As promised, Forever Entertainment showed a demo of its upcoming Panzer Dragoon Zwei Remake at the 2025 Tokyo Game Show. On Sept. 25, the company posted footage of the demo in action to its YouTube channel. It shows Jean and Lagi taking on Episode 2, opting to go right at the fork in the path. This means only ground-level gameplay is shown.
Reception in the comment section shows a heavy amount of criticism and suggestions to the developers. A browser plugin that displays the amount of YouTube likes and dislikes shows just two thirds voted “like.” Forever Entertainment does indicate this demo as being a work in progress, adding “visuals and gameplay subject to change.”
We recorded a casual run at Episode 2 on the Saturn original with real hardware. The following video shows them playing side by side.
Lagi’s animations appear to move slightly slower in the remake. Spinning the camera around also moves at a slower pace. In the remake, a quarter camera rotation takes about 0.83 seconds. On Saturn, it takes about 0.28 seconds. The camera is much farther from Lagi in the remake. Furthermore, the timing of enemies appear to be different in some areas, though other enemies appear and act at roughly the same time. They all appear in the same order as they do in the original.
Visually, the remake adds a lot more environmental features to the desert floor and canyon rock faces of Episode 2. There are a lot more rocks, fine details in the dirt, and additions to the buildings. When a ship is destroyed, pieces of it fall to the ground and stay there for a little while before fading away.
The colors on Lagi’s model appear to be more muted. The bold red details on his wings are gone. Contrast between his blue and white features are sharply reduced.
Additional lighting effects that were not seen on the Saturn original seem to be in the remake. The color palette has significantly changed. Simply put, things are a lot more brown in the remake.
One significant change is how the game transitions from the upper area to the lower ground when Lagi takes a leap from the cliff at around two minutes in. Watch the comparison video above to see for yourself.
It is hard to hear the new soundtrack in the remake demo footage. Volume of the sound effects are much louder than the song.
No release date info appears to be public. It is still unclear when the remake will come out.
The first remake was really not great, still bought it day one because I really wanted to show support to the team so we can see a remake of this great game.
Seeing it now… it’s quite difficult to state anything positive. I’m not sure what they’re trying to achieve here. All I’m thinking is that they should not bother with launching this game if they don’t intend to revamp it so it’s more faithful to the original material.
Seing this short clip of the Saturn version gave nice feelings though, so there’s at least that 🙂
It looks like the devs listened to the criticisms about the first remake being too colorful and lacking the ‘bleakness’ of the original game. Maybe a bit too early to write it off? It’s an early build after all.
here is how a next gen version of Panzer Dragoon could look mainting the vision but being high res
https://discuss.panzerdragoonlegacy.com/t/panzer-dragoon-zwei-ii-remake-playable-at-tgs-2025/9074/12
They spent what is it 7 YEARS making this it ain’t getting better
I desperately want a remake of PD Zwei, but not when it’s of such a lacklustre quality like this. Please, SEGA, take this project away from the incompetent team at MegaPixel Studios and Forever Entertainment (which their previous 3 SEGA remakes and Nintendo needing to severely rework their DKC Returns port demonstrate) and do it inhouse or give it to developers who care about the source material.
I agree with you 100%
What I can hear of Kobayoshi’s soundtrack is pretty good, adding her own style to the original tunes while retaining what made them great in the first place.
But the sound effects are off, suggesting a more mechanical dragon and world, just like in the remake of PD1.
And the more modern, realistic art style the developers have gone for clashes with that of the original PDZ, eschewing the grittier greys and sense of scale for generic browns and smaller, more detailed yet confined environments. There are some small details, such as the destroyed gates and the lighting on the ships, that are nice touches, but they add nothing when the rest of the environment fails to evoke the same sense of awe as the originals.
Fingers crossed they make these and other important changes before release, but past efforts suggest they only intend to stick to their unfaithful artistic vision of the PD world.
I bought the first remake. Several of it’s faults have been corrected on a later patch, like the dragon bouncing as it flied. I liked it’s colorfulness and the game allowed you to use the original soundtrack (thank God). The game is now actually quite good, but I don’t like the way it looks like a budget smartphone game.
The budget smartphone game look continues and I hate it. It has technically more detail, but has no artistic vision at all. It seems slower and the Saturn version always looks more busy and alive. I really, really hate the dragon animation, the way it moves. The music is quite bad, I hope it allows you to choose the original music as well.
What turns me off the most is that it’s clearly a budget title from a team that may be good at developing, but not at CREATING. Sega should give it a much better budget for such a beloved game. Nintendo would never deliver a remake like this.
I haven’t spoken to one person who liked the remake. I did enjoy playing it with the option of using keyboard/mouse. But honestly it feels like a waste and just another cash grab. The sega name is now being used by indie developers and nobody likes the results.