YMMV / Panzer Dragoon

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Dermont's Ranch in the Pandora's Box of Saga. To explain, it's a post-game bonus camp area where Edge is replaced with a baby coolia and you can interact with other coolia, and any interaction you have with them is in complete gibberish. "Strange" is putting it nicely.
• Breather Level: After the very difficult penultimate stage of the original game, the final level mercifully pulls the brakes and provides the player with a much simpler final level. Unlike previous levels, the stage and its boss are also split into two separate episodes, so you get a small health refill after passing the stage and a full health retry in the event you need a continue once you reach the boss.
• Broken Base:
  • The soundtracks for the first two games: some fans of the first game's orchestral songs were disappointed that the Zwei soundtrack lacked similar songs and deem it inferior for that very reason. Many others believe that the atmospheric soundtrack for Zwei easily stands its own against its predecessor.
  • Most fans see Orta as the fourth canon entry in the series, especially since former members of the disbanded Team Andromeda were involved with the game, but there are some, including Futatsugi himself, who believe the story ended with Saga and view Orta as a separate entry, as the game wasn't developed by the original team.
  • Which is the best Rail Shooter in the series: Orta or Zwei?
• Cult Classic: The whole series, with special mention to Orta - widely considered to be not just one of the best installments, but one of the best (and best-looking) Rail Shooters ever made, as well as a loving Grand Finale to the franchise.
• Even Better Sequel: All of them - Zwei is widely considered to be superior to the first game on all counts (although opinions vary between the soundtracks), with the introduction of the Berserk mechanic, a more fluid framerate, and better replay value through multiple paths and the dragon's evolution. Despite being an Eastern RPG, Saga was received even better and hailed as a masterpiece with gorgeous graphics that pushed the system to its limits, explored the series' world in depth with a great story and memorable characters, and introduced a unique battle combat system, all while maintaining everything the series was known for. Orta takes a page from Zwei and improves upon it by implementing elements taken from the Saga battle system, such as positioning and changing dragon forms in real time.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Zwei is the only game in the series to give the dragon an actual name "Lagi", as named by his owner Lundi. Fans have since applied the name to the dragon in each installment; what helps is each chronological dragon is the same in spirit, as a result of the Heresy Program.
  • The language spoken in the games is a mix of Ancient Greek, Japanese, Latin, and Russian, which fans refer to as "Panzerese".
• Good Bad Translation: "Pandra's Box", a bonus mode unlocked after beating the game in Zwei and Saga, is also a common Japanese mistranslation of "Pandora's Box", but many fans believed it was a play on the phrase using the game's title (Panzer Dragoon). Sega corrected it in Orta and the Sega Ages version of the first game, though some fans preferred they hadn't.
• Growing the Beard: The original game was a unique Rail Shooter that showed off what the Saturn was capable of and introduced players to the world of Panzer Dragoon, but it was Zwei that established the series' mysterious desolate, yet gorgeous atmosphere, sound direction and lore that would be further explored in Saga, while streamlining the gameplay to deliver a more fluid experience with improved replay value.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Although beloved by the fans, one of the main criticisms of Saga is that it's not a particularly challenging game, especially compared to the previous entries and other games in the genre. In interviews, Futatsugi wishes the game had been made a little harder. Fortunately, there is plenty of depth to warrant multiple plays. Of note is the rating system at the end of the game - for example, miss a rare enemy or a part of the map on your travels (even a teensy bit), and you won't be getting a clean sweep at the end. As an RPG, it's a little deeper than kill percentages... and even then, those percentages don't mean you've discovered everything.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!:
  • Perhaps the biggest criticism of Saga, especially from Eastern RPG veterans, is that it's incredibly short for such a game, with a full playthrough taking only 15 to 20 hours. Considering how short the Rail Shooter games are, fans of the previous games were fine with the length, believing that it encourages repeat playthroughs, and that it's a short, but sweet and unforgettable experience. Those who also aren't usually fans of RPGs partly due to their extremely long play times also consider this a positive, as it's only a little longer than a typical action game.
  • The 2020 remake is largely faithful to the original game, and in this case, it also means that what was acceptable for a Saturn launch title dipping its toes into 3D in 1995, now has a much more uphill battle regarding value vs. length, with several players balking at the hour-long campaign with a $25 asking price. Furthermore, it has the misfortune of existing in the shadow of Orta, which padded out its short length with a wealth of extra content, among them side missions, the encyclopedia, and the entire first game.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The North American commercial for Panzer Dragoon Orta featured an exclusive song that had people swarming gaming message boards wanting to know where the song was from, and were far more interested in the song than the game itself. Many were disappointed to find out it wasn't in Orta, and some even swore off the game because of it. The song was eventually revealed by the song's original artist, "Violet" by Bones Domingo^note Although there's a similar sounding song named "Violate", also by Bones Domingo, but the latter lacks the beat of the former. Many fans mistake "Violate" as the song used in the commercial.
• One-Scene Wonder: The rider in the first game's initial cutscene, who is never identified. Fan speculation about him is all over the place.
• Padding: The "Lifeless" achievement serves no other purpose than padding out how much time you need to sink into the game.
• Player Punch: Mostly with Saga.
  • Each game has a Bittersweet Ending, which often involve the death of the respective dragons, but Saga is the worst offender, revealing that Edge was Dead All Along and is never heard from the others again.
  • When the Empire destroys Zoah, killing everyone in town: all the times you listened to Juba, when you gave Jael the pipe and got the music box from Rhoda? All dead. You find out there were a few survivors, but wish there were more.
  • When Enkak falls ill in Disc 3 of Saga, you can look for the Tobitama Rock in Uru to save him. If you don't get it by the time Disc 4 rolls around, you'd think An'jou would somehow come across it instead. He doesn't, and the boy dies.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Zwei is significantly more forgiving than its predecessor (without cheating). The player can save their progress after dying, unlike the first game, which had limited continues - additional continues were granted based on performance. Zwei also features the first appearance of the Berserk mechanic, which allows a Beam Spam when the Berserk meter is full, granting full invincibility as it's unleashed.
• That One Achievement: In the remake for the first game, the Lifeless achievement is awarded for playing the game for more than 100+ hours (more than four days). To put this in perspective, the main campaign is 30-45 minutes and you can get all of the other achievements in five hours TOPS. To make matters worse, it only counts time spent with the game open and running upfront, so you can't even start it up and alt-tab out to do something else while you let it idle to rack up hours. And just to really twist the knife, it doesn't count any play time you rack up with cheats active.
• That One Attack: The second and third form of the Final Boss in Orta will start using the same Homing Lasers as the dragon's, making it impossible to evade. Naturally, the best way to counter this is to fire your own at the boss' lasers, cancelling each other out. The problem is the timing is considerably strict - too early or too late will result in a few lasers still taking a chunk out of the dragon's Hit Points.
• That One Level:
  • Stage 5 of the first game will likely give players headaches: it's one of the longest stages in the game, filled with an onslaught of brutal enemies including multiple tank-like ones that cannot simply be bombarded with bullets, as they need pieces disabled before they can be shot down, and you still have to deal with smaller enemies while you're focusing on them. Several parts of the stage also require you to face sideways, a view you cannot steer yourself in, so you have to shoot down targeting projectiles instead of being able to dodge them. To top it all off, you have to get all the way through this brutal level and its difficult stage boss, who is a two-part boss, all on the same life! Die at any point in the stage and it's back to the beginning.
  • In Saga, the Underground Passage in Uru: since the dragons are absent, a Floater is used instead, which is capped at a Laser Rank of 0 and has no special berserk abilities. The real issue is that it cannot go up slopes, and the maze-like dungeon is filled with them, meaning that not only is it easy to get lost, but any missteps and you'll be doing a lot of backtracking. If you're going for a 100% Completion rate for map exploration, you'll need to explore every area and backtrack some more before raising the water.
  • Episode 5 of Orta, especially for those who try to get S rank. Your dragon is injured and reduced to level 1 for most of the level, and you are faced with many enemies who have high amounts of health, some of which take several clusters of level 1 lasers to kill. The boss fight, particularly the phase after your dragon regenerates, is also particularly annoying, as the boss will constantly move away whenever you damage her weak spots.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The modern remake of the first game completely overhauls the visual style in a way that will utterly break the base depending on whether one thinks it's an interesting re-interpretation or flat-out unfaithful to the original, not to mention the tweaks to the controls that make it noticeably more sluggish than the original game that ran at around half the framerate most of the time.
• Video Game Movies Suck: There was a Panzer Dragoon Original Video Animation produced in the 1990s - 25 minutes of Flat Characters, nonsensical plot, bottom-of-the-barrel Limited Animation and horrible CG. It was universally panned, and ended up on several — er, well, just about every "Worst Anime of All Time" list. Outside of Japan, it was only released on VHS by the now-defunct ADV Films, and hasn't been picked up by any other licensor.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Saga easily boasts some of the best visuals on the Saturn: the ability to alter the dragon's Voluntary Shapeshifting for each of its forms is quite an impressive technical feat, especially considering the console was not designed for 3D. The game's In-Universe Game Clock is also impressive by the system's standards, particularly in Zoah where sunset soon becomes night.
  • Orta looked absolutely phenomenal when it was first released on the original Microsoft Xbox, and its digital re-release on the Microsoft Xbox One shows that it's aged well. Special mention goes towards the episodes "Forbidden Memories" and "The End of Destiny".
• The Woobie:
  • Azel becomes this towards the end of Saga after she loses Atolm, her lifelong companion, and Craymen, the man who woke her, undergoes her Heel–Face Turn and loses her sense of purpose. She slowly becomes more human when she and Edge traverse the Tower for one last time, all before she declares her love for him and loses him as well. When Sestren and the Towers are destroyed, she goes to the ends of the earth in a vain attempt to find him.
  • Orta: locked up alone in a tower for most of her life, feared by the Seekers who see her as a weapon only useful for war, and has no friends or known family. Without knowing the reason, she's targeted by the Empire for extermination. When Mobo takes her to his village, the elder Ponta can see it's left her nothing but resentment and bitterness at the world. Thankfully, things change when they invite her to stay with them and Orta later discovers her origins when chasing after Abadd. At the end of her journey, the dragon that saved her life dies, yet the epilogue shows she's no longer alone.
• Woolseyism: The English localizers for Saga had a lot of freedom with how they translated the game and ran with it. Moderately enforced because their initial work had a lot of gaps to fill. Some of the enemy names that didn't translate well to English were given special names that were inside jokes to the development team, with the story proper actually being made Darker and Edgier than it already was. The localizers also didn't believe that English players would catch onto the subtleties of the romance between Azel and Edge, so it was made very explicit. Perhaps the most notable example of this in action, however, was the Shout-Out to South Park of all things in the Village of Zoah, where an engraving on a figurine reads "They killed Kenny."