Introduction
Panzer Dragoon has come a long way. Though not even remotely apparent when looking at Orta's unassuming title screen, this game is the next installment in one of the oldest and most tenacious series' to survive the Sega Saturn. In fact, PD was one of the premiere reasons for owning the console. Remembered for its fun style and addictive gameplay, Panzer Dragoon set the stage for numerous sequels. Making its way onto the Xbox, the series is just as alive and vibrant as ever, showing some of the newer developers how to make a real challenging game.

Gameplay
The sound is basically good without any problems. Music is original and fun, though ultimately not as catchy as your average Final Fantasy's score. The sound effects fit very well along with the spooky dialogue, all of which is subtitled in English. The game doesn't have too much variety, but there are a few points where things get mixed up a bit. For example, 90% of the game is spent flying on the back of a huge dragon, shooting at incoming missiles and destroying enemy ships while facing off against a boss character during some point in each of the game's ten levels. But during one sequence, Orta actually rides her dragon like a huge horse across plains of snow with slightly different play mechanics to boot. Aside from that, however, things stay mostly the same. Fortunately, the controls are sensible (much more so than GunValkyrie, also developed by Smilebit, the people behind PDO) and the learning curve is short and sweet, with a nice tutorial to prepare you for the action.



Fun
For longtime fans of the Panzer Dragoon series, this is a given. They will enjoy this game for what it is and be especially thankful for a few of the game's hidden secrets in particular. However, newcomers would do well to rent this one first to see if it's what they like. Make no mistake, Orta is a difficult game. But it is also extremely rewarding in more ways than one. If the Xbox can get more games of this caliber, it will certainly remain a force to be reckoned with.



Story
First off, the graphics are astounding. Well, for the most part. During the game's rousing opening sequence, the gamer is bombarded with images of death, destruction, monstrous beasts known as "dragonmares," and the mysterious girl at the center of all of it. And it really does look amazing, showing just how far gaming has come since the days of the Saturn. Unfortunately, it's not all great. About halfway through PDO, one can't help but notice the horrid background textures used for the sky and also the inside of the mainframe you must explore. It truly is ugly and almost painful to look at. It's unfortunate that something like this had to be included in a game that was otherwise graphically flawless.

Graphics
Panzer Dragoon Orta isn't the longest game in the world, but it isn't supposed to be. The difficulty more than makes up for this, however and some casual gamers may find this frustrating to begin with. Luckily, there are plenty of unlockable secrets of varying quality to make up for the short play time.

Sound
Another small complaint is with the plot. Though seemingly deep at first, it falls apart quickly and never really comes back into focus. This isn't enough to ruin the overall feeling of the game, though, so it's not really much of a problem. It's also something of an incentive to play the game over, just to see if you can better understand the story the next time through. Besides that, there are different modes of difficulty, thus warranting more play time after you've completed it once.