Forever Entertainment has confirmed that Panzer Dragoon: Remake for Stadia will launch with the v1.3 patch and gyro controls will be tweaked in an upcoming update, but is the current version 1.3 polished enough to provide a solid gameplay experience?
We would also like to inform all of our readers who haven’t been closely following Twitter and Discord that we haven’t seen the last of Panzer Dragoon: Remake on Nintendo Switch. Another patch is on the way. The official Panzer Dragoon: Remake Twitter has confirmed that the gyro controls will be tweaked. Beyond this, we don’t have information about the contents of the next patch. The latest patch, Panzer Dragoon Remake v1.3, was a large update that also contained whole new features such as Episode 0 and a performance mode. It’s reasonable to assume we won’t be seeing the same quantity of improvements in future updates going forward, although nothing has been confirmed.
Unfortunately not everyone has been able to download the v1.3 patch, with the COVID-19 situation still preventing the release of patch in Japan.
But the official Panzer Dragoon: Remake Twitter has just confirmed that the upcoming Google Stadia version of Panzer Dragoon: Remake will include the v1.3 patch “for you to enjoy all the new features”. The Stadia version of Panzer Dragoon: Remake launches on June the 1st.
With the release of Panzer Dragoon: Remake v1.3 for Nintendo Switch, has the game reached a point where it has been refined enough to provide a solid gameplay experience? I haven’t written a full review of Panzer Dragoon: Remake or shared my thoughts here about the game, and that’s been intentional.
Early versions of Panzer Dragoon: Remake felt very much like a work in progress, with an immense amount of feedback collected from fans on Discord and used to improve the game. There’s a good collection of videos capturing some of these issues over on Synbios 16’s YouTube channel that you may find interesting.
With v1.3, I feel that the main gameplay issues, particularly surrounding the responsiveness of the controls, have been resolved. It’s not perfect, but Panzer Dragoon: Remake v1.3 is, from a gameplay and level design point of view, a solid 1:1 remake of the original 1995 game. It’s hard to deny that from a graphical point of view, Panzer Dragoon: Remake, which has been rebuilt from the ground up, is technically on another level than what was possible on the Sega Saturn. The art direction, a somewhat more subjective quality, is more controversial and I might talk about this in a future article. But if you’re looking to get into Panzer Dragoon (or revisit it after all these years) and own a Nintendo Switch (or soon, have a Stadia Pro subscription), we’ve reached a point where many of the rough edges have been ironed off and it’s the right time to give Panzer Dragoon: Remake a try.