Panzer Dragoon Orta on Xbox Series X|S: How to Play

Panzer Dragoon Orta is the first game in our series on 15 Xbox classics you can still play on Xbox Series X|S. Sega’s dragon-riding shooter was one of the original Xbox’s most striking exclusives, and more than 20 years later it’s still on the Xbox Store and runs on current consoles through backward compatibility.

Panzer Dragoon Orta at a glance
Developer: Smilebit
Publisher: Sega
Original release: 19 December 2002 (Japan), 14 January 2003 (North America), 21 March 2003 (Europe)
Original console: Xbox
Xbox Store price: £8.99 (not currently sold on the US store)
Game Pass: not included
Backward compatible since: 17 April 2018
What is Panzer Dragoon Orta?

Panzer Dragoon Orta is a rail shooter. You play Orta, a girl who has been held captive for most of her life until a dragon breaks her free. From then on, the dragon flies along a fixed path through each level while you aim and fire at enemies coming from any direction, turning the view to cover the front, sides and rear.

The game’s main twist is that the dragon can change between three forms at any moment. Base Wing is the all-rounder. Heavy Wing hits harder but is slower. Glide Wing is fast and can boost but is weaker in a fight. Swapping between them to suit each attack wave and boss is central to scoring well.

The main story runs across ten levels. Beyond that, the game has an unlockable menu called Pandora’s Box, which holds extra modes, an encyclopaedia of the world and a full version of the very first Panzer Dragoon.

Panzer Dragoon Orta’s history on Xbox

Sega’s in-house studio Smilebit started development in early 2001, and the game took about 18 months to make. Around a dozen staff who’d worked on earlier Panzer Dragoon games at Sega’s Team Andromeda came back for it, and it was originally pitched as “Panzer Dragoon Vier”. It was directed by Akihiko Mukaiyama, his first time as a director, and produced by Takayuki Kawagoe.

The game was first announced in March 2001 as part of a deal between Sega and Microsoft to bring Sega games to Xbox. It was shown under its final name at E3 2002 and launched in Japan that December, reaching North America in January 2003 and Europe that March.

The music is by Saori Kobayashi, and the ending theme, “Anu Orta Veniya”, is sung in the series’ own invented language. In the US, it was the fifth best-selling Xbox game in NPD’s January 2003 chart.

Orta was the last new Panzer Dragoon game until a remake of the original game in 2020.

Why it matters

Panzer Dragoon Orta came out during the original Xbox’s push to sign exclusives from Japanese publishers, and Sega was one of the biggest names to come on board. The game was built for Xbox hardware from the start rather than ported, which shows in how much the console could put on screen at once in 2002.

It’s also a reminder of how many original Xbox games are now hard to get. Panzer Dragoon Orta is one of the few from that line-up that you can still buy digitally and play on a current console without hunting down the disc.

How to play Panzer Dragoon Orta on Xbox Series X|S today

Panzer Dragoon Orta joined the Xbox One backward compatibility programme on 17 April 2018, and every backward-compatible game also runs on Xbox Series X|S. You can buy it digitally from the Xbox Store for £8.99. It isn’t currently sold on the US store, so availability depends on where your account is set up.

The store lists it as Xbox One X Enhanced. It isn’t in any Game Pass tier, and it doesn’t have FPS Boost.

If you still own the original disc, put it in an Xbox One or Xbox Series X and the console will download the backward-compatible version to play. The Xbox Series S has no disc drive, so you’ll need the digital copy there.

Original Xbox games didn’t have achievements when they came out. Panzer Dragoon Orta has turned up in some players’ achievement lists with no achievements attached yet, as we reported in our story on original Xbox games appearing in achievement lists. Xbox hasn’t confirmed achievements for it.