Weapon of Choice

If there’s anything that you can learn about me from watching my reviews, it’s that 1)90% of what I say is a pop culture or gaming reference – sorry about that, and 2) I really like old games. Also that I have self esteem issues but that’s neither here nor there. So when I scoured the magic miracle box that is my computer and found out about Panzer Paladin coming to Switch, I was really excited to buy it and see what it’s about. Do I still feel that way after playing through it? Yeah, more or less. It’s got a great look to it and it’s imaginative and is still somehow original despite borrowing concepts that have come from so many games before it, but then immitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and you can tell from beginning to end that this was a sincere effort at making a great NES-era styled action game.

So in Panzer Paladin you play as an android named Flame, who pilots a big paladin mech named Grit. Their job is to save the world from demonic gateways that have opened across the world, by killing the Weapon Keeps who wield the weapons giving each gateway its power. The game’s cutscenes don’t have much in the way of animation but the character designs are great, with Flame looking like a character out of the original Voltron series and Grit looking like your basic mech from Gundam or even Transformers. It all has this 80’s era anime look to it that I’ve really missed.

The game itself is set up with a stage select so you can tackle each level in whatever order you want. The bosses in level are all based on actual occult demons from real life literature and other sources, and it was really cool to see them come to life here. Each level is also unique to each other, so you’ll see the jungles of Mexico, a Scottish castle or fight it out through city streets in the USA. There’s also a mix of common and unique enemies to each level. It’s your typical NES style graphics that are too detailed to ever fit on an actual NES cartridge, but they’re colorful and there’s a lot going on. One minor gripe I have is that sometimes I couldn’t tell what I could step on and what was meant as background art. That led me to plummet to my grisly, horrible death a few times. Actually it wasn’t that horrible – I just fell off the screen and had to start over. I’m just dramatic.

The music in each level is unique to it and really catchy too. You can buy the soundtrack separately and I actually liked it enough that I could see myself buying it. I mean it’s not something I’m going to thump in my car going to the club with Mrs Controller or anything, but it’s fun and upbeat.

It’s obvious to compare the combat to Mega Man or Castlevania, mainly because that’s what everybody does with a game like this. In my opinion it’s more of a mix between the level design of Mega Man with combat that reminded me more of Blaster Master than Castlevania. Grit is surprisingly mobile for a mech, with the ability to do a quick dash backwards, and he can use an upward thrust with his weapon to get some extra height out of each of his jumps. He can swing is normal weapon to either hit enemies up close or hit projectiles back at enemies, and he’s got a shield that’s surprisingly good at blocking projectiles.

This all sounds straightforward and borderline boring, but the thing that makes this more interesting is that the weapon variety in this is insane. Basically you’ll get to wield a ton of different weapons that vary in length, speed, strength, and most importantly durability. These weapons are made to break, but the good thing about them is that they each have a special effect that pops when you break the weapon. That’ll vary from healing Grit to upping the durability for other weapons, shooting beams out of your weapons, and more. The trick is to wear down the weapons to their final hit before they actually break from hitting any enemy, since the benefit won’t go into affect if that happens. You can also use your weapons at the blacksmith to level up Grit’s max health, something that you only do a max of 5 times, which I thought was really odd. In my playthrough, I maxed him out within the first few levels and had a surplus of weapons for the remainder of the game.

The bosses in level are all based on actual occult demons from real life literature and other sources, and it was really cool to see them come to life here.

Flame can eject out of Grit at any time, though she dies in a few hits so you want to use her sparingly. There’s parts in each level where you’re forced to eject because the spaces are only large enough for her to travel through, and personally I didn’t like these sections as they felt too forced. Basically all of her sections in each level consists of killing a couple enemies, then whipping a hook of some kind to swing across a couple pits, then get to a summoning portal to summon Grit to that spot and continue on. The swinging felt oddly difficult to me, and mistiming a swing and dying means having to start back at the beginning or the previous checkpoint to do it all over again.

It’s also worth noting that if Grit runs out of health and collapses, you have to make it through the rest of the level with Flame-only, which is really difficult when she has an eighth of the health he does and isn’t capable of any of his style of attack or picking up weapons. When that would happen I’d basically just make her jump in a pit because it would save time that way. That said there were a couple boss fights where Grit would buy the farm and I had the boss’ health whittled down enough that I was able to still beat him, but it wasn’t by much.

The difficulty of the game is on par with other NES-styled games, though I didn’t find it frustrating until later on. The reason being is that the levels are longer than you’ll expect, especially in the last major section of the game. There’s 2 checkpoints in each level, each one before a mid-boss which is always The Horseman, this guy who looks like a more elaborate version of the first boss in Zelda II, and the other before the final boss of the level. Getting killed always moves you back to that checkpoint, or back to the beginning of the level if you didn’t hit the 1st one. If it sounds like a drag, I assure you that it is and I actually had to walk away from the game a couple times because it was so disappointing, especially after some deaths that I thought were cheap that there’s no way I could’ve seen coming. Activating a checkpoint is a risk vs reward because you’ll need to insert one of your weapons to activate it. If you have a ton of weapons, this won’t matter as much, but the last thing I wanted to do was use up a weapon with a Full Heal spell on it just to save myself a trip all the way through the level again in case I died.

Other modes in the game include a Speedrun, a boss rush mode, a remix mode that, well, remixes the game, and a really cool blacksmith mode. This mode let’s you draw your own weapon to be shared with people over the internet. You can also customize the stats, give it a name, and there’s lots of slots for you to make multiple weapons. Your fantasies of making Grit wield Link’s Master Sword, a lightsaber, or a fart in a jar can now be realized.

So at the end of the day I still think Panzer Paladin is worth a purchase. The look of it is really cool, I loved the bosses and art style of the characters along with the music. The levels could stand to be shortened or maybe have 1 extra checkpoint since dying is more frustrating due to playing the level over again, and Flame should’ve had some more bells and whistles so she was more fun to play with and felt viable as a playable character and not just a challenge for masochists. But really if that’s the worst the game has going for it, then that proves what a strong title it is. Those of you looking for a retro-styled game should give it a shot.