With video games, specifically, Dragon Ball Z has had a rich history. Many games in the series’ early life were RPGs with many of them focusing on card-based movement and activity. Those RPG components have persisted through the years, but when most fans think about Dragon Ball Z video games today, they’re more prone to think about the battling games, and for good reason.
For a series that is so ingrained in action, it simply makes sense it would come to life as a fighting match.
Even though a good chunk of Dragon Ball Z matches have been exclusive to Japan, you will find lots great ones who have made their way to North America. Regrettably, some games in the series do not have exactly the same level of polish when it has to do with localization. Like any thirty year franchise, Dragon Ball Z has had some ups and downs, and you may see that clearly in its games.
Dragon Ball Z: To Kinect
Dragon Ball Z: For Kinect takes everything which makes Dragon Ball Z fun and butchers it for absolutely no reason. It is no surprise that the Kinect did not take off the way Microsoft wanted it to, but the grade, or lack thereof, of matches offered for the motion sensor, is debatable.
More or less every single asset is shamelessly stolen from Ultimate Tenkaichi, but without any of the gameplay that made Ultimate Tenkaichi so memorable. The narrative mode is just one of the worst in this series, along with gameplay is constituted of throwing around random punches and leaping around. Sure, it is fun to shoot a Kamehameha the first time, but then?At site dragon ball z shin budokai ppsspp from Our Articles It’s just an exercise in tedium. Save yourself the hassle and play with among the much better Dragon Ball Z games.
Taiketsu
Advertised as the very first game to include Broly as a playable character (which can be a bold faced lie, by the way,) Taiketsu is the worst fighting game in the series and most likely the worst Dragon Ball Z game interval assuming you do not believe Dragon Ball Z: To Kinect a video game.
Taikestu is an ugly, small 2D fighter for your Game Boy Advance that is more Tekken compared to Dragon Ball Z. Now, a conventional DBZ fighter might have been phenomenal, however Webfoot Technologies clearly did not care about creating a fantastic match, they simply wanted to milk that candy Dragon Ball absolute. Battles are sluggish, the story mode is completely abysmal, the graphics are hideous, and the battle isn’t responsive at all.
Webfoot Technologies created Legacy of Goku II along with Buu’s Fury, so it’s not like they have been unfamiliar with the series, and they had a good history. As it sounds, Taiketsu is a downright shameful stain on the series’ video game heritage.
Evolution
Speaking of spots, let us talk about Dragonball Evolution. Based off among the worst adaptations from the film medium, Dragonball Evolution strips off all the allure, nuance, and passion that makes Dragon Ball such a fun series and repackages it into a disgraceful attempt by exploiting the franchise to get profit. You would be hard pressed to find anybody who’d seen or read Dragon Ball and thought,”You know what could make this better? If Goku went to high school and was moody all of the time.”
Sure, the Dragon Ball includes a lot of product, and you wouldn’t be wrong with saying that the show has likely sold out, but at least the innumerable spin-offs attempt to offer something in the way of grade or fanservice to make up for that. Evolution, however, doesn’t care whatsoever and is content in being a fair fighting game that barely knows the series it’s based on.
Final Bout
Dragon Ball GT was this awful series that Toei waited seven years to try and milk Dragon Ball again, so it is no surprise that a fighting game based from GT pretty much killed the Dragon Ball video game arena for half a decade.
Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout was the previous entry in the original Butoden sub-series and was the first one to be released in the USA. The previous entries in the series are all excellent games but last Bout, perhaps because of its source material, failed to live up to any and all expectations. That means, for some individuals, Closing Bout has been their introduction into the collection.
Probably the weirdest thing about the game is the fact that it barely features some GT characters at all meaning its flaws could have very easily been averted. It probably would have been an ugly mess, however.
Ultimate Battle 22
What happens when you combined lovely sprite work, awkward CG wallpapers, and ferociously long loading times? You receive Ultimate Battle 22. Another entry in the Butoden sub-series, Ultimate Battle 22 fares much better than Final Bout but not by much, frankly.
To get a fighting game to succeed, it needs to be quick, also UB22 is anything but. Getting in and out of games should be instantaneous, but they just take ferociously long. Sure, playing your favourite Dragon Ball characters is entertaining, but you know what else is fun? Actually getting to play a video game.
There are some neat ideas present –such as a level up system for every character– but the actual gameplay borders on the mundane. The older Butoden games were excellent because the little roster intended more focused move sets, but Ultimate Battle 22 does not really give you the exact same feeling. Goku versus Vegeta just feels like two muscled men slowly punching each other in the atmosphere.
Infinite World is now Budokai 3 when the latter bothered looking for an enjoyable video game which also played like an episode of Dragon Ball Z. Truly, everything Infinite World will Budokai 3 did better years before. Infinite World goes so far as to eliminate characters from B3 though the former uses the latter’s engine. In circumstances such as this, where a pre-established game is shamelessly being rereleased, there is no reason to get rid of content, let alone playable characters.
Perhaps most offensively, Budokai 3’s RPG styled, character driven narrative mode was completely neutered and replaced with a shallow mess that has significantly more minigames than it does engaging battle. Truly, it is the shortage of the story mode that hurts Infinite World the most. Dragon Universe is hands down one of their greatest ideas a Dragon Ball Z has had and dropping it hurts Infinite World more than anything. If you’re going to rip off a better match, at least slip the aspects that made it a better match to begin with.
Budokai Two
Budokai 2’s cel shading is completely gorgeous, the battle is nice and fluid, and it raises the roster with a decent level, but it also has own of the worst narrative modes ever to marvel Dragon Ball Z. Combining the worst parts of Mario Party with the most peculiar qualities of the anime or manga adaptation, Budokai 2 follows up the first Budokai’s fantastic story style using a board game monstrosity that butchers its origin stuff for little reason other than to shoehorn Goku into each significant battle.
When it comes to fighting mechanics, Dragon Ball Z tends to not shine so that the stories need to do the heavy lifting. If the story can not maintain, the match naturally loses something. Budokai set such a powerful precedent, correctly adapting the anime using full cutscenes up to the Mobile Games, but Budokai 2 ends up dreading the storyline in favor of Mario Party shenanigans and a narrative that gets nearly every significant detail wrong.
Raging Blast is basically what you receive if you strip Budokai Tenkaichi into its base parts and release it before placing back the customization and roster. It is still a good game, mind you, but it is missing a lot of what produced Budokai Tenkaichi a fun series.
Perhaps the best items Raging Blast brings to the table is totally destructible environments, combat damage, and even mid-battle facial expressions. It feels like an episode of Dragon Ball Z occasionally, with characters and the environment noticeably decaying with time. It is actually a pity Raging Blast did not go farther with its premise since only a little character customization could have gone a long way to provide help.
The story mode follows Budokai Tenkaichi’s lead, but it’s even more cluttered and cluttered. If it’s your only option for a Dragon Ball Z fighting game, it’ll find the job done, but it won’t be the best that you can do.