I didn't have a bad time with this game, but I don't think it was particularly good. And this version has some particularly notable issues.

The controls are alright. Your dragon feels a little sluggish to move/evade, but the cursor is pretty snappy and the quarter turns are both fast and reliable in the thick of aerial combat. Stage variety is solid. The music is... okay? Not particularly memorable, and in a few cases the tunes they picked felt slightly out-of-place for the scene. I just finished it and cannot for the life of me remember a single note of the thing, but that also means nothing was bad enough to stick out, either.

But this port has a decent amount of jank to it. The graphics are solid; very colorful in parts with nice effects. But there is a LOT of screen tearing, even when using V-sync in the menu and activating it in the Nvidia control panel. I used a controller, and for some reason it didn't work unless I had one plugged in directly (not bluetooth or 2.4GHz receiver) and only AFTER launching the game. There were also some points where it felt like a sound effect was missing, though that might have been a decision from the original game carried over to this remake.
I feel like this remake is something of a half-effort. Maybe the devs didn't have much time or budget, but it definitely feels its age. The dissonance between the new graphics and some of the staging of cutscenes gives the thing an odd quality.

If you enjoyed the original, this seems to be largely an upgrade.
But if you don't have much nostalgia for the series or love for the genre, this janky port isn't going to change your mind.
I had a decent enough time on my run, but I had no desire to boot it again to try harder difficulties or cheats.
Pick it up on heavy sale, maybe?

Graphics – 6/10
Sound –6/10
Gameplay – 7/10
Story – 1/10
Replayability – 8/10

Overall – Panzer Dragoon: Remake is a pretty faithful remake of the first game in the franchise. The original music is sadly missing so some of the atmosphere is a bit off, but I had a good time with this one. Pretty fun and casual game to spend a few hours on. Recommended.

🖥️ System Specs
Intel i9 13900K | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 FE | DDR5 32GB RAM | Alienware AW3423DWF 3440 x 1440 165Hz

A cult classic that IMO did NOT age particularly well.

I'd give this game a NEUTRAL rating if I could (but it certainly doesn't deserve NEGATIVE). I would say it's a "5.5 out of 10".

I hate that I cannot LOVE this game because conceptually it is fantastic but the gameplay falls quite flat due to being a relic of its time; This was one of the Sega Saturn's early games, but by then even the SNES StarFox from two years prior on a less-powerful system wins over in terms of gameplay.

Main complaint is how disjointed aiming and dodging feels. You're primarily moving your character's aim instead of controlling the dragon-- but it follows to a small extent. It's not like controlling a space fighter in which you gotta point the fighter's nose at whatever you want to destroy. Just never really feels like you're doing both aiming and dodging at the same time even though they are bound to the same input. (The MODERN control option splits the two, but it feels needlessly cumbersome-- almost as if this game doesn't really know what kind of rail shooter it really wants to be.)

No countermeasures aside from intercepting shots and moving out of the way. No barrel rolls, no flips, no advanced maneuvers. Just a slow-flying dragon that is mostly reliant on you to keep it safe. You cannot dodge attacks coming from the sides or rear; intercept only. Just feels a bit lacking in gameplay mechanics.

Difficult to hit anything without the homing shots; Your basic projectiles are smaller than they look and lack burst-fire.

Those were all issues inherent to the original Saturn version. The remake is "true to the original".

Quite lacking on the feedback when you take a hit in the remake because they changed the dragon's yelp into a dull bird screech.

Sure beats the original Saturn version, though (or the ever-so-slightly-improved PS2 port). Definitely needed the increase to framerate and rendering distance. The graphical facelift is also really nice.

Bit of a shame that this apparently didn't do well enough for Zwei and Orta to get the same remake treatment.