A young soldier, Edge, is on duty as a guard at a distant Imperial excavation site. He begins to wonder what he is truly fighting for, just what the Empire is up to, and expresses his wonderment to his colleague, Rhua. Rhua tells him that it is better for him to simply do his job and not worry about Imperial intentions. Suddenly, there is a commotion inside the excavation site. Edge and Rhua rush in to investigate. A large monster, seemingly from a long-forgotten ancient era, has attacked the excavation workers and nearly decimated the guards who have come to the rescue. Our young hero comes face-to-face with the creature. The creature takes a swipe at Edge with its retractable claw, just barely missing him and opening up a hole in the wall behind him revealing a stone casing with a beautiful female embedded inside. Edge is immediately mesmerized by the sheer beauty of the creature but is snapped out of his trance by his captain's screams warning him of an imminent attack by the creature. He picks up a large weapon, which is lying on the ground next to him and just as he is about to shoot the creature, his captain yells at him, "Aim at the floor under it!". He does so, sending the creature down into the depths below.

As Edge helps his captain and the remaining survivors out of the site, they are greeted by a group of men with Imperial aircraft, who immediately shoot all of the survivors. Edge himself is spared due to the intervention of the supposed leader of the rebel faction, Lord Craymen. Edge then tells the tale of the wonderful creature he has seen inside and is immediately rendered unconscious by the butt-end of a pistol. Craymen sends his men into the cave to retrieve this mystical being.

As Edge recovers consciousness, he sees the rebel fleet taking off from the excavation site towing the mysterious female's stone casing. He runs after them in a foolhardy attempt to stop them and is subsequently shot by one of Craymen's men, a large deformed creature with a maniacal laugh. Edge falls into a deep canyon and into a pond below. He awakes submerged in the pond and swims up to the cave above.

Thus ends the 10 minute long FMV intro and the player takes control...

What can I say? Gameplay is nearly perfect. A lot of the annoyances of traditional RPGs are missing. Rather than spending a lot of time traveling from one part of the map to the other fighting useless "character building" random encounters, you simply are transported to your next location. The best feature of all in my mind is the "targeting system" used for practically everything in the game from entering tunnels to talking to townsfolk. Anytime in a town or in a location you are exploring you may stop and activate the targeting system. This will then tell you what you may access, whether it be a person to talk to, an entrance to a cave, an item "pillar" to get items, or simply decorations to look at. Also, there are rarely any battles you engage in which do not serve some sort of purpose to enhance the storyline.

This is also where you build up your character's level. Surprisingly it is very well balanced. You're never too strong or too weak, a testament to the designers of the game. Although there are random encounters, they are few and far between. Nearly every battle is important.

The battle system is the best in any turn-based RPG to date. There is the gauge system from FF (you can't attack until your gauge is full) except this time there are three of them. Actions will require anywhere from one to three full gauges, but you can also combine attacks (i.e. filling all of your gauges and using 3 one-gauge actions in a row). You can reposition your dragon to one of four spots on the screen (N, W, E, S). Doing so may reveal weak spots as well as moving you away from enemy's strong attack areas to ones where the enemy can only attack you with a secondary attack, or to where they cannot attack you at all. This is an excellent evolution of the classic Square formula.

Oh, I can't forget the ranking system. This is one of the greatest innovations I've seen in a long time in an RPG. Depending on how fast you beat the enemies and how much damage they inflict on you, you will receive one of 5 rankings from "Excellent!" to "Narrow Escape". This will affect how much experience and dyne (money) you receive and also whether or not you get at item (you only get one if you get one of the two highest rankings). This system eliminates the boring, single-button holding battles and forces the player to try in every battle. The only thing I see missing from the gameplay is the lack of secrets. There are some, but not really that many.

Panzer Dragoon Saga also has arguably the best story, definitely best told story, of any RPG. I don't want to reveal much about the storyline since it is among the best I've seen in any RPG. I was mesmerized by the plot pretty much all the way through my 16 1/2 hours of playing. The game is not that long, but a great deal of that time (I'd estimate at least 60%) is spent on plot development, whether through FMV, real-time cutscenes, or even plot sequence before, during, and after a battle. This plot is as intricate and involving as any other plot I've ever seen and the twists later on will definitely shock you. Let me just say that a storyline this strong, told so masterfully with an excellent mix of FMV and real-time cutscenes, can carry an RPG, mediocre in other aspects, and satisfy even hard-core gamers. With an excellent game like this, the experience is enhanced greatly. Definitely a new standard in RPGs.

Graphics is one area where the game could have used a little bit of work. The game has a fully 3D world, but unfortunately the Saturn is not powerful enough to handle all that Team Andromeda asked of it. There is a sickening amount of draw-in and the textures are flat and quite repetitive. Yet, somehow Team Andromeda admirably overcame these shortcomings to create a very atmospheric world, with cool towns, locations and dungeons. Also, while not quite FF7-quality, the spells in the battle sequences are fairly nice. Overall, the graphics are still nice and suit the game well. RPGs have never been about graphics and since it doesn't affect gameplay, they do not detract from the game at all.

The music in PDS is quite good, just below the great ones like FF2 and CT. Not too many absolutely amazing tracks like in the Square games, but all of the music is very atmospheric and is used very well. Each town and area has its own tune and, when necessary, the music was changed to suit the occasion (i.e. special music for important battles). In particular, the boss battle and ending songs are quite good. Great, just not amazing. There are excellent sound effects in this game from the dragon's flapping wings to the enemy creatures. The attention to detail was wonderful (changing the attachment to your gun meant a change in sound). All were used nearly to perfection and definitely enhanced the experience.

The greatest weak point of PDS is it's difficulty. This game is not difficult at all. I beat it my first time through in 16 1/2 hours, only got lost once, and only died three times, mainly due to carelessness. A great deal of that time was spent watching the seemingly endless cutscenes as well. But the length was fine. Why? Simple: there was no travel time between cities or locations to increase the length of the game. Also, there were barely any random encounters in the traditional sense. Even if you got attacked randomly it was because you were being chased or something. That's 16 1/2 hours of nearly pure plot development, which is more than most RPGs can boast. Anyone with RPG experience shouldn't have too much trouble with this game. If you look at the clock, you'll think this game is too short, but it certainly doesn't feel that way.

There are a few things which keep this game from being perfect. A very linear plot, very few secrets, a fairly mediocre challenge, and a few graphical glitches. But these flaws are so overshadowed by the experience of the game, the wonderful storyline, and the extremely fun and intuitive gameplay that it is very difficult not to label this game as a revolutionary title. It's so fun, you'll play it over and over again just to experience it all over again, even with the lack of secrets. This game epitomizes just what excellent planning and execution in a game can do. I can't imagine what Team Andromeda would do with a Dreamcast version, if they ever got back together again.