Dragon Valor is an action role-playing game developed and released by Namco for the Sony PlayStation on December 2, 1999 in Japan. It is the third game in the Dragon Buster series, and features platform and hack and slash elements. In the Dragon Valor world, dragons are monsters with immense power; the player's role as a Dragon Valor is to slay them with a magical sword that is passed down through successive generations of the family. In a manner somewhat reminiscent to Phantasy Star III, the gamediffers from other action platform games of the time in that whom the protagonist marries during the game will influence who will lead the adventure in its next phase. There are two choices in the first chapter, and a possible two choices in the second chapter, hence the game flow has three potential paths and thus three different endings.
Gameplay
In Dragon Valor, the player's character is placed in a stage, with the intention to get from where they start towards the end of the stage or to defeat specific boss enemies along the way. Ultimately, the player must fight and defeat a dragon at the end of each chapter in order to clear the chapter. Along the way, players can collect items to boost their hit points, magic points, attack and defense. Players can also obtain 'tomes' after defeating specific enemies, which grant access to spells. The game's currency is Val, and players can collect this to buy recovery potions, status-improving items, or items that may be sold for Val or traded for other items later on in the game. Furthering this topic, the items that the player usually gets in a trade are status-improving items. As stated above, the protagonist changes after clearing each chapter. There are three possible paths, coinciding with the three magic swords that are found on those paths: Azos, Soul, and Kadum. Players generally control a character for one chapter, though some characters can be played twice. The paths, as stated above, are chosen depending on certain triggers in the first chapter. Fulfilling the trigger in Chapter 1, for example, means that Clovis marries Celia and becomes King of Raxis, and the next player character is their son, Arlen. Not fulfilling the trigger means that Clovis instead marries Carolina, which results in the next player character being Kodel. There is a similar choice trigger as Kodel over whether or not to save Fannah in his chapter. Regardless of the fact that the characters change every chapter, the basic commands remain almost the same, with some slight variations in how they are carried out visually being the only telltale difference.
Reception
Chet Barber reviewed the PlayStation version of the game for Next Generation, rating it three stars out of five, and stated that "It may not blow your socks off, but Dragon Valor is a solid title worthy of any gamer's attention." The game received "mixed" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.
