I guess I'm a stupid stupid bastard. I tried the demo, and while the graphics were pretty the game itself didn't do much for me. I'm just not a fan of rail shooters (and the inclusion of the Arwing levels was one of my beefs with Starfox Adventures).

Since I'm a glutton for punishment I just kept right on playing the game until I finished it last night. In the final analysis it's not so bad on the Easy setting, but the Normal setting is just too damn hard and made gameplay annoying.

Not my favorite game, but not the worst I've ever played.

The original Panzer Dragoon that unlocks at the end has better gameplay, IMO. That's probably just because I don't like Orta's targeting lock-on system. The story in the original is a lot more compelling as well, but man those old graphics don't look too good on a large screen. What system was that for, anyway? Dreamcast?

The other unlockable mini-games are weird. They have 8 hours of story to scroll through, followed by 5 minutes of impossibly difficult gameplay, and if you die you have to sit through another 3 minutes of story before you can replay. Has anyone ever mastered piloting the little hovercraft thing?

The original was for Saturn IIRC.