Dragon Valor

Game Overview by Mike Finkelstein

It’s likely that most players have never heard of Dragon BusterA seminal title of the early arcade action scene, this game from Namco helped to usher in the kinds of platforming action adventure that became a staple of many series, Castlevania included.. Although an interesting arcade title, one that would go on to influence many other action platformers after its initial release in 1984, the game was never officially introduced in the U.S., seeing play only in Japan and Europe. That goes some way towards explaining why its first sequel, Dragon Buster II: Yami no FūinA Famicom-exclusive sequel to the arcade original, this second Dragon Buster game ditches the platforming perspective for overhead action, and ends up feeling less interesting and less exciting by comparison., was released only on the Famicom, and in limited numbers. Namco knew they had something here, they just weren’t sure exactly how to get out into the hands of the masses.

It took four years between the release of the first Dragon Buster and its (little loved) Famicom sequel, but it would take even longer for Namco to revisit the franchise again. It was 1999 in Japan (2000 everywhere else) before Dragon Valor, the third and (so far) final game in the series arrived, exclusive to the PlayStation, and it was also the first time that the series saw release in the U.S. The game debuted to little fanfare and mixed reviews, which might also explain why the series hasn’t seen a fourth entry since.

The thing is, I don’t think Dragon Valor is necessarily a bad game. For the era it came out in and the genre it was working in it certainly didn’t do much to stand out, especially if all you played was the first chapter of the game (which would take most players an hour or so to complete) and got bored. Make no mistake, I can understand that impulse. The game is repetitive, slow, and at times kind of tedious. But there’s a certain quality to the game that makes it interesting and that, mixed with an interesting story progression system, does make for an experience that’s worth trying out at least once.

The game opens with the avenger, Clovis, off to kill a dragon. Years before, Clovis’s sister was killed by a dragon, and while Clovis was able to defeat the beast, it resurrected into a new form. Clovis swore revenge and has been tracking the beast ever since. That’s what led the warrior into the Kingdom of Raxis, a land overrun with evil monsters and dastardly knights. Clovis has to decide if he wants to free the land or ignore it and search for the dragon, and in the end, one way or another, the beast must be felled.

And that leads to the second chapter. Depending on Clovis’s actions in chapter one, one of two different heroes will emerge as the next generation of dragon slayers, off to bust some dragons and save another land from evil. And then, depending on their actions, the next generation will rise up to fight a new beast. Each generation picks up the mantle of the Dragon Buster, off to fight evil and save the land once more, and it’s entirely up to the player what course of events eventually leads them to a path of glory.

To be clear, the multiple paths to explore, with branching story ideas and different heroes taking the lead, is probably Dragon Valor’s greatest strength. The original two games in the series had the same hero going on a repetitive quest, over and over, fighting greater and longer adventures to, time and again, kill a dragon. Dragon Valor puts a generational spin on the adventure so while your basic mission is the same – play a chapter, kill a dragon, rinse and repeat – the change in characters, and the evolution of the story, does help to make it feel a little less repetitive overall.

Not that it isn’t repetitive. Most of the game breaks down into the same loop. You’ll navigate on the map to the next location to explore. There you’ll follow an (often) linear path through the dungeon, fighting monsters and, possibly, looking for treasures. Sometimes you’ll find a secret nook and hidden character, but often your job is to trudge from one end of the dungeon to the other before finding a boss enemy and killing them. You’ll repeat this for however many locations are in a chapter until you finally reach the dragon’s lair and kill the beast. Then it’s on to a new character to do it all over again.

In fairness, that was also the gameplay look of the first two games of the series. Dragon Valor is nothing if not effectively consistent with the scope and concept of the first two games. But there are flaws with the way that Dragon Valor handles it that didn’t feel as prevalent in the previous adventures. For starters, there is far less complexity to the dungeons as they’re laid out in Dragon Valor. Where the first game was sprawling dungeons with multiple paths to explore, and the sequel had massive, overhead caves and dungeons to clear to find the item and exit, Dragon Valor is far more linear, far less interesting in exploration or adventure than it is in getting from Point A to Point B, and that does decrease some of the fun.

The repetitive nature of the loops also wears more the longer you go through the game. While Dragon’s Valor is absolutely packed with content (you could play this game for six hours or more searching for all the items and finding all the story paths to unlock), the core loop doesn’t really change. Enter dungeon, fight enemies, find boss, find dragon. Over and over. It worked in the arcade because you were trying to get through as many loops as you could on a quarter and you wanted to see just how well you could do. In Dragon Valor, though, that impetus is gone, so you are here to see the story and the game, and you have no pressure to try and do it efficiently.

In think that’s something that really holds the game back: it’s so tied to the idea of the arcade loop that it doesn’t try to evolve the gameplay at all. It’s a 3D adventure that functions like a overhead dungeon crawler, but there’s less to do and less to see than in any of the previous titles. It’s as if to fit the game within the PSX’s limitations and function as a home release, the developers actually made something less expansive, gameplay wise, than either of the previous two titles.

And that’s sad because, if we set aside the gameplay for a second, Dragon Valor does present a fairly handsome package. It’s packed with story, has a decent art style, and has a great soundtrack to boot. If you have to spend hours in the game (and you don’t mind chunky, early PSX graphics) then you get a game that looks pretty good and was clearly meant to entertain. It’s not as pretty, or as artistic, as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, but then few games really were, and honestly Symphony was reviled by American audiences when it came out (because, “ew, sprites,” was the sentiment at the time) while this game had all the chunky 3D graphics American audiences wanted.

Except it still failed to win people over, and that brings us back to the gameplay. I like the idea of Dragon Valor but it feels too safe in its design, too limited in scope without pushing enough boundaries. The multiple paths to explore is a neat idea, but every hero, despite looking different, functions generally the same. There’s little incentive to explore the game if you don’t like the gameplay and aren’t hooked by the story, and the gameplay loop itself is ever fixed and unchanging. You have to really want to like Dragon Valor to get into it, and that’s really a hard sell, not only now but back in 1999 as well.

Dragon Valor is a great game in concept that fails in execution. It’s one I really wanted to like, and I think plenty of games could probably enjoy a loop or two of the experience if they gave it a chance. But I wouldn’t want to go back to it, and it’s certainly not going to hold a prized place on my shelf. It’s a mid-tier actioner that really should have been so much better.