When I think about some of the best sleeper games I’ve played, key titles come to mind; Demon’s Crest for the SNES, Mr. Bones on the Sega Saturn, and the Colony Wars series on the PSX. While I don’t think Panzer Dragoon fits the mold of a hit sleeper game or a dark horse that takes home awards, it has quietly been one of the better Sega games since its inception on the short-lived Saturn.

Developed for the Xbox in 2003 by Smilebit, a now defunct studio for Sega, taking over production duties from series director and game designer Akihiko Mukaiyama's Team Andromeda. By this time, most of the staff that had worked on the previous games had left, many of them after the completion of Panzer Dragoon Saga. Orta would end up being the final game in the series.

Panzer Dragoon Orta is a rail shooter where you control the titular character Orta, a teenage girl who rides atop a dragon. With the shoulder buttons, you can swoop the camera 90 degrees to alter your view at a quick pace. You can switch between three different transformations, Base Wing, Heavy Wing, and Glide Wing. Base offers solid all-around parameters in speed, agility, and power. Heavy Wing deals greater damage, but you move very slow. Glide Wing, a very fleeting class that's great for firing down a great deal of projectiles, making it perfect for defensive strategies. I also like the Glide Gauge, an ability that essentially activates Bullet Time for a distinct period, based on the three forms you're utilizing. Heavy Wing, for instance, can't use this, as it sacrifices the skill for more damage output. 

The longtime Panzer Dragoon formula has always been solid, and it only gets better. Locking on to enemies, even faster moving targets, is remarkably easy and the cursor speed is no slouch. Also new to the series is the way some boss battles are structured. After sustaining a certain amount of damage, you’ll have to speed up or slow down by boosting or downshifting (I couldn’t think of a better term, so if you know what the colloquial term is to slow down a dragon, feel free to let me know.) to attack from a different angle or to evade a killer blow that will cripple your health bar.

Orta’s visuals are very impressive, invoking a neo-futuristic, fantasy setting, a bit like Nausicaa Of Valley of the Wind. While rail shooters leave very little in terms of exploring the world you are in, what you do see is stunning. Rocky bluffs and cliffs filled with lots of flora, most of which will try to kill you, in some stages to navigating and veering amongst a huge armada of flying boogies and gigantic warships in aerial levels, the scene is genuinely breath-taking. Panzer Dragoon has a rich, eerie lore to it that always felt like it would be worth opening up and exploring, opportunity providing. The atmosphere in this series has always conveyed over the years, that of which represents a tale about a long, dark period of oppression from a corrupt empire seeking out those chosen by the Heavens to bring an end to the tyranny. While it’s commonplace for most fantasy games and RPGs today (Drakengard and the Dragon Age series), this was rare for a rail shooter to showcase this much depth and nuance.

The music is composed by the team responsible for the previous Panzer Dragoon games and Skies Of Arcadia, one of my favorite RPGs of the modern era, and of all time. It’s beautifully orchestrated and at no point ever overbearing or takes over any events during the story or gameplay. In-game effects are crisp, very familiar if you have played these games before. At points the game dips into complete silence where it seems like a musical cue would be appropriate.

Panzer Dragoon Orta is the strongest game in the series to date (I still have to get my hands on the elusive Saga RPG, after I pay I king's ransom for it), with its great visuals, excellent control scheme, new and welcome additions to the gameplay, solid story, and some well deserved extras, it’s a strong effort and I hope to see more additions in what I feel is still an underappreciated series of games. The difficulty is insane and might turn away some, but it’s an adrenaline-pumping action game nonetheless if you're fan of the franchise. It's also worth it to check out Crimson Dragon on Xbox, a fascinating spiritual successor to the Panzer Dragoon series.