Dragon Valor

Dragon Valor is a PlayStation game that was released in the US in 2000. It's an action RPG with simple combat and very basic “find the key” type puzzle dungeons. The story is fairly straightforward as well, being a simple Good vs. Evil plot with a generation of dragon slayers fighting various dragons and their minions. A cool wrinkle in the basic premise is that characters change frequently as time moves forward and you take control of the offspring of your previous PC. The actions you perform in certain generations determine which character you will play as in the next generation, and the story branches off in some interesting ways.

I played Dragon Valor a few months after it came out. My cousin had it, and every time I went to visit him we played for hours and hour. This time of year I always remember a New Year's Eve party at his house where we stayed in his room and played it all night. We kept getting stuck at a very early boss, a dragon with ice powers. So we just kept restarting and playing the game through up to that point. It's actually a really clear memory for me and it makes me smile. My cousin had a blacklight and all these glowing stars and a glowing alien head in his room.

It was awesome. Kind of like the Thanksgiving another year at my house where he and I played Tomb Raider, the St. Francis Folly level, over and over. But that's another story.

Eventually I borrowed Dragon Valor from him and played it into the ground, going through every path multiple times. About a year ago I borrowed the discs from him again to rip and play through on ePSXe. As you know if you read this blog, I'm playing it again on my Nexus 7 (although, for some reason my rips didn't work and I had to find another disc image online) and it's a blast.

I don't know what it is about the game, maybe it's the fond memories, but I just have so much fun with it. Maybe it's the fact that the story, combat and puzzles are all so simple (even that ice dragon now that I suck less at games) that I can keep my brain about 80% off while I play. Maybe it's become a form of meditation for me. Maybe I'm just an idiot and enjoy simple things.

Regardless, to me it's a perfect game.