Panzer Dragoon Orta Preview

Despite critical acclaim, Sega's Panzer Dragoon series seemed destined to remain a footnote in gaming history. While the trio of unique games offered stunning art design and innovative gameplay that brought depth to the shooting genre, they never clicked with the general public. However, the franchise has been granted a new lease on life on the Xbox. Panzer Dragoon Orta marks a new chapter in the series and evolves the gameplay and offers fresh direction for its story. We checked out a previewable version of the US game and were suitably impressed by what we saw. Featuring amazing visuals, tight gameplay, and an involving story, Panzer Dragoon Orta is poised to be a game that should please fans of the franchise as well as newcomers.

Meet Orta, the newest dragonrider.

For those unfamiliar with the Panzer Dragoon franchise, look here for our retrospective on the underappreciated Saturn games. Here's the reader's digest version of the tale: The franchise is set in a future wherein the last vestiges of humanity struggle to survive in the wake of a massive war that saw the use of biological weapons of terrible destruction that nearly laid waste to civilization. As humans struggle to rebuild their way of life, an empire rises from the ashes of the war. To ensure its dominance over the scattered tribes of humanity, the empire searches for the ancient weapons that nearly destroyed the world. The Panzer games have focused on dragons that have emerged on separate occasions to bring the empire down. Panzer Dragoon Orta takes a slightly different approach with its story, which focuses on a young woman named Orta, who is chosen by a dragon to be its rider. Unlike the previous riders, who have been young men drawn into the conflict between the dragon and the empire by circumstance, Orta seems to have some involvement with the empire. The game opens with an attack on a settlement by Imperial forces that appear to be targeting her. Fortunately the appearance of a dragon prevents her death. With nowhere else to go, Orta mounts the dragon and heads out on an adventure that will uncover the empire's interest in Orta and her past.

When you start the game up, there are a few options to choose from: new game, continue, Pandora's box, and tutorial. New game obviously lets you start the game, while continue will let you resume playing from a save file that you'll have the option to create when quitting out of an episode. Pandora's box is a collection of extras in the game, similar to the feature seen in Panzer Dragoon Zwei but considerably more fleshed out. You'll find statistics on your performance alongside an impressive array of extras, including a complete port of the original Panzer Dragoon, subscenarios, extras missions to play through, art, CG movies, and a comprehensive encyclopedia containing information on the empire, the world, and the various creatures you'll encounter. Finally the tutorial is a primer on the various aspects of gameplay and is broken down into three multipart lessons.

Well that sounds pretty ominous.

In terms of its gameplay, Panzer Dragoon Orta takes the core gameplay from the Panzer games and folds key elements of Panzer Dragoon Zwei and Panzer Dragoon Saga into the mix. The game is still a rail shooter, but Smilebit has incorporated the dragon-morphing feature, berserk attack, and alternate routes introduced in Panzer Dragoon Zwei and the strategic-positioning feature that played a vital role in Panzer Dragoon Saga's combat. You'll find 10 episodes to go through in the game, varying in length and difficulty. Each episode will challenge you to blast through a seemingly endless horde of foes in order to reach a boss. The core gameplay mechanic still relies on using a combination of rapid-fire blaster fire and your dragon's homing lasers, which can target a series of enemies. You'll rotate your line of sight in 90-degree increments around your dragon as you progress through the game in order to track enemies.