|
Wimps, Whiners, Epileptics, and the
Elderly Need Not Apply:
Before I begin, let me make one thing clear. Orta is my first
experience with the Panzer Dragoon series. My last experience
with rail shooters was Rebel Assault 2 way, way back in the
day, unless you count some of the missions in James Bond 007:
Agent Under Fire. That’s right, I’m not a preexisting
fan of the series, nor did I even own a Saturn. That is, until
three days ago when I purchased a factory sealed Saturn on
eBay. Why, you may be asking, would I purchase a Saturn when
I already have a PS One, PS2, Xbox, GameCube, Dreamcast, GameBoy
Advance, GameBoy Color (two of them), Original GameBoy, NES,
SNES, Genesis, Master System, Lynx, ColecoVision, WonderSwan
Color, two desktop PCs, a laptop, TelStar (fifty some flavors
of Pong), Atari XL, Atari ST, and Atari 2600? Well that’s
obvious… because I’m a god damned freak, I never
owned one, and I now wish very much that I could inject all
things Panzer Dragoon directly into my veins until I sprout
wings and shoot homing lasers out my ass. After playing just
half way through Panzer Dragoon Orta, I became so entranced
by the story and characters that I felt legitimately guilty
that I never owned a Saturn and never played the originals.
Such a compulsion to buy old things I haven’t felt since
discovering that Final Fantasy II and III in the USA was actually
Final Fantasy IV and VI in Japan and we had been cheated out
of II, III, and V. It reached a fever pitch when I saw that
factory sealed Saturn on eBay, and quickly tumbled out of
control as I mercilessly sniped auctions for Panzer Dragoon
Zwei and Saga out from under other bidders. I went to obscene
lengths to horde these missing chapters into my collection
(the original Panzer Dragoon is included with Orta by the
way) in the space of three days, and I’m feeling very
happy about it. Panzer Dragoon Orta sold me on an entire franchise…
and a long dead console. It’s a rare game that can do
that.
As I said, I was not a fan of the franchise before picking
up this utterly fantastic game. Therefore, if you haven’t
played previous Dragoons either, you will probably be a fan
of the series after you play Orta. The graphics are spectacular,
highly stylized, and nothing short of breathtakingly gorgeous.
It takes an honest effort to remain focused on the action
around you and not just stare at the view from the back of
your dragon. The entire visual presentation virtually oozes
thick, gooey lumps of quality and creativity from every single
pore. If you can afford $2,000 for a new wide screen HDTV
and have yet to jump on the HDTV bandwagon, this game alone
is reason enough to suck it up and pay the piper. You’re
going to want a nice 5:1 surround system too, as the music
and sound effects found in Orta are just as scintillating
as the visuals. You could easily drop $3,000 upgrading you
home entertainment center just to give this game a properly
respectful environment in which to live.
The gameplay of Orta, as you are no doubt well aware, is
rail shooter in nature. Don’t let that turn you off
though. This isn’t Rebel Assault and it sure as hell
isn’t Space Harrier (which, by the way, was arguably
the first rail shooter). Yes, you do fly along a predetermined
path and shoot things, but it’s so much more complicated
than that. If you go into this game thinking that all you
have to do is aim and shoot, you’re going to get spanked
so badly you’ll wake up with bloody welts on your ass.
In Orta, as with the previous Panzer Dragoon games, enemies
attack you from all four directions. You use the shoulder
buttons to swing your view 90 degrees to your left or right
to face oncoming threats that are displayed on your radar.
Also like the previous games, you are given a handgun for
Orta while Lagi (the dragon) has his trusty homing lasers
(also known as “Arrows of Light”). Again, as with
the other games, you tap the fire button to use Orta’s
gun and hold down the fire button, “paint” targets,
and release to fire Lagi’s homing lasers. Homing lasers
are stronger than the gun but can’t shoot down projectiles,
while the gun can shoot down projectiles but can’t lock
on. Of course, you also have Lagi’s berserk attack that
débuted in Panzer Dragoon Zwei. It’s very standard
fare for anyone familiar with the Panzer Dragoon formula.
What is new, however, are the abilities to morph Lagi between
three different forms on the fly and to “glide”
to different locations around the enemies or to vary your
speed to evade attacks. Arguably, both of these abilities
were introduced in Panzer Dragoon Saga. However, the execution
was considerably different because Saga was an RPG with a
significant tactical flavor to it and Orta is a frenetic shooter
that gives you very little time to consider your options before
you must react.
Lagi’s three forms are the Base Wing, Heavy Wing, and
Glide Wing. The Base Wing, as you can probably guess, is a
good balance of the other two forms. You can glide twice consecutively
in this form, launch a good number of moderately powerful
homing lasers, and enjoy a rapid rate of fire from Orta’s
gun.
The Heavy Wing takes away your ability to glide, but adds
better durability. It also reduces the number of homing lasers
you can lock on with at one time and slows down Orta’s
gun tremendously, but also greatly increases the hitting power
of each. Another down side of the Heavy Wing is that it’s
rather slow, making it hard to maneuver around all those projectiles
you won’t be shooting down with Orta’s slow rate
of fire.
The Glide Wing will appear at first, to most people, to be
next to useless. This is more or less true for the first few
levels in the game, but you’ll soon encounter screenfuls
of projectiles coming at you at a time. This is where the
Glide Wing comes in. Not only is it obscenely maneuverable
and capable of doing three consecutive glides without waiting
for a recharge, it also features a huge targeting reticule.
Orta’s gun will lock onto, track, and smite anything
under that reticule. Obviously, this is most useful when shooting
down great swarms of small enemies or wave after wave of projectiles.
The down side, however, is that the Glide Wing is much more
susceptible to damage and completely lacks the ability to
fire homing lasers.
As you can see, you’ll be switching between forms frequently
throughout a level, especially during a boss fight. The final
bosses are amazingly complex ballets of lasers, projectiles,
and frantic dragon morphing. It’s not easy, but it is
a tremendous amount of fun. T’Mitka enjoyed just watching
it. Of course, according to her, it’s very “relaxing”
from the point of view of a spectator. I’m always glad
when she can take any interest at all in a game I’m
playing, but calling this game “relaxing” is simply
evil… which is fine with me. On top of all this, Lagi
will also gain levels as you collect blobs of DNA that are
released when you kill certain enemies or completely eradicate
entire groups of certain enemies. The DNA is applied to whatever
form you’re currently in, so again, you’ll be
doing a lot of morphing. You may need to take down a Dragonmare
with the Heavy Wing to get DNA, but want to apply the boost
to your Glide Wing.
As wonderful as this game is, there will undoubtedly be those
who profess to hate the game because it is far beyond their
gaming abilities. Below, you will find a “User Review”
from EBGame.com. This person who, depressingly enough, shares
my first name… is obviously a cock goblin. Here is the
post in its original state.
JeffreyBusby(Devildog_0300@hotmail.com)
on 2/8/2003
SUCKED
This game features a game play that is horrible
withcontrols that dont work. It throws way to many enemies
at you at you time. The game picks up to fast and people who
have never played the game before have problems playing it.
Peaple who gave it a good review only did so because they
are fans of the title. This game is not worth the money for
it neither your time for playing it. It is just another one
of the stupid Japanese games that is not worth ! In my opinion
this game should be erased from all memmory. I wish it was
from mine.
Now, here it is with my responses.
“This game features a game play that
is horrible withcontrols that dont work.”
Apparently, his apostrophe key dont work neither. I’m
not sure what he’s talking about here though. The controls
in this game are some of the tightest I’ve ever seen.
I think that by “dont work” he means to say “I
have no hand-eye coordination and thus I died a brutal death
on the first level”.
“It throws way to many enemies at you
at you time.”
Oh, waaa! Cry me a river! “Mommy! The mean game isn’t
letting me win! Make it let me win, Mommy! WAAAA!” Yes,
it does throw a ton of enemies at you at once… and if
you have an ounce of skill in your body you’ll be able
to at least put up a decent enough fight if you make full
use of Lagi’s and Orta’s abilities.
“The game picks up to fast and people
who have never played the game before have problems playing
it.”
You know what? That’s why there are three difficulty
levels. I played through on Easy on my first run so I wouldn’t
be blindsided by new bosses that could kill me before I could
experiment to learn their patterns. After that, Normal was
challenging but doable, and Hard is still a huge challenge.
In my opinion, that’s exactly how a game should be.
The more you play, the better you get.
“Peaple who gave it a good review only
did so because they are fans of the title.”
As stated before, I knew exactly dick about Panzer Dragoon
before playing this game. This game made me a fan of the series,
not the other way around. Oh… and what are “peaple”?
“This game is not worth the money for
it neither your time for playing it. It is just another one
of the stupid Japanese games that is not worth ! In my opinion
this game should be erased from all memmory. I wish it was
from mine.”
My, he’s bitter, isn’t he? I’m not sure
what “memmory” is nor why he wants to erase this
game from it, but he is obviously very angry with his own
inadequacies. I do believe, what we have here, is a person
destined to spend his life’s saving on a banana yellow
Corvette someday.
And now, a final word about Panzer Dragoon Orta’s story.
Here’s the basics. You play Orta, a young girl who has
been kept in a tower prison her whole life. She knows nothing
of what it means to care or to be cared for. One day, out
of the blue, the Empire attacks her village with a squadron
of Dragonmares, big genetically engineered dragonny things
that look strangely like an H. R. Geiger wet dream. They break
down the wall of Orta’s prison, intent on killing her,
but she is saved by another dragon at the last minute. This
is the dragon from previous games, Lagi, and this time he’s
chosen Orta as his rider. The two make their escape and Orta
gets dragged along on a journey that will eventually reveal
her true nature. That’s all I’m going to say about
the story, since I don’t want to spoil anything. A word
of advice though… whatever you do, do not skip the ending
credits. If you do, you may miss the final part of the ending…
which you will definitely want to see.
From the story to the visuals, sound, level design, controls,
and overall gameplay, Panzer Dragoon Orta does not disappoint.
It won’t make you forget other genres, but it will make
you totally rethink the potential of the currently endangered
rail shooter.
-K'Tok
|
