Now that Panzer Dragoon Orta is backwards compatible on the 360, hopefully more people will be able to experience it.
User Rating: 9 | Panzer Dragoon Orta (Platinum Collection) XBOX
Panzer Dragoon Orta is one of the rare games that I was charmed by almost as soon as I put in the disc. The first thing I noticed was probably the excellent graphics, which are absolutely top notch for an Xbox game. Orta and her Dragon look positively amazing, especially during the cutscenes, as do the other dragons and soldiers present. The characters are all animated perfectly as well. When flying, the environments looks great as do the enemies that you'll be shooting down. I may have been spoiled a bit by the 360's amazing explosion effects, so the explosions in this game are obviously a step down from, say, Lost Planet's, but given the hardware it was built for the explosions looks great too. Gameplay is simple but addictive. It took me a little while to get used to the controls, but after playing the game for around 20 minutes they started to feel pretty good. PDO gives you limited control of your dragon, only allowing you to shoot straight forward. If you want to change the direction in which you are facing, pull one of the triggers and your dragon will turn to face that direction. Pressing the A button will fire off a basic projecile attack, while holding down the A button and sweeping the cursor across the screen will execute a lock-on attack that will chase after any enemy that it locks on to. The X button will make your dragon boost forward and the B button will make your dragon decelerate. You can also enter a powered up "berserk" mode and change the form of your dragon to be more attack or speed oriented than its original form. The worst part of the game is probably the sound, although in this game the worst is still pretty good. The sound effects are all pretty basic, but at least they get the job done. The voiceovers are all in Japanese, which bugged me a little at first until I realised that the Japanese voiceovers actually fit the game perfectly, and now if I could choose to have them in either English or Japanese, I'd have to go with Japanese. The music and dragon roars are all uniformly excellent as well. All in all, PDO is an extremely good game that combines great graphics, sound and gameplay into a tight and fast paced package. Boss fights are tough, but somehow they manage to not be frustrating, but rather just hard enough to be rewarding when you win. Panzer Dragoon Orta manages to combine all of these elements to form an amazing and addictive game that all Xbox or 360 owners should try to check out. Now pray for a 360 sequel :D
