Gorgeous. Fast paced. Engrossing. Frustrating. The words that come to mind when I think of Panzer Dragoon Orta.
This game has some of the best visuals I have ever seen. Crisp, fluid, smooth graphics abound in this game. A very organic look permiates the game, much in the same way that Retro Studios gave Metorid Prime an organic look; but PDO adds bump mapping as well.
Minimalistic sound, but great music, is the limits of the sound in this game. Still, it's perfect for not distracting you while playing.
Like any good shooter, the game is very fast paced. Tons of enemies to shoot down, and the ability to shoot down certain enemy rounds (a staple of older shooters) make this game move at speeds you wished it didn't.
Once you start playing, you really want to keep going. Differing paths allow for this in certain levels, as you can redo the levels in different ways, if you so desire.
The only thing that is real annoying is the difficulty. Even on normal, the default difficulty setting, it's damn hard. This might turn off a lot of more casual gamers who like to just jump in and be able to beat games quickly.
Another minor gripe is the lack of checkpoints in levels. Making one simple mistake beofre the boss fight on each level makes you redo the entire level over again. This can get extremely frustrating on certain levels. Especially levels where there is a mini-boss before the main boss.
Some of the bonus features are nice, especially the ability to play the original Panzer Dragoon (a port of the PC version, not the Saturn version). However, this feature gets to be about useless in the long run, because you can't save your progress in the oringla Panzer Draggon.
You also can only have 1 save game per hard drive, which is really unacceptable IMHO.
I heartily reccomend this to fans of shooters, and of the Panzer Dragoon series; for those not falling into that category, I suggest you rent it first.
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