The dynamic duo of one-dimensional heroes of the first Panzer Dragoon game. To be quite honest, I wasn't expecting these two to have as many feats and abilities as they do... then again, the fact that there's an OVA probably helped. Speaking of the OVA: I'll be using feats and such from it in this blog, as very little from the game itself was contradicted. The only noticeable and prominent differences between the game and the OVA is that the latter gave Keil a girlfriend and The Blue Dragon's name is Blau (I will be referring to him as such for the remainder of the blog). Lastly, don't expect a "Personality/Intelligence" section, since neither of them have anything interesting or notable to talk about. Here’s a 1 hour playthrough of the game’s hard mode and here’s the OVA if you wanna watch them. Anyway, let's get started.
Background/Story
If you don't want to read a summary of what's pretty much just the opening sequence of the game, you can watch the game's intro here (0:54) and the OVA's intro here (0:36).
The story of Panzer Dragoon is incredibly simple. It follows the adventures of Keil Fluge, a member of a hunting party (consisting of him, his girlfriend Alita, and their mutual friend), who encounters a battle between two dragons, colored black and blue. The rider of the Blue Dragon is mortally wounded in the battle and entrusts his mission, as well as his dragon, to Keil. The Rider tells Keil that he must stop the Dark Dragon from reactivating an ancient tower in the middle of the ocean and in turn, destroying the world. It should be noted that in the OVA, it's Blau who tells Keil all this information. Also, in the OVA, the Dark Dragon kidnaps and kinda-sorta absorbs Alita, making her rescue a primary motive for Keil during their journey.
Abilities/Arsenal
-Blaster-
-Homing Beams-
-Precognition(?)-
Shown here in the OVA, it seems like Keil has several seconds-worth of precognition. However, it could just be that he has really good instincts and/or reactions, so ignore this if you want.
-Telepathy-
As seen here (as well as several other parts of the OVA), Blau can speak to Keil telepathically. However, Keil doesn’t have this ability and actually has to verbally speak to Blau.
-Charge Beam-
In the OVA, Blau can charge up for a few seconds and shoot a massive, devastating laser-like blast of energy.
-The Dragon Within-
-Energy Horn Attack-
Used only once at the very end of the game and OVA, Blau fills his horn with what’s probably the same blue energy that his projectiles are made of, and he charges at his target.
-Force Field-
In order to protect Keil from the Tower’s explosion (and subsequent vaporization), Blau created a small force field around him. Whether or not he can create one to cover himself or an opponent is up for debate.
Feats/Scaling
-Strength/Attack Potency-
- In the OVA, Blau’s charge beams one-shot multiple airships. This might be a small building level feat at best.
- It should be noted that in the game, all projectiles (blaster and homing) can be used to damage them.
- Keil’s blaster can destroy large cannonballs, missiles and fodder enemies in one shot, as well as damage larger enemies and bosses (Though the majority are featless).
- Keil and Blau’s projectiles are capable of destroying the exoskeletons of these gigantic centipedes.
- In the OVA, “The Dragon Within” is used to finally take down the Dark Dragon.
- The Dark Dragon and Blau seem to be relatively on-par with one-another, both in the game and the OVA, so their stats should scale.
- Homing Beams can one-shot tanks.
- The duo battles and ultimately destroys the Prototype Imperial Assault Ship.
- Blau and Keil fight and defeat the Guardian.
- Note that most of the work was done by Keil’s blaster, rather than Blau’s homing beams.
- The two take on the Imperial Flying Stronghold and a small fleet of Imperial Airships. To do so, they have to destroy all of the stronghold’s turrets, which - while not necessarily a major feat - is pretty impressive, given how many of them there are.
- Keil and Blau are confronted by and defeat the Super Dragon, the Dark Dragon’s super form (if you couldn’t tell by the name).
- In the OVA, Blau briefly subdues and pins down the Dark Dragon
- In the same scene, Keil pulls Alita out of the Dark Dragon’s back… kinda gross if you think about it.
- At the end of both the game and the OVA, Blau uses his energy horn attack thing to destroy and actually VAPORIZE the tower. Since it’s the same structure in both, the following calculation by a friend of mine (prefers to stay anonymous) should apply to both. Also, he used the OVA for the calculation, since the tower stays shut instead of opening like it did in the game. Note that almost every structure in the entire game is made of metal, and steel is a very common building material in large man-made structures. This is also kinda lowballed, since he scaled the top of the ships (essentially a hot air balloon) to that of a real world pirate ship instead of the ship itself. Anyway, here are screenshots of his measurements and my calculation of the energy required to vaporize the tower:
- Ship Measurement
- Tower Measurement
- Energy calculation
- Blau’s destruction of the tower ends up being a mountain level feat (212.4 megatons of TNT)
-Durability/Endurance-
- Blau and Keil can shrug off direct hits from any enemy (including bosses) in the game, some of which are the size of large buildings.
- They can shrug off being hit by large cannonballs and missiles, fired from tanks, turrets and/or bosses.
- Blau can go toe-to-toe with the Dark Dragon, both physically (seen in their OVA fight linked in the Strength section) and with their respective projectiles (in-game and OVA).
- Blau is both implied by the game and shown in the OVA to have survived the Tower’s vaporization, giving him mountain level durability.
- His Force Field protected Keil from the explosion, only knocking him out instead of… y’know… killing him. This means that his force fields can take at least as much of a beating as Blau himself.
-Speed/Agility-
- Superior to the Dark Dragon, who casually breaks the sound barrier in the OVA.
- Seeing as cannonballs are a regular occurrence (most commonly fired by futuristic tanks and standalone cannons) in Panzer Dragoon and they most likely dodge and shoot them, their speed should scale to that of a cannonball… duh. So, that’s about 381 to 518 m/s (a little over mach 1). However, cannonballs and missiles seem to travel a lot slower in the game than they do IRL, so take it with a grain of salt.
- While it’s extremely unlikely to ever happen, as the animation is only 3 frames long and thus requires frame-perfect precision, Keil’s blaster bolts and Blau’s homing beams can actually reach and destroy this enemy before its laser reaches them. Trust me, you’re only going to pull it off if you’re actively trying to do it. Took me over a dozen attempts.
- In the same level, the duo can dodge and intercept these enemies’ laser-like projectiles.
- And these.
Summary
- Strength/Attack Potency: Mountain Level w/Blau’s Horn (Possibly Mountain level with other projectiles via scaling to Dark Dragon and Super Dragon).
- Durability/Endurance: Mountain Level (Possibly higher w/Force Field).
- Speed/Agility: Supersonic flight/travel speed. Relativistic attack speed and reactions.
-Strengths-
- Homing attacks are always a pain to deal with.
- Blau’s telepathy and Keil’s (possible) precognition can give them a HUGE tactical advantage.
- Even if they’re separated, Blau and Keil are more than capable of fighting independently.
- Having fought hundreds of flying enemies and even another dragon rider, they have enough experience to not be going in blind against an opponent of that sort.
- Force Fields allow for better defense and might have some kind of offensive utility.
-Weaknesses-
- Aside from his horn, Blau doesn’t have many (if any) close-quarters options.
- Keil has never shown much either.
- Their strongest attacks have a relatively slow charge time.
- Keil is extremely hot headed and moody in the OVA.
- Moveset is simple and relatively predictable.
- Only a day or two of experience together.
- “ALITAAAAAAAA!!!!!”
