Panzer Dragoon Orta

Panzer Dragoon Orta marks the return of Sega's cult series to the more powerful Xbox hardware, after its home platform Dreamcast met an untimely end and Sega decided to become a purely software company. Development was handled by Smilebit, a Sega subsidiary specializing in action titles, and it managed to bring the series' signature rail-shooter genre into a far more audiovisually ambitious form than the older hardware of the original entries ever allowed.

The player rides on the back of a dragon whose appearance and combat abilities can be switched between three distinct forms during battle - attack, defense, and speed - and choosing the right form at the right moment is key to surviving hordes of enemies attacking from every direction on screen at once. The camera can be rotated all the way around the dragon, and the targeting reticle lets you lock onto multiple enemies at once and unleash a volley of homing missiles, so despite the fixed flight path this is a game demanding quick decisions and full awareness of the surrounding space. The short but dense campaign is designed for repeat playthroughs thanks to scoring and unlockable bonus content.

The game takes place in an enchanting, post-apocalyptic world full of organic, biomechanical structures and ancient ruins of a long-vanished civilization, its visual style blending delicate artistic stylization with then-advanced graphical effects, accompanied by the atmospheric, symphonically-tinged music of composer Saori Kobayashi. The fluidity of the action, boosted by the Xbox's extra power over the Dreamcast, and the gripping story told from the perspective of heroine Orta proved that Sega could still craft exceptional artistic experiences even after abandoning its own hardware. Sales stayed modest, which only makes Panzer Dragoon Orta more prized today as a collector's gem among Xbox titles and one of the last great entries in this significant Sega series.