I think this is one of the greatest games ever made, and if you ever find a way to play it it's an absolute must. I've played this a dozen times now on original sega saturn hardware, through the retrotink 5x, my personal controller preference for this game is 3D Control Pad.
Every bit of this game is designed to perfection. I love how it looks, it takes the saturn to its absolute limit yet it still runs so well. It's crazy how much of a jump up this feels from the first one. The people who made this are absolute wizards of programing.
The game starts deceptively simple, but the more times you play it the more I realized it's depth, and I'm still playing it to try and get better and better at it. It's this perfect middle ground between being a cool chill game to spend a couple hours on and also being something that has a ton of depth and mastery that encourages replay. I feel like Sega really mastered this kind of design specifically in the late 90s. You are ranked on various things in the levels that can change how your dragon evoles over the course of the game. The ranking and scoring is particularly addicting and I'd recommend, after your first playthrough, that you go into the settings and make the scoring visible. This I feel, is where the meat of the game lies.
I think the levels in this game are amazing. It's just such a knockout in terms of atmosphere, music, and enemy design. The whole game has this unmatched sense of wonder to it. It knows exactly when to spiral into exciting action, but then it slows down and becomes more contemplative. There isn't much story to go off of, but it's all wrapped so tightly by incredible atmosphere and art design.
I could say a ton more about this, but this is really something you need to experience for yourself. It's a shame this never got properly re-released, it's such a marvel of its time.
Every bit of this game is designed to perfection. I love how it looks, it takes the saturn to its absolute limit yet it still runs so well. It's crazy how much of a jump up this feels from the first one. The people who made this are absolute wizards of programing.
The game starts deceptively simple, but the more times you play it the more I realized it's depth, and I'm still playing it to try and get better and better at it. It's this perfect middle ground between being a cool chill game to spend a couple hours on and also being something that has a ton of depth and mastery that encourages replay. I feel like Sega really mastered this kind of design specifically in the late 90s. You are ranked on various things in the levels that can change how your dragon evoles over the course of the game. The ranking and scoring is particularly addicting and I'd recommend, after your first playthrough, that you go into the settings and make the scoring visible. This I feel, is where the meat of the game lies.
I think the levels in this game are amazing. It's just such a knockout in terms of atmosphere, music, and enemy design. The whole game has this unmatched sense of wonder to it. It knows exactly when to spiral into exciting action, but then it slows down and becomes more contemplative. There isn't much story to go off of, but it's all wrapped so tightly by incredible atmosphere and art design.
I could say a ton more about this, but this is really something you need to experience for yourself. It's a shame this never got properly re-released, it's such a marvel of its time.