Panzer Dragoon Saga 100% Complete Playthrough

Claire Sawyer and Peter Malek sat down with Chaz Picardy to discuss his recent 100%-completion playthrough of the seminal Panzer Dragoon Saga (you can catch his video playthrough series finale here and the interview here). Claire and Peter grilled Chaz on how he did it, and what advice he has for those aspiring to make their own way through the game.

“Don’t worry about 100% on your first playthrough,” says Chaz. He instead recommends that you enjoy the game the first time around and determine if it’s one you’d like to try and 100%-complete. The more you love a game, he reasons, the more likely you are to remember fine details which will help you later on.

“The trickiest element you have to work with [to completing 100%] is the enemy data collection, because not only are there rare enemies in the game that you can miss, but there’s a small chance that you can miss common enemies [as well]”. Each time you encounter and defeat an enemy in battle, their bio is saved in your bestiary – along with the battle rank you achieved when you engaged them. A 100% completion requires encountering every single enemy. The battle ranks range from Excellent to Close Call, and for his 100% completion playthrough, Chaz aimed for the lofty goal of achieving an Excellent ranking against every single enemy. “Some of those enemies are only available in a small time window,” continues Chaz, “so if you miss them, they are gone forever.”

Another aspect of achieving the 100% is full and complete map coverage. As you progress through the map, you end up marking off locations that you have visited. Think of a map drawn on grid paper – as you travel over the grid, squares you have visited are colored in towards your 100%. “There are some little nuances where some little slivers or pieces of the map don’t get covered in blue and still stay gray, but the game will still factor a 100% legitimate score that you did cover the map,” Chaz adds, so players don’t have to stress over those slivers that refuse to turn blue on their map screens.

The game is compatible with the 3D Control Pad, over and above the standard Control Pad. Chaz played using the standard MK-80116 (original Japanese design) controller, being an adherent to this controller over the MK-80100 USA-design controller. The 3D Control Pad affords the additional use of both the digital and analogue thumb pads at the same time, and whilst there are minor differences in using analogue mode, (think being able to control the incremental speed at which Edge walks / runs) it is not such a difference that one style of controller provides a monumentally superior experience.

Chaz also had some specific advice on ensuring that none of the game’s break targets were missed. All break targets must be destroyed for the 100% ranking, and not all of them can be returned to, once an area is completed. One such area is the Imperial Air Force Post. “With the break targets, there are the search lights, the search light stands, the platforms with the ships on them that also have item boxes… there’s just a lot to target your laser with, in the Air Force Post. […] What I like to start with is to destroy the search lights, because there are usually two of them on a base / on a single post, and when you destroy those two search lights, the post becomes a target. When you target that and destroy it, the lid of that post will pop off and fly in the air, and that also becomes a target that you can shoot within a small time window before it crashes and splashes into the ocean, [and then] that target is gone forever – so you really have to keep your eye peeled when targeting the search lights, and the posts themselves, and even sometimes after you destroy that lid, that blew off, the post where the search lights were becomes a target again.” Chaz recommends keeping a close eye on the radar, as it will display the break targets available to the player and is thus helpful in ensuring none are missed.

Returning to enemy data collection, Chaz advises that once a location for a rare enemy is found, it is a matter of circling that particular area in hopes of triggering an encounter. Players will know they’re in the correct area when their radar turns yellow – assuming they possess a Telepathy Shard in their inventory. Two easy-to-miss enemies for Chaz happen to be the Battlecruiser and Warship, but this can vary from playthrough to playthrough, as eagle-eyed viewers of his playthrough can attest that he happened to encounter them fairly quickly on the live stream. Identifying which enemies are counted as ‘rare’ is easy – their icon shows as blue in the enemy data screen.

The Behemoth sub-boss gave Chaz some trouble in achieving the Excellent ranking. The minor enemies are not a problem, as one can always just engage them again to improve their ranking, but with boss fights, this is usually not possible. In the case of the Behemoth, Chaz “kept forgetting that to weaken it, you shoot the engine in the back which will stun it temporarily, and then swing over to its’ left side, then inflict damage using your gun or your laser. Because [Chaz] kept forgetting that, [he] kept getting a ‘lousy’ Good Fight or Great Fight [ranking] and [he] just kept messing it up.” Chaz needed to read up on how to correctly dispatch this enemy and then was able to achieve an Excellent ranking. The Detonator enemy also presented a similar challenge which Chaz needed to overcome in order to hit his 100% ranking.

The last aspect to achieving 100% in Panzer Dragoon Saga involves the strength of the bond between the player and the dragon. When at camp, players who target the dragon at close range have a chance to smile at, pet, or ignore their winged companion. Each time the ‘smile’ or ‘pet’ option is selected, the game counts Spiritual Closeness points – a score which is not displayed to the player at any time. Once that score reaches 100, the player earns an Extra Class Berserker technique, and that is a signal that this particular category has been maxed out and will count fully towards the 100% completion.

Ultimately, Chaz made good on his vow to deliver a 100% playthrough. The game first rolls all ending sequences and credits before the grand reveal, and Chaz took this opportunity to stretch his legs. “In the last shot, when Azel is heading off into the desert on the Coolia, that of course was the most tense screen because I’m taking in a few breaths, saying to myself ‘did I get it? Did I get it?’ And then when I see the screen, and the first thing I read is ‘You are worthy to live among the Gods’, I knew I had it. That was it. I jumped up off my seat, I screamed with joy.” As someone who watched the moment live, I can only say that it was a special thrill to share this moment with Chaz. An amazing accomplishment, considering how easy it is to permanently miss an enemy or a break target.

To summarize, getting your 100% playthrough includes finding each enemy, exploring 100% of the game map, destroying each break target in the game, and achieving a closeness with your dragon. It’s absolutely not easy, but as Chaz demonstrated, entirely possible. This is perhaps the ultimate Shiro Challenge with this game – completing it at 100%, and with an Excellent rank on every enemy to boot. Come on – will you join Chaz and take your rightful place to live amongst the Gods of Panzer Dragoon?

-Peter Malek

Sega Saturn, Shiro!