Panzer Dragoon Orta

released on Dec 19, 2002

The fourth installment of the Panzer Dragoon series has you playing Orta, a young girl who has been imprisoned by the Empire. Under a wave of attack, the prison camp is broken through by a mysterious dragon, and Orta takes it upon herself to ride the dragon, and destroy the Empire once and for all. Along the way, she will also discover her own destiny, and the mystery surrounding her new friend. Simply put, you have limited control of the dragon for most of the game, as your trigger finger will be shooting non-stop at the enemies that fly around the area. Orta will be your main source of fire-power when you simply press the fire button, but by pressing and holding, the aim cursor will change, allowing you to fire a burst of power from the dragon at whatever the cursor aims at. The dragon itself can change into three forms at a press of a button. Each form has a different style of attack and power ability. A port of the original Panzer Dragoon is included.


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(Would like to give a big thank you to @IronLuis for making this review possible. He let me borrow his Xbone just to play the game)

I can't with this shitty game anymore I'm done.

Panzer Dragoon is a series that had intrigued me and finally checking it out, I loved all of it.

Despite Mini, a game that was not only barely functional but also a game in between two fantastic games, the series, and overall Trilogy really, were all incredible and reasonably difficult. Deserving its status as the incredible landmark on the Sega Saturn. I had known the series did get another shot on Xbox but finally playing the games made me more intrigued regarding the entry that is Orta.

As a follow up to Saga I knew it couldn't top it, and all I had thought and expected was for it to just be a good game. A great game. The worthy continuation it dares to be to a very fulfilling trilogy that ended on a fair note.

It ended up being an arse to finally play the game however. Right after beating Saga, I checked it out off Xemu which didn't play the cutscenes. Then I ordered a og Xbox copy for 45 buckos then after some convincing got @IronLuis to let me borrow his Xbone just to play this game. And ALSO finally got the official rechargeable batteries for mine and his Xbox controller.

And so after all this work and effort, I finally played it.. and was remarkably disappointed. For starters I will still ponder why was the lock on nerfed so badly??? Saga introduced other forms for your Dragon but in this game you have to be switching all the fucking time if you wanna be doing any damage or any health resourcing when none of that bullshit was in the previous games. Playing it the old way, your damage just tickles them at most.

The game also has the most bullshittingly difficult difficulty to a point it made me genuinely mad in literal years. it's buttfuckingly unfair. Zwei is a game where it became harder by the paths you decided to choose. In Orta it's just fucking difficult because it said so, fuck you, you dare have fun? kiss that ass goodbye. BE SURE TO GET A NICE WHOPPING OF TWO BOSSES IN A FUCKING ROW!!!!!

I thought maybe I was delusional, I thought maybe I was wrong after simply beating Easy, but I ended up being right. I gave Normal another go and just could not. It's so fucking bullshit.. And not even fucking worth it. As all you need to know about the story is that it is LITERAL BULLSHIT!!! I don't like Mobo and his stupid fucking posse. Every time I see these imbeciles talk I miss the humanity of Paet, Gash, and Azel. They spoke with character. Growth. Personality. I miss it so much.. It was all in Saga. All dissipated in Orta.

Orta in general for me is a literal disappointment. I wasn't expecting or hyping up that it'd be the best of the series. Literally the minimum for me was just it simply be a fun time. A great time. A journey in a unique world.

But instead I get a game that can't fucking make up its mind on if it desires to be ambitious like Saga or have the simple storytelling of Zwei and the first one. It doesn't help either when you look into it even the Developers themselves feel mixed on if they should've even made a 4th one after Saga.

Which anymore is that I recognize the Pandora's Box which in fact is why my rating isn't any lower even if to be completely honest, I think alot of it is buttfucking padding. ESPECIALLY WHEN SOME OF THAT INFORMATION COULDVE BEEN TOLD WITHIN THE GAME.

What's that? You want to be told the story's details in the STORY!?? NAHHHHH!!!! GO READ ABOUT IT JERKWAD!!! STOP ASKING QUESTIONS!!!!

Panzer Dragoon Orta is another one of those games I mostly remember hearing about in magazines. It received a lot of praise at the time, but being as it was an Xbox exclusive, it was forever out of reach like other well-regarded classics of that generation, like Jet Set Radio Future and Blinx the Time Sweeper. You have no idea how much I longed to play Azurik: Rise of Perathia, there was a whole universe of games just beyond my grasp!

Unlike JSRF and its own predecessors, Orta is actually fairly accessible today thanks to the Xbox marketplace, and used copies are still reasonably priced. I've been thinking of grabbing one as recent delistings has inverted my prior (psychotic) belief that I need digital backups of all my physical games. Gotta cover all my bases, I need to be able to play this grungy-ass port of the PC version of Panzer Dragoon whenever I'd like, that's important.

In any case, it's nice that I finally got to check this game off my list after 20+ years of thinking "I really should play Panzer Dragoon Orta," and I'm happy that it lived up to years of continued hype. Orta feels like a culmination of Panzer Dragoon's narrative and mechanical ideas, borrowing from all three previous games in one way or another to create what I think is the most fully realized entry in the series.

Obviously, Orta models itself after the on-rails entries rather than continuing down the turn-based RPG path laid out by Saga. That's not to say it jettisons all of that game's identity, of course. Orta is similarly narrative heavy and makes good on Saga's world building and storyline by focusing on Azel and (presumably) Edge's daughter. Look, it's a little hard to say, Azel just downloaded some DNA and I'm not about to check the file properties on that. Orta also borrows from Saga's positional combat in a way that feels very naturalistic, so much so that I had to question if it was present in Zwei.

Speaking of Zwei, the dragon yet again has the ability to grow over time, but no longer does so based on end-of-level scores. Rather, it changes shape in real-time when enough power-ups are collected in a given form to advance it to the next stage of its evolution. This feels like a natural progression from Zwei, and though the effect might seem quaint today, that level of skeletal deformation and changes to texture mapping is one of Orta's most impressive features. Being able to swap between different attack types also adds a layer of depth, and the deeper into the game you progress, the more rapidly you'll find yourself flicking between forms in order to manage different enemy types. Though I found this a bit overwhelming initially, once you find the right flow and develop an eye for what enemy types you need to counter, it feels pretty good.

Unfortunately, I live in an imperfect, shitty, fucked up world where a sequel to Saga and the overall health of the franchise was solely dependent on how well Orta performed. Since then, we've gotten a remake of the first game that released 18 years after Sega put the series on ice, and people tore it apart for reasons I still can't quite wrap my head around. I think it's safe to say the book is closed on Panzer Dragoon, and that's a shame, but I do think Orta is a good note to go out on. There's no cliffhanger ending here to weigh down on me, though Orta's story is left open, and the gameplay is so tight and refined that I'm not left with a sense that they needed one more game to get things right.

Sometimes you just gotta be grateful for the Panzer Dragoons you got.

ideologia é o privilégio do não-desespero. o tempo necessário para tomar uma decisão teórica depende da ética que advém do desapego, de certa distância, do eterno "e se". o ethos não é um sobrevivente e sim um acadêmico. a ideologia se confunde com a política pois a política depende de um movimento em massa para acontecer, então ela se vende como um fator ideológico em que existe Informação a ser Interpretada: a normalização (criação de denominador comum) da heurística, um véu comunitário sob algo que é inerentemente solitário e solipsista. o pathos é a sobrevivência, a divisão definitiva entre o que é o Ser e do que é sua Ideia, pois embora um, claro, influencie o outro, corrija o outro, esse um nunca comanda o outro. há um abismo dificilmente cruzado entre a prática e a ideia quando não existe tempo de planejamento, quando a ideia já é um resultado de outros atributos ativos de antes. a única defesa contra a ideologia é o suicídio. o barulho de tiro é mais alto do que a música. não existem perigos universais pois eles não são necessários: o mundo está sempre acabando pra alguém.

This review contains spoilers

when i had first beaten panzer dragoon on retroarch, i was hooked and deeply in love with the series. zwei kept me coming back, made me feeling like i was high on crack, and saga... my god no other game has left me THAT stunned and emotional by its ending, to say i was blown away would be an understatement. i was spacing out the games between 1-2 months so the time was right for each, and the wait for orta was incredibly anxious.

after my weekend trip i punched my light out, smashed my ass on the chair and was ready to engage with this. it started with the haunting and epic prologue, i hadnt felt this engaged in a while, almost as if i had been participating in a series (duh). the difficulty of the game quickly ramped up, the imperial ship put up the fucking fight of the century, my blood was rushing and my heart was PUMPING. i was gunning through this, not only was it a mental and physical workout but i was also having an absolute blast. after it was all said and done, i realized... holy shit THIS WAS THE FIRST BOSS?!?!? goddamn this game was pretty hard ngl but I actually loved that it was incredibly challenging, enhanced the feeling of reaping the skies. another thing that had me loving the game was the ost sounding like shpongle (which is probably my favorite band. gaining a huge bias in the process). i was in complete awe by the games imagination and scope.

a while before i played orta i was spoiled by the fact that she was azel's daughter. i was less confused and more curious how they would pull this off, in fact i was kinda stoked that i could potentially unlock her, but what they did with her was miles better than what i expected. her vague appearance and message was so sad yet wholesome i wanted to fucking cry ;_; azel is such an amazing character. my favorite part of the game was the imperial city, especially paired with its song. visually its bombastic, soaring through the top of the caves and blowing shit up, i sound like a dummy but yeah thats how i feel, a lad talking about the coolest shit hes experienced. my journey through panzer dragoon was coming to an end, but yet it wasn’t so sad, more optimistic than anything. i was finally closing the chapters, nearing the end of this chaotic and strangely beautiful world, needless to say it will forever hold a special place in my heart. i want these games injected into my blood stream

Incredible experience. I got pretty far until I got stuck on a boss. When I finally beat it, I turned off the console not realizing the game didn't save for some reason. I was super demotivated since I spent like 30 minutes or more trying to get past that boss and I don't want to do it again.

XEMU doesn't play the FMVs but the audio so I can't play this game for shite. I really would love to play this game but I GOT NOT XBOX!!!!! OR A COPY!!!! SO FIX XEMU PLSSSSSS!!!!!!!