremely powerful, is what really ruins everyone’s ****. In your standard RPG, i.e. Final Fantasy, you wind up with supposedly human characters becoming almost godlike by the end of the game, which always struck me as kind of silly. Now, if you start giving the human dragon rider skills and such, you run the risk of that happening.