Dragon Valor
The Next Generation

Review by Chi Phan

STORY

The story of Dragon Valor takes places through different generation of heroes. And somewhat different family tree branches. The story begins in the Prologue and Chapter 1 where the hero Clovis is searching for Dragons to be killed. We learned earlier in the Prologue that Dragons are evil in the world of Dragon Valor and that Clovis sister, Elena was killed by a Dragon. Clovis becomes a Dragon Valor, a special knight equipped with a sword that can kill Dragons. So basically you could say that Clovis makes his living finding and killing Dragons. Anyways the country of Raxis is said to be harboring a Dragon. In which case Clovis decides to head off in search of the Dragon in the country of Raxis. Now here in Raxis, depending on what route you take, Clovis will meet up with one of the two feature female characters in Chapter 1. Carolina and Celia. At the end of the chapter, after defeating the very easy Dragon boss. Clovis will marry one of the two girls and thus setting up your generation tree branch. Basically there's not much of a story plot in this game. Each chapter (there are a total of 5 chapters by the way) has a very small storyplot line where the main hero goes through various dungeons and fight a sub Dragon Boss at the end of each chapter and marries the female character in that chapter. The son or daughter of the married couple becomes the lead character in the next chapter. Later on in the late chapters you finally get a sense of an overrall plotline to Dragon Valor. Basically the Dragons are trying to revive a dead Dragon Boss. But still there's really not much of any real storyline here as the game is more gameplay focus than anything else. Kinda disappointing. I do like how the generation of family tree branch is presented to us though. It's much better than the way Saga Frontier 2 handled it.

Score: 3/10

CHARACTERS

Oh boy. This game put the action to action rpg. This is basically a loner rpg game. Meaning 90% of the game consist of just you, the player, controlling whatever lead character of a particular chapter that you are playing in, searching through various dungeons and stuff. There's really no basic secondary characters here or any real character developement. Each chapter will give you a cameo appearance of a female character where the hero will end up marry at the end of the chapter and that's about it. Overrall the characters are boring and uninteresting.

Score: 3/10

GRAPHICS

Graphics are base on a side to side scroll in a 3-D elements using polygons characters and background. Basically the entire game is almost made up of a side to side screen scrolls. Still it is amazing how they manage to put the 3-D into this side to side elements. The polygons characters aren't very detailed and somewhat deformed at times. The background are okay and the colors are average at best. Not one of your best polygons graphics game. That's for sure.

Score: 5/10

MUSIC

Music wise is pretty average at best. There are like maybe 4 or 5 tunes and that's about it. The tunes aren't bad but they're not that good too. When you're playing this game, you'll probably won't even notice the music at all. Sure Alundra 2 had average music but at least some of their tunes kinda stands out. Nothing here stands out. Another disappointing part of this game.

Score: 4/10

GAMEPLAY

Well, as for the gameplay. It's pretty much your basic action rpg game. Hack and slash your way through various dungeons. Use your elemental magic when needed. Fight the Sub Dragon Boss at the end of each chapter and move onto the next chapter. Each chapter is fairly easy with hardly any puzzles to solve. The dungeons are pretty short. The Boss fights or any fights for that matter are fairly easy. So basically go through the various mazes inside the dungeons, searching for the dungeon exit to move onto the next dungeon. Sometimes you may have to locate a key to open a door but you really shouldn't have any problems with locating the key at all. You can use Magic but they're pretty useless except for your healing magic. Now unlike the typical action rpg. Dragon Valor gives you a wide range of attacks through different buttons combonation like in street fighter games. You can do regular hack & slash as well as incorporate different moves like Backflip, Double Backflip, Backflip into a Kick, ect. It should take you about 2-3 hours tops to finish one chapter. So you should be able to finish one Dragon Valor game in about 15 hours tops. While the gameplay is very easy, it is also very uninspiring. Searching or exploring through dungeons is very boring after awhile. The good news is that the dungeons are fairly short and the enemies are very easy to kill. Still a game needs to be more than just hack & slash your way through a dungeon. It also doesn't help that the story is boring as well. That is if there's a story to begin with. If gameplay can get boring at times than you have to have a good story to get people to continue to move along in the game. But if the story is boring and the gameplay is boring too then there's not much point to sticking it out for the duration of the game. For the whole time I was playing this game, I was asking myself, "Is this chapter almost over yet?" It's not a good sign if you're doing that. That tells you that you would rather do something else.

Score: 5/10

EXTRAS/REPLAY

Now there's really no extras at all. None that I can find that is. No mini games or anything to distract you from exploring dungeons. Now there are two separate scenarios base on whom you get to marry at the end of chapter 1. After finishing your first game, you can make a clear game save and start the game over and see what's different in the other scenarios. After finishing both scenarios, you get a Gallery Option at the Start screen. Basically the gallery options let you look a numerous different artwork for Dragon Valor. The disappointing things is that once you turn off your playstation, the Gallery Option disappear. It appears that the Gallery Option only shows up immediately after you finish both games but if you turn your playstation off, it's gone for good whether you made a save or not. Quite sad really. I give it a 5 for the multiple endings and the gallery option. I'm being generous here.

Score: 5/10

Well, Dragon Valor is strictly for beginner's action rpgers and nothing more. This game is quite boring at times. This is the kind of game that you really don't want to play unless you don't have anything better to do. I like the whole generation concept as I did when it first appeared in Saga Frontier 2 but these generation games need to have a bigger and more develope storyline. Without a good storyline, rpg games tend to fall flat.

Final Score: 4/10

Best Hero: Miheal

Best spell: Heal

Best Move: Hammer Blow

Also try: Threads of Fate

Up next: Lunar 2, FFIX, Breath of Fire IV, and Persona 2