Best of the Best on the Sega Saturn - Directors Cut

[Music] thank you when Sega released the Saturn in 1994 no one could have predicted the exact course it would take the company there were a fair number of questions about its complicated design and cost but there were just as many questions about Sony's lack of experience and consumer interest in fact for an entire year before these machines began their battle in the west Sega Saturn outsold Sony's Playstation in Japan lending some Credence that things were on the path for healthy competition for years to come but things changed quickly and the Saturn ended up getting little support from consumers and third parties in the West in fact even Sega of America had no faith in the product lending to disagreements and conflicts that crippled the company internally but as a gamer on the outside of all that I adored my Saturn and played it as much as I could whenever new software hit the market I supported it at retail for as long as new games were released and it was a major source of import gaming for me as well it is by far my most played console and the one I know the best this prompted me to do an awards episode four years ago where I named the best games in a number of categories while that episode was fun to make it was early in my YouTube journey and I always felt I could have done it better when I started making the best of the best videos I thought it would be a perfect time to revisit that subject and expand the episode into what I initially wanted it to be and that's what I have for you here today the best of the best on the Sega Saturn I have greatly expanded upon the original content and picked nearly two dozen categories and chosen one runner-up and one winner to represent the very best software that Saturn has to offer there's only one guideline I used no single game could win a category twice this is going to be a heck of an episode so get the popcorn ready and let's get started foreign [Music] We Begin our journey with the puzzle category this genre was strong and had many entries that easily could have won our runner-up is the 1995 Sega developed bakubaku animal it was developed as an STV Titan arcade game before making its way home to Saturn and I really enjoyed the concept basically you match the animal to the food it eats the more food you consume in a single move the better you perform their single player multiplayer and different difficulties to try out there's even a story about you facing opponents to earn the right to become the Kingdom's new zookeeper it's a pretty good time our winner was made very much in the same mold as Baku Baku animal but instead of animals and food you use street fighters and crystals the 1996 Capcom release super puzzle Fighter 2 turbo is our winner in the best Puzzler on the Sega Saturn here you form colored crystals and then break them for score and send damage to your opponent's side of the screen mean the art has a super cute chibi look similar to pocket fighter and it uses characters from Street Fighter and dark stalkers like those games the mechanics here are geared towards versus play with the objective being to knock out your opponent by filling their screen up it's crazy addictive and the presentation is top-notch I wish Capcom had updated this over the years with new modes and Fighters a modern four-player online version would be something special [Music] thank you [Music] the console light gun game has fallen to the Wayside over the years but back in the Saturn's day it was a strong genre of some incredible multiplayer options the runner-up here is the 1998 Tantalus interactive developed the house of the dead this was among one of the last releases for the Saturn in North America and though the port was quite ugly compared to the arcade original the fun Factor remains as high as ever you are basically playing a horror movie come to life as you battle zombies and all sorts of vicious monstrosities the multi-path Gunplay was fast fun and challenging more importantly the Virtua gun did a great job with accurate shots and the Saturn supported two players at once I wish that Sega had kept the Saturn Port in-house but they were already dead set on Dreamcast development by that point fortunately for us our winner was handled in-house the 1996 release Virtua cop 2. this was a maturation of sega's development tools that were earned Through Blood Sweat sweating tears and the end results are nothing short of impressive the smooth performance the polygon environments I mean this thing looks damn near as good as the model 2 arcade original you get two players support and it even works with the shuttle Mouse it's one of the Saturn's most impressive arcade ports and many of sega's am2 staff returned to make sure it was the best it could be if only house of the dead had received similar treatment oh yeah rainbows [Music] on the Genesis Sega Sports meant the world to the platform's success but on Saturn it almost seemed like sega's American arm just gave up right from the get-go fortunately the Japanese side of things kept pumping out incredible games and our runner-up is World Series Baseball whether it's the original two releases with two-dimensional Sprites or the 98 version with polygons this was a heck of a series that had great visuals and some of the best gameplay you could find in the genre it was smooth the flow of the game was really nice and the presentation looked like something you would have gotten on television at the time these were based on sega's greatest 9 releases in Japan reskinned and using the MLB license Sega had some solid hockey and soccer releases that generation but none beat their baseball games there was only one other release I consider better and that's decathlete the high resolution Track and Field title developed in-house by Sega you get different athletes a very in stats battling each other in events like the 100 meter dash javelin throw and the long jump 10 events in all this isn't your normal crappy looking Olympic game either harnessing the power of the Saturn's vdp2 chip this gives us exquisitely detailed visuals that make it one of the best looking games on the platform it has two-player competitive matches that make it a killer party option as well it had a sequel called winner heat that was very much in the same mode but with winter events adding four player matches to the mix it too was a winner foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] the racing genre was one of the brightest and darkest areas of the Saturn Library there were some really nice games here but far fewer than other platforms at the time fortunately before the Saturn gave up the ghost in the West in 1998 we received an excellent Port of Need for Speed and it's my runner-up for best racing game on the Saturn this was an excellent multi-platform racer that stood toe-to-toe with the PlayStation version and in some ways bested it there were exotic cars to race multiple tracks and environments to compete in and a fairly decent soundtrack behind it all it's a lot faster than the 3DO original and it's loaded with more content but you know what's coming for our best racing game the iconic Sega Rally Championship it was such a visual improvement over the Saturn's Daytona USA Port now at a rock solid 30 frames per second with a polygon draw in much further in the distance Sega added a new red book soundtrack and it support the analog racing wheel it's short with only four tracks and three cars but the gameplay is fast and fluid and the replay value is still Sky High this along with Virtual Fighter 2 and Virtua cop hit at the end of 1995 showing that the Saturn had the chops to do three-dimensional games much better than first believed if you are in the market today be sure to go after the Japanese cigarale plus it has a few graphical changes and additions as well as dedicated 3D analog pad support right [Music] [Music] the best adventure category can be a bit of a pain because of all the sub-genres that fall under its umbrella my runner-up itself could fall into a few different categories but dark savior is quite the unique experience on the Saturn either way basically it takes an isometric action platformer and melds it with a one-on-one fighter with a multipath story if that sounds interesting to you I really do recommend you give it a try the 3D environments look great it has a memorable soundtrack and the replay value is off the charts thanks to the way the story can segment into multiple different endings it has its issues to be sure but I still consider it a Saturn must play when I think of the very best adventure on the Saturn though is there anything better than the legend of Oasis the overhead two-dimensional visuals are stunning the gameplay and design are tried and true continuations of the 16-bit Beyond Oasis settle in and give this one a real shot and the quality will hook you start to finish it has a very zelda-ish feel to it where dungeons have special items that must be scored to help you on your journey Sega really should have kept the series going and evolved it over the years a 3D continuation on the Dreamcast would have been outstanding [Music] foreign [Music] the strategy category actually has some really deep games on the Saturn in fact I'd argue some of the very best games it has to offer would fall into the genre my runner-up may come as a surprise to some of you however Mysteria the Realms of lore was not exactly a popular game at its release also released under the name blazing Heroes this was a turn-based strategy RPG that had a young prince recruiting an army to take down an evil warlord I love the gameplay because the battles were long and intricate with your team learning tons of new moves As you move deeper into the story The pre-rendered visuals are a bit stiff but the music is spot on incredible I've considered it an underappreciated gem for years my winner for this category is a game I wouldn't have considered just a few years ago but after konami's Vandal Hearts got an English fan translation I was able to finally sit down and play it all the way through and whoa was it an eye-opener absolutely killer turn-based action in here right up there with some of the very best in terms of Challenge and fun the two-dimensional Sprites look great the 3D environments can be rotated and positioned at will and the soundtrack fit the action like a glove there's different classes to learn and take advantage of and while the story itself is pretty standard stuff I still enjoyed it immensely the Saturn mod Community made this gym accessible to English-speaking audiences and they will forever have my gratitude [Music] sure [Music] foreign [Music] the Saturn had some very nice RPGs many of which stayed locked in Japan without any sort of translation elsewhere fortunately Sega themselves undertook the Western localization for our runner-up shining the holy Ark this is a first person dungeon crawling RPG that uses pre-rendered Sprites in three-dimensional environments to tell the tale of the Thousand-Year Kingdom as you gain new members of your party you can swap them out for new team members to better suit the current situation the streamlined setup makes towns for buying new weapons and items recovery and saving While most of the exploration and story unfolds in the dungeons that you explore it's set up as a prequel to Shining Force 3 so you definitely want to give it a go if you love that series of games but like our strategy category the overall winner for best RPG is a game I would not have considered just a few years back the Saturn mod Community comes to the rescue again and gives us an English translation to Rondia easily the best game on the Saturn in the genre beautiful two-dimensional Sprites set against detailed 3D environments are just Heavenly and it's one of the few examples of a polygon world still looking great from that era of technology I love the huge areas to explore in the Deep battle system that allowed you to upgrade your items and Magic as you use them you could avoid many of the enemies entirely while you explored and the overall feel puts you in mind of other game arts created RPGs it was once one of the biggest casualties of the Saturn's failure in the west but now it's available to English-speaking audiences everywhere foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] there are so many fighting games on the Saturn that I decided to break them down into two categories 2D and 3D but you know what that didn't help picking them a lick because there are still so many to consider even when separated I settled on our two-dimensional runner-up Marvel superheroes vs Street Fighter because I always felt it had a great feel that was just above X-Men vs Street Fighter I enjoyed the end boss battle as well there's no doubt you could interchange either one of them as the runner-up and I wouldn't fuss too much the art animation and gameplay are all top-notch super moves fill the screen with massive damage and the 4 megabyte Ram expansion was used to its absolute fullest my only real complaint is is that I wish the roster was a touch larger but the addition of a few secret characters definitely helped to beat it you needed something even more impressive and Street Fighter 0-3 was that game this took the formula that we loved in the previous two entries and added a bunch of Fighters some more modes and spruced up the visuals quite nicely outside of the animation seen in Street Fighter 3 this is the best looking Capcom ever got this series when it came to 2D I also had a special love for the reverse dramatic Battle of vicious test of skill that pitted you against two computer Fighters at the same time coupled with a Saturn pad this is still my favorite way to play this game speak basketball [Music] yeah [Music] you win [Music] our runner-up for best three-dimensional fighter on the Saturn is Dead or Alive by Tecmo I picked this one up at its release and really enjoyed it the counter system set it apart from Virtual Fighter 2 and the high-res visuals were just as nice of course many people look at it today and remember the women with large Bouncing Breasts but it's so much more than that so much more that the series continues to this very day but no 3D fighter on the Saturn had what our winner had pure Sega magic Fighter's Mega mix was the game they should have launched with the Saturn a great mix of fighters from multiple Sega universes there's a bunch of content to unlock lighthearted editions like playable cars and it has a great soundtrack from multiple Sega series as well am2 mixed in some of the gameplay from Virtua Fighter 3 to keep things fresh while adding in fighting Viper's rules a potent combination that Sega should have kept improving on by making this a series it lacks the high-res look of Virtual Fighter 2 but the rest is so good you won't care at all it's the deepest three-dimensional fighter on the Saturn and easily one of the best fighting games that entire generation [Music] [Music] okay [Music] shoot em ups were another well-represented category on the Saturn there were arcade ports Galore and even some exclusives that really stood out my runner-up is she and Ryu the vertically scrolling Beauty from morashi this game never got the love it deserved back then and even gets overlooked today maybe because I like the writing game so much but I find this to be really well made I love the visuals especially the shrapnel from destroyed vessels falling everywhere if you're the type looking for story and lots of behind the scenes mechanics happening you may find this one a bit too simple but for me it was easy to get into and I still play it today my favorite in this category was cotton 2 however this was made to take advantage of the Saturn's Hardware top to bottom the original arcade was released on the STV Titan board and man is it a looker scaling and rotation effects everywhere bdp2 layers and transparencies fill the screen as far as the eye can see and all those Beauty beautifully animated Sprites it's one of those two-dimensional games that makes you fully realize just how underused the Saturn was for the things it could actually do well the gameplay is pretty straightforward cotton if you're familiar with the series there is an added melee style attack where you can grab enemies and use them as weapons for additional score bonuses cotton Boomerang is sort of a remix that could be traded in for it but either way it's a beautiful title well worth playing all right foreign [Music] unfortunately the beat em up genre saw a steep loss in popularity around this time what had been so popular on the Genesis was reduced to a few scant releases on the Saturn lucky for us we did get the runner-up Die Hard arcade a very loose adaptation of the hit film you and a partner hit the nakatomi building in an effort to rescue the president's daughter gameplay is essentially small Arenas where you beat down bad guys and move on sometimes these are connected by QuickTime events where you can score a quick knockout but if you miss it usually means more enemies to face the visuals were solid and the two-player mode was a blast but no beat em up on the Saturn was as good as guardian Heroes my best friend and I dumped countless hours into this and loved every minute of it it has RPG elements like upgrading your stats and a story that actually is based on your choices which can radically affect who you fight and How It Ends the gameplay itself uses a multi-plane system similar to something like snk's fatal Fury you can switch planes to avoid enemy attacks or launch a surprise offensive of your own the hand-drawn art is a bit pixelated but the Sprites are huge and quite well animated it even has a killer soundtrack foreign [Music] like beat em ups the Run and Gun genre saw something about falling off during the 32-bit generation they were still there but they took a back seat to all the new polygon titles coming out our runner-up gets the nod not just because it was a good game but also because it stood out so much in the Saturn Library Metal Slug was essentially Contra for a new era of gaming it gave us unbelievable animation detail in a two-player mode that never got old it uses the one megabyte Ram expansion to minimize load times and keep much of what made the Neo Geo original so special the winner would have to do a lot to best it but assault suit linos 2 gets the nod as my best run and Gun winner this is a sequel to The Genesis game Target Earth a mech-based run and gun that has you flying boosting and battling tons of enemies and massive bosses it was only released in Japan and it badly needs an English translation but even in its original Japanese language it's a hell of a game there are tons of weapons the screen scales in and out across huge battlefields and the action rarely if ever slows down you'll see it a bit on the massive enemies you fight at the end of the level but that's it the only real knock I can give it is is that it lacks a two-player mode but even so it's so incredibly unique on Saturn you still gotta play it if you enjoyed cybernader or Metal Warriors this is the game for you foreign [Music] was first released the first person shooter was still in its infancy how we got such a great Port of Duke Nukem 3D is still Beyond me but it's my runner-up for this category The Magicians at lobotomy software managed to completely redo the original engine in 3D for the Saturn and while it did change the feel of things I still really enjoyed it I mean you never would have guessed the Saturn was capable of this until you saw it for yourself it even has unique light sourcing that looks really nice and as good as it was it owes all its success to our winner and the best first person shooter on the Saturn Power Slave this is the original slave driver engine that lobotomy created that eventually was used to Port both Duke and Quake to the Saturn and I still think it looks and plays the best here I always thought of this as the first real 3D Metroid game you get a world full of hidden items and weapons that you must travel between and discover in order did it get to the final area you'll battle evil aliens and tint on destroying our world and you'll eventually discover the power of the Gods themselves to take them down it's got great light sourcing effects the performance is mostly smooth and the music is pretty dang good it would have been cool to see 3D enemy models but outside of that this is a game not to be missed foreign [Music] had a number of really good two-dimensional Platformers my runner-up is capcom's Mega Man X4 this action platformer is a beauty and continues the great formula set forth by the series across numerous other platforms you know how this works go in defeat the bad guys get the new weapon find upgrades and become an all-powerful killing machine by the end you get two playable Heroes with different stories and some of the better two-dimensional multi-platform visuals on the Saturn and I know it's probably gonna get a few groans from the peanut gallery but our winner in best overall platformer on Saturn is castlevania's Symphony of the Night while it falls under the banner of Adventure platformer it's still at its heart very much a tried and true representation of the genre and even with its issues there is not a single platformer on the Saturn that does it any better as Alucard son of Dracula you begin this adventure with your weapons items and power Stripped Away okay alone you must find new weapons new powers and unlock the secret to see the entire game and get its true ending also along for the ride are Richter and Maria who have their own Quest and powers to discover Sega should have totally robbed this formula and made their own sequel to master of Darkness yet we receive nothing of A Sort you may want to play this one elsewhere today but on Saturn back then it was still among its best games oh [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] before we take a look at our 3D platformer winners I want to make it clear that I do not consider nights into dreams a platformer nor do I think Tomb Raider fits this genre's descriptions some may disagree but they are not in contention for this category and with that out the way our runner-up is the grossly overlooked pandemonium while this one is on Rails and essentially a 2.5 D platformer it's close enough as the jester fargus and the acrobat Nikki you must Traverse the land and find out how to undo the terrible curse you Unleashed on the kingdom you are jumping and climbing all over a polygon world and it actually looks pretty snazzy for a fully 3D Saturn game it runs decent the gameplay is fun and it's pretty dang challenging our winner is one of the very first mascot style games the Saturn received bug this one is also one of the Saturn's best-selling titles early in its life even spawning a sequel the following year as bug your job is to travel across six worlds on your journey to defeat the evil queen godavra it's set up kind of like a movie where your death is another take on you getting the scene right the gameplay while again not a fully 3D go anywhere platformer still allows you to move in 3D along predetermined paths its visuals are really nice and the entire world has a fun and playful tone that kids should love it's a divisive title however the stages tend to be far too large and the difficulty quite daunting for its target audience give it a fair shot though and I think you'll find quite the experience foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] the 3D control pad came out in mid-1996 and would go on to support a number of big name releases for the Saturn of the games that supported it the best my runner-up is burning Rangers it played well enough with the standard controller but with the analog pad it steps up to another level movement becomes more fluid the camera control is so much easier on the l r triggers and the entire setup just feels so much better this is likely in part to the Rangers being so fast and the digital d-pad feeling a bit Twitchy the analog control helps with this and takes an already excellent game and improves upon it but Sonic teams nights into dreams is the clear winner here the 3D control pad was designed and released with it after all and it's a match made in heaven the feeling of flight the smoothness of the loops and the quick directional changes all feel more responsive with the analog pad the l r triggers perform tricks while you're in flight or you can stop on a time if you pull them together if you find yourself going for the best scores it's almost mandatory [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you our best party game category was a tough one because there are so many good multiplayer titles on Saturn and our runner-up can be an absolute blast when eight players get together to take advantage of its split screen battle option Street racer is a weapons-based go-kart racing title with some of the prettiest visuals on the Saturn it uses bdp2 to create a racing area that runs at a full 60 frames per second it was never released in the US but there was a Japanese Empower version our winner is the unequivocal champion of party games though Saturn Bomberman this supports an incredible 10 players at once and gets pretty crazy at that level with over 20 different items to power you up or change the gameplay in some way you can also choose from characters to use like Balkan Master Higgins don't worry if you don't have 10 people to play either it rocks with any number of people it's one of the better releases to carry this series namesake foreign [Music] the best Sega Saturn arcade Port is the category where I wanted to highlight games that really nailed the arcade versions they were based on I excluded STV Titan titles because it was essentially the same Hardware our runner-up is Tito's elevator action returns this two-dimensional Masterpiece is a Search and Destroy shooter where you must battle your way through buildings airports and even sewers in an effort to stop terrorists from blowing things up you'll need to find the data needed to disarm the bombs while shooting down enemies that constantly assault you it has two-player Co-op and the Saturn recreated the look feel and animation of the arcade original perfectly it really does stand the test of time and is easily one of the more impressive arcade conversions that generation but there was one arcade poured on the Saturn that stood side by side to its source and bested it in every single way outrun was a Sega ages release that went above and beyond the call of duty by not just giving us a perfect Port but also giving us an option to go A Step Beyond it the smooth mode gives us buttery performance that looks incredibly fluid it also has more music more options for things like traffic and it has both the Japanese and overseas track layouts pound for pound you won't find a better arcade port on the Saturn that gives you so much more than the original it really does make you wonder what the Saturn could have done with an outrunner's conversion foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the best exclusive was another tough one the Saturn had a fair number of titles released only for it that generation and I needed two of the best the runner-up I feel was a given deep fear was sega's take on the Resident Evil formula instead of being trapped in a mansion against zombies you are instead trapped underwater against Monsters similar to those found in John Carpenter's The Thing it uses two-dimensional backdrops and polygon characters to paint its claustrophobic world the gameplay actually has a number of cool mechanics that make it a bit more impressive than the original Resident Evil experience you can move with your gun drawn and you must worry about oxygen deprivation it even has the crappy voice acting to keep you in the B-movie Vibe our winner is something special though bulk slash is a third person Mech shooter where you have the run of the area to blast enemies collect power-ups and transform it will it really did show that Saturn could do a fully 3D polygon world that could be explored and fought in with great success I love the battle options here you can assault your enemies from the sky transform and attack on foot and even boost into melee range with your sword a recently received an English fan translation complete with new Voice work so you can play it in all its original Glory it's Unique and it looked great and it was a great addition to your Saturn Library [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] best sound and music on the Saturn it conjures up images of countless titles there are even some middling games with great soundtracks which made this category especially competitive our runner-up is the Techno soft classic Thunder Force 5. these these games always sounded great and the fifth one was no exception it's a great mix of rock and Electronica that fits the action as good as you could have hoped for the tracks have cool names like Rising blue Lightning and fatherless baby and there were lots of them let's have a listen [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] our winner of the best music category is Panzer Dragoon this was a magical group of tracks that were just as important as the graphics and gameplay the first time I heard it I just sit and stunned amazement at how it played with your emotions and made you feel part of that journey I have a few examples so let's see if you agree [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] ly sat down to decide on the categories I wanted to cover best graphics was a given but I also realized that the Saturn really needed two categories to do it justice so we are gonna take a look at the best 2D and 3D graphics on Sega 6 planet from the sun our runner-up for best two-dimensional Graphics is KO flying Squadron 2. this game is simply gorgeous it has full screen transparencies massive Sprites colorful stages and some really nice animation driving everything you see it's absolutely stunning and what I expected from a 32-bit two-dimensional game so good does this game look it literally does everything in a single game that critics said the Saturn was incapable of but the best 2D graphics on the Saturn appeared rather early in the console's life and was simply never surpassed our winner of Best two-dimensional visuals is a stall this is a combination of excellent art Direction and Technical bro Millions resulting in what I consider one of the prettiest video games ever to exist it's got everything you need to be impressed scaling rotation Parallax transparencies say what you will about its gameplay but when it comes to style and visual presentation a stall was in a class all by itself okay [Music] [Music] the category of best three-dimensional graphics on the Saturn wasn't that hard at all because few companies outside the Sega themselves knew how to harness the machine properly that meant the list was fairly short of the very best looking titles and our runner-up for best three-dimensional graphics is last Bronx imagine for a moment of fighting game that looks as nice as Virtual Fighter 2 but uses vdp2 for a very convincing effect to create three-dimensional looking backgrounds it's a great combination that elevates last Bronx above the likes of other excellent 3D Fighters like dead or alive and fighting vipers but our best looking game in the three-dimensional graphics category is Panzer Dragoon 2. this was one of the first times I realized the Saturn could do 3D games on a level that went well beyond my understanding of the hardware when you combined what this machine could do with its polygons Sprites and backgrounds the results could be something truly exciting and man was Panzer 2 a beauty I still remember the incredible feeling of scale as I ran through the giant Cliffs of stage 2. I remember that first flight as you jumped from a cliff and glided down to the desert below and who could forget that boss encounter at the underground lake or the assault on a massive ship in the clouds high above the land The Sensational flight the design of the enemies and bosses it all was so well done it was so cohesive that it brought this world to life in a way few 32-bit titles were capable of and you could only play it on the Saturn foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] our final category is a big one best overall game on the Sega Saturn no doubt this one is gonna be different for pretty much every one of you but for me our runner-up is Shining Force three what some of you may not know is that this was actually split into three episodes unfortunately the West only got the first one translated to English so most of us missed the complete story for years thankfully the Saturn Community comes to the rescue yet again and now we have access to all three in English it tells the tale of a war breaking out in the nefarious forces behind it each story connects and is told from different viewpoints as you unravel the Mysteries behind it all the gameplay is turn-based strategy long battles against many enemies as the order of the day and it has the sound and visuals to make it work on a level that I would put up against the best on any other platform at the time it was an epic story that needed three CDs to get it all done and his point blank some of the finest Works Sega ever produced it's absolutely criminal it's never been reissued that leaves our winner of best overall game on the Saturn as Dragon Force it's hard to pin a genre on Dragon Force it's part RPG part strategy and part simulator but even then it doesn't quite describe exactly what this game is at first it seems incredibly complicated but it's anything but it's so incredibly simple form an Army attack castles and that's pretty much it the actual battles play out as armies clashing on the field but the only control you have is over your formation commands and your general special attacks but it's here where Dragon Force shines which seems at first to be minimal control actually hides a deep and well put together battle system your formations mean everything because your troops will meet other armies that have tactical advantages over you that means your strategies special attacks will need to be on point to turn the tide there are also numerous leaders to choose from at the start with different characters resources and different places on the map this adds to the challenge incredibly but the most important part is that you control everything you want to run rough shot over the AI and conquer the map in no time load up with dragon troops and that's possible want to challenge yourself and make every battle a satisfying tactical Victory choose a weaker troop type and play it that way it's all up to you on top of the great gameplay Dragon Force also has a nice soundtrack and some pretty incredible two-dimensional visuals it supports 202 characters on the screen at once making for explosive battles that look like something no other console could have pulled off at the time frankly not only do I consider it the best Saturn game it's one of the best games of that era period [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] there we go the best of the best on the Sega Saturn I know I know the Panzer Dragoon Saga fans are probably already picking away their disgust in the comments but remember just because it isn't here doesn't mean I think it's a bad game I just find these to be better as someone that has owned a Saturn since it originally launched in Japan it's the only console I have never been without over the years other machines have come and gone at various points in my life but when the Saturn launched it became my favorite and has stayed by my side ever since there are so many games on this console that are criminally overlooked because everyone wanted to play polygon games back then had any number of the games I just showed you in this episode been on the PlayStation or Nintendo 64 they would be considered absolute classics by The Gaming Community at large but it would be years before anyone paid attention to them on the Saturn it wasn't until social media came along that Nintendo Sony and Xbox box fans paid the Saturn any attention and now all of a sudden the Saturn's best games are now going for hundreds and even thousands of dollars thanks to collectors discovering the console wasn't full of just bad PlayStation ports part of me is happy to finally see my favorite console get the attention it deserves but I'd be lying if I didn't also tell you that I still laminate treatment while it was on the retail market so focused on hype and the premise of 3D polygons many turned their nose up at the Saturn and spat on it leading to dismal sales in the west it's a sad story that never should have been if Sega had been better run and consumers better informed there was no limit to what this machine could have given us I'm single Lord X thank you guys for watching and I will catch you next time foreign [Music]

Channel: Sega Lord X

Views: 90,308

Keywords: sega saturn, saturn, retro gaming, segalordx, sega lord x, sega genesis, sega dreamcast, mega drive, megadrive, game gear, 32x, mega cd, genesis, master system, sega, sega cd, gameplay, review, movies, retro games, video games, ps4, xbox, wii, nintendo, gamecube, n64, ps1, ps2, ps3, psp, vita, switch, atari, sega saturn games

Id: EXoMGoIcITM

Length: 53min 15sec (3195 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 24 2022