Just to warn you all, I’m lousy at introductions 
. Let the tomato throwing begin!
I discovered the Panzer Dragoon series through a good friend of mine who let me borrow his copy of Panzer Dragoon Orta for XBox. I wasn’t expecting much but the praise he gave to it got me interested and I played it. Why didn’t I discover it sooner?! Panzer Dragoon Orta became one of my all time favorite video games and I wish I had bought the previous installments to the series that everyone here enjoys. I was lucky enough to find my own copy of Panzer Dragoon Orta from Amazon and finally beat it just two weeks ago. I wish it had been longer.
Thats all I can think of :anjou_embarassed: . Have nice day.
Welcome! And I’ll try to answer your question even though it was probly rhetorical… you didn’t discover Panzer Dragoon sooner because the Saturn “officially” sucked and didn’t have any games worth getting one for.
Or to put it another way, both Saturn and Dreamcast were worthless systems… until after they had given up the ghost and then it seems to have been “officially” discovered that there were lots of amazing games on them…
And for that matter Orta came out maybe just right before XBOX “officially” had any good games that weren’t Halo.
There’s always gems to be found off the beaten path, just gotta learn to assume the games everyone says are great aren’t automatically the greatest games that you will play. 
Welcome to the forums Tropicat! I’m pretty new to the wonderful world of Panzer myself! I had heard great things about Panzer Dragoon Saga here and there, and I thought Orta looked interesting. Just this past year, I started purchasing a bunch of consoles that I had never owned before (due to a lot of price drops on things like the Xbox), and I decided to order a Saturn and all four Panzer Dragoon titles!
I played them a bit out of order, as I started with Panzer Dragoon Zwei (the second title), and then the first, then Saga, and then Orta. Of them, both Saga and Orta have become two of my favorite games of all time.
I’m not all that partial towards the first two shooters, however. It seems as though they were certainly great games for their time, but I’m of the opinion that Orta takes everything that they do well, improves upon it to the point of perfection, and then adds in its own myriad charms to craft an experience far greater than the first two games could ever hope to be. That being said, I have a respect for the power of nostalgia and can certainly see why many fans that have been there since the beginning seem somewhat adverse towards it.
Saga, the one and only RPG of the Panzer family, is a very different beast altogether. I had a slight fear after the first two shooters that much of Saga’s appreciation stemmed from nostalgia, but I am very pleased to say that I found Saga to be unbelievably ahead of its time! Indeed, even by today’s standards Saga is still one of the most incredibly advanced and polished games ever released! It has an unbelievable creative spirit running through it, and as far as I’m concerned it is a true triumph of imagination and execution. It has a very steep price, but I don’t have a single regret about my purchase! 
So hey, my first response to your introduction was sort of inappropriate Tropicat, looking at it again. I’m a sardonic and sarcastic bastard by habit, but don’t take it personally or anything, I meant it very literally in a round about way.
I’ve witnessed enough new ‘discoverings’ of these games to be a little jaded about it, and while it’s not very likely to apply to you or any other individual, it can’t help but remind me of the times I myself have tried to tell people how great these games are all along and was , at least metaphorically, laughed at. And as I said in both cases the situation of the consoles at time of their release, in particular for PDS and Orta, is sadly a not insignificant part of this series’ story.
And Alucard, it’s very cool you at least managed to play them in some appropriate order, and as you say the original shooters are arguably more of a had-to-be-there deal. For myself there’s still at least a couple things that held Orta back from being as ‘perfect’ a game as Zwei, as much as I do appreciate it’s own refinements and elaborations of the formula.
First, it was designed around a more forced - perhaps more ‘tactical’ - pacing, as even evidenced by the fact you can’t change the aiming speed. Which isn’t precisely a bad thing, but it effectively removes most of the quick draw, twitch element I associate with the other games. If you screw up and miss any cues by even a little, there’s usually no chance reflexes can make up for it.
And it fails on a very personal criteria of mine, a sort of small thing but it’s part of almost every old-school scrolling shooter I’ve ever loved. Not only does almost every boss battle take a really long time in Orta, but there’s really nothing you can do that will ever make that duration seem dramatically less. Whereas in Zwei, as you get better at the rythm of the targetting it’s possible to totally kick their ass.
Azel though… yeah it really was just so ahead of it’s time, huh?
. Let the tomato throwing begin!
