Orta would have made me die in pleasure if it complimented Zwei and Saga…but it didn’t, and was, thus, a failure.
[quote=“Megatherium”]
if you liked saga’s level of detail, orta should have killed you with pleasure.[/quote]
can you please define what you mean by detail? do you talk about graphics here or do you mean complex story or what?
for me detail is something that fulfills a purpose. I can make a 2048x2048 pixel texture in photoshop and add “detail” with filters. but that is nothing in comparison to the tiny machine gunners on the firs endboss in PD. They actually fall from the ship into the sea…
so yes, orta had higher resolution in polygons and texture. that does not necesarily mean more detail.
I always wondered why the mini-spotlights fell off the ship. Now I know 
[quote=“lordcraymen”]for me detail is something that fulfills a purpose. I can make a 2048x2048 pixel texture in photoshop and add “detail” with filters. but that is nothing in comparison to the tiny machine gunners on the firs endboss in PD. They actually fall from the ship into the sea…
so yes, orta had higher resolution in polygons and texture. that does not necesarily mean more detail.[/quote]
i think our definitions are in accord. orta had both meaningful detail as well as graphics to support that detail (as can be seen with the imperial bullets that are each printed with the face of the emperor).
How is that meaningful detail when you only get to realise that when you check the model in Pandora’s Box…
Anyway, yes, Orta has detailed graphics… But that alone doesn’t mean they portay something better than the previous games. When did the argument over which is the better game turn into an argument over which game has higher polycounts and higher resolution textures… There’s no argument to the latter really. There is however to the first.
I love my Zwei… And I don’t think anyone addressed my explanation on that in my previous post… I won’t bother quoting but it revolved around enemy design, level design, enemy patterns and the joyous feel of gliding through the levels which imo isn’t replicated well enough in Orta…
And of course I also prefer the overal artwork style of that game over Orta’s by far… And as I explained before in other threads, the previous games simply evolved the art style of their predecessors while Orta in a lot of places CHANGES it which is a big difference… To put it in PD terms, Orta, to me, is a Mutation instead of the Evolution it should have been 
THANK YOU! Someone needed to say that. It may not be as good as Panzer Dragoon Saga but PDS came and went, play it as many times as you like, if you want to continue to dwell in its greatness then by all means do so and continue to hope that perhaps PDS2 will one day come out, and if not, know that PDO is possible the last, THE LAST Panzer Dragoon game ever. You can either appraciate because it was something that everyone wanted or you can dislike because it didnt fit your ideal Panzer world.
So what if PDO was not like any of the other previous Panzer Dragoons? It is not the abomination that some of you make it seem.
It is a game, I enjoyed it. I liked the music, even if it may not be “Panzerish”
Of course I was dissappointed that I did not see the old Battleship crusiers… well to fight against… there were some in the beginning movie, but honestly, can things like the ships, the lack of towers, etc really make a game not that enjoyable? Can something as odd as the Statue be that bad? Just because it was not Panzer Like? Wow, like how much do we really know about the Panzer world? Besides the little portion of land that the stories took place on? You certaintly did not explore the whole world, and surely there are cultures out there that have strange things… kind of like our own world.
I just simply like the game for what it is, even if it was my very first PD game I still would have liked it.
but that really is entirely based off of wether or not you liked the changes. that was the problem kadamose was having; not being able to separate legitimate statements and his flatly incorrect anti-orta conjecture. saying it is a mutation rather than an evolution says nothing. both mutation and evolution entail changes. if your personal view is that the changes were bad or out of place, then you’ll view it as a mutation.
but as atolm pointed out, it is a bit presumptuous to assume we know how the PD world should be when all we’ve seen is one small region in three brief periods of time. if they made a PD game that took place during the ancient age, there would be enormous changes made to the game. no ruins, no mutated types, the empire wouldn’t even be in the game. i suppose you guys might take that as a personal slap in the face for how mutated it would be.
consider it from my (clearly more gameplay-oriented) perspective, i view saga as the outcast since it was an entirely different format and the gameplay was about the polar opposite of what the first two and orta were. but i accepted saga for what it was and enjoyed it sufficiently.
also, i was able to see the emperor’s face on the bullets during gameplay… though i didn’t recognize it as the emporer because i didn’t know what he looked like.
Atolm : this is not a forum about cool games.This is about a PD fan communitty.You can’t say you are a fan of series if there isn’t something common between each game.
Sure as a game Orta as nearly perfect but as a PD game (that it should be; if they didn’t want to do a PD game they could do another thing) it’s not the best and is not very good.
Megathedium : Who are we to say what’s Panzer and what’s not?We are they guys that “fell” for the common patterns between the first 3 games.We of all people know.Developers can be in a “joking mood” and decide to put Sonic somewhere in the next PD game.Is it legit?Of course it is : it’s their creation.
Will it be coeherent with what they did to that point?No.
If Panzer is suposed to be a coeherent world some drastic aesthetic changes shouldn’t have took place.Surely the Towers’ deactivation didn’t affect the Imperial sense of fashion.Oh wait : it did.
Very well put Gehn.
Same with the new Star Wars movies maybe fun movies, but they are not good Star Wars movies. Midichloreans… sure.
[quote=“Kadamose”]
The original Panzer Dragoon was medicore, and only that. The original game, by itself, will not make anyone a fan of the series. Zwei was a HUGE improvement over the original, and Saga was basically a 1up from Zwei. In the end, it was Saga that made most of us fans of the series…but if Saga didn’t compliment both Ein and Zwei in every way, then we probably wouldn’t love it as much as we do. Play Saga again…and pay attention to the detail…it’s amazing.[/quote]
Utter rubbish you sound like you joined the series late in it?s life.
It wasn?t SAGA at all that made Panzer fans of the series. It was the 1st 2 games.
I still love the 1st game , and think it?s the best in series.
The series did not start out as a RPG, but a Shooter . That?s why I agree with Atolm so much aboutall this anti ORTA load of rubbish.
I wish people would get over the fact that it isn?t a RPG.
The series started out as shooter, and this is more a sequel than SAGA ever is. It goes back to the series original routes. There loads of SEGA fans wishing Sonic and PS games would do just that
ORTA combines the best parts of the 1st Two games, and add in a bit of SAGA into the mix. It?s hands down the best game I?ve played this gen.
Yes I love to see a SAGA II, but I love to see a ORTA II as well. Shooter are my fav genre
Maybe peopel would like to see an RPG but no one said Orta was a let down because it was a shooter.If you the entire thread you’ll see the primary let down was the changes made to the world of PanDra ; not the genre of the game.
Personally I liked the fact Orta was a shooter and not an RPG.
Why do people keep making this as if the ones that don’t like Orta do it out of their love for PDS… I even strictly held my part of the discussion comparing Orta with Zwei, as did others, in order to avoid such things…
As for us “nitpicking” when we mention things like the statue or that “claws boss” airship, whatever it was called… Well, we are not nitpicking, they are the tip of the iceberg as far as out of place changes are concerned, they are simply more striking because they are bosses and they are huge and they actually represent a lot of the game’s visual changes… So they will obviously be mentioned as examples of the changes. Still, more common enemies were just as different (what the hell were those things you were fighting while flying at the side of the huge air fortress?). The dragon itself was different too, is that nit picking as well? You can argue that some of the changes on it happened due to its separation from the heresy program but the changes are not only anatomical (I actually liked the way the dragon runs even tho i didn’t like the way the claws looked while he flies around) but also in the visual style things are portrayed…
And, Megatherium, you also ignored half of my last post and yet still replied to me quoting a small portion of it?
Oh and maybe there are different regions but there’s still a single empire and a single emperor that does things his way… So maybe you have regions but you basically still only have “The Empire” and “The Seekers” and I guess now “The Wormriders” too…
[quote=“GehnTheBerserker”]Atolm : this is not a forum about cool games.This is about a PD fan communitty.You can’t say you are a fan of series if there isn’t something common between each game.
[/quote]
Thank you for pointing out the obvious.
My points still stands however.
Shooter, RPG, World, who cares? Just because there were some changes in the pattern does not make it something bad. Most people would welcome a change because it is something new and not the same pattern that most great things tend to repeat. No one wants to read a novel (or anything) series only to have the same things in it. It can still be same World that we all know and love but like in the real world there are changes in patterns.
And anything that breaks/changes these paradigms does not fit into the ideal Panzer world? Give me a break, the lack of Towers for one example, they were shut down. Thats it, why keep their presensce in the story when they have no part of the story? Although the suspecion about the Underground Tower level is neat… that is something that old fans can enjoy…It would probably be confusing to new fans about Towers, PDO was about something new, for PDS concluded the story on the Saturn and PDO, if any other PD game shall ever come out, might as well set something in for fans, old and new to something that everyone can relate to.
The tricky thing about series is exactly this. How much change is enough? Too much? Too little?
Most people (including those here) blast the FF series for sticking too close to its formula. Each iteration, though featuring a different “skin,” is essentially the same story. They all have similar pseudo-spiritual themes, threads concerning coming of age, etc.
Yet, when it comes to Panzer, why is change unwelcome? For some, it seems that the changes made “ruined the world.” Would you rather the same exact themes/threads from PDS repeated over and over, ad infinitum, with new characters? Would you rather the team repeat the Lucas-mistake of using the same foil over and over (RE: the Deathstar didn’t need to appear twice)?
Not saying either is correct, just posing questions for food for thought purposes.
Building on and around the core gameplay is good enough for me. What a shame Sega was incapable of doing that in the latest iteration of Shining Force.
I’m all for telling different tales, but that is something that’s determined by the mass market which seems to eat up every last chunk of whatever garbage Square-Enix spews out.
You people sure like missinterpretation.
Atolm : Don’t you get it?We are not saying change is bad.But the changes were HUGE.Are you saying the differences between PD1 and 2wei or 2wei and Saga are non existant?
Everyone likes evolution.
Oh Abadd I don’t get your point.You say we bash the FF series for beeing repetitive and we’re welcome for it? O_o
[quote=“Abadd”]The tricky thing about series is exactly this. How much change is enough? Too much? Too little?
Most people (including those here) blast the FF series for sticking too close to its formula. Each iteration, though featuring a different “skin,” is essentially the same story. They all have similar pseudo-spiritual themes, threads concerning coming of age, etc.
Yet, when it comes to Panzer, why is change unwelcome? For some, it seems that the changes made “ruined the world.” Would you rather the same exact themes/threads from PDS repeated over and over, ad infinitum, with new characters? Would you rather the team repeat the Lucas-mistake of using the same foil over and over (RE: the Deathstar didn’t need to appear twice)?
[/quote]
There’s a big difference in your analogy, Abadd…Final Fantasy is NOT an epic series…it’s basically the same story, with different characters and names in different parallel universes/planets. Panzer Dragoon, however, is THE SAME STORY, THE SAME CHARACTERS (i.e. dragon/heresy program), and is a very generational EPIC.
Though the Saturn series ended with a bang with PDS, the story was far from finished and left alot of questions unanswered (alot of people think that ending a series with questions still lingering is a good thing, but I disagree - with a world and story as rich as the Panzer Dragoon universe, you don’t leave loose-ends unless you plan to resolve them later…which I believe was the plan in the beginning, but something got lost in translation when the planning of Orta took place)
Don’t get me wrong - gameplay wise, Orta was magnificent…but when compared EPICALLY to the Saturn trilogy, it was utter crap.
There were too many changes…some big, some small, and I did not feel at home in the Panzer world anymore. This is a very bad thing, that I hope is corrected.
Oh, and yes, I hate the Final Fantasy series with a passion (just wanted to add that in)
Gehn: I was primarily saying that everyone bashes FF for not changing enough, yet people seem to complain that Panzer changed too much. I was just throwing it out there to see where people drew the line, or what differentiations are being made between the two.
Kadamose: Point taken, but with FF, it could be argued that each individual installment of FF could be considered epic in and of itself. But, how is, say, the recycling of a world/characters intrinsically better than the recycling of a theme or story arc?
PDS had definite closure on many levels, which all but forced the new team to start over with a new world, new characters, etc. Change was inevitable. How is this bad?
[quote=“GehnTheBerserker”]You people sure like missinterpretation.
Atolm : Don’t you get it?We are not saying change is bad.But the changes were HUGE.Are you saying the differences between PD1 and 2wei or 2wei and Saga are non existant?
Oh Abadd I don’t get your point.You say we bash the FF series for beeing repetitive and we’re welcome for it? O_o[/quote]
At least Abadd knows what I am talking about, I just think I am not doing well enough to get my point across.
If anyone has played BOTH final Fantasy and Panzer Dragoon, then you will know what Abadd is talking about. Change is neccesary for the Final Fantasy series, despite the fact that they are different stories, there are elements that make the game simular to the others ones, but when the Change comes to Panzer Dragoon, it is not welcomed or more so, not highly looked at.
Change is not welcome in the Panzer Dragoon universe BECAUSE it’s basically a novel trying to tell a story in multiple incriments. Evolution for the series is not a bad thing, and it’s something to look forward to…but as pointed out earlier, Orta was a MUTATION, or better yet, a misinterpretation of what the world was supposed to be. If Orta took place several thousand years AFTER PDS, then yes, the changes could have been justified…but the story took place a mere 30 years after the deactivation of the Towers…that much change, in such a short amount of time, is not realistic and left a really bad taste in my mouth.
Another thing disappointing about Orta, is most of the time your were fighting the imperial fleet, instead of the fierce creatures of the world…christ, you didn’t even see a freaking Baldor in the whole game; Episode 2 and 5 were the only episodes where you fought the ancients’ legacy…and none of them were familiar.