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Review: Dragon Ball Z Budokai |
Dragon Ball Z has been known the world over as an exciting anime series ever since its debut in 1989. The success of the series led to all manner of spin-offs, and being that DBZ is an anime known for its extremely long and brutal fights, naturally there have been several video games created based on the enduring saga. But since the series moved from Super Famicom to the next generation systems, none of them have ever really been considered to be anything really special or even all that good. At least not until Budokai.
DBZ: Budokai seems to have been programmed to be both easy to play and to appeal to the longtime DBZ fan. The basic one-player mode, Story Mode, takes the player through a condensed version of the anime story, through the perspective of one of the characters, re-enacting scenes from the show. The brevity of the scenes should please DBZ’s critics who feel the story drags on and on, and they are well done to boot, rendered in real-time and dubbed into English by the same folks who do the anime. It’s an incredible step up from the last game, Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout, where there was no story presented in game and you just basically fought a guy and then moved on, a la Street Fighter II; and they just found random people off the street to do the voice-acting. Completing Story Mode once enables you to go back and replay scenes, and also unlocks more story scenes featuring different characters and original ones where you play as a ’saga boss’ (Vegeta, Frieza, Cell) that basically answers the question ‘What if they won?’ with results ranging from awesome to just flat-out hilarious. A nice little bonus for the fans.
The gameplay itself is not too terribly deep, but a great step up from previous outings. The attack configuration gives you buttons for Punch, Kick, Guard, and Energy, sort of like playing DOA2 with fireballs. Combos are generated by sequences like PPPKK, so the game is pretty button-masher friendly. However, in order to use the Super moves like the Kamehameha or Final Flash, one has to input the proper sequence, usually something like KK>K>KE, with the proper timing otherwise it won’t work. It really helps to keep things from getting too scrubby during the fights.
Longtime players will surprised that this game has no ‘Jump’ or ‘Fly’ button. Certain attacks will knock your opponent into the air, but your character will automatically be able to move or dash towards them to pursue. I wasn’t too high on this at first, but later on I realized that this was a way of making fights look more like the actual fights in the anime. I mean, you don’t ever see Vegeta or Cell arbitrarily moving up and down the screen, do you? And one of the big issues I had with DBGT was that often times you couldn’t attack your opponent because your vertical planes were just slightly off. This seems to play to an overall theme of the game looking and feeling as much like the show as possible, and it really helps to keep things moving.
Graphically, the game looks decent enough. The game runs in high-res at 60fps. The menus are quite fun to look at as there is usually a character or two hanging out moving the menus for you or just there to add flair, like a super-deformed Goku on the Nimbus cloud hovering in the upper-right hand corner. There’s plenty of original art in the game too, all drawn in the Akira Toriyama style. Characters have plenty of great facial animations in the game. I’m kinda puzzled as to why they didn’t go with cel-shading since it would seem to be a natural fit.
For once, they finally got a character select right: There is only one slot for Goku. Unlike DBGT, there are not any extra slots for Little Goku, Super Saiyan Goku, Super Saiyan 4 Goku, or Super Saiyan Little Goku. I didn’t make any of that up, he was half of the characters in that game. Goku can transform into a Super Saiyan, however, and most of the other characters have a power-up they can use to gain strength. It is also quite nice to see just about every fighting character from the sections of DBZ this game covers. Even characters that die almost right away like Raditz, Nappa, and #19 are here, or characters that had a bigger role in Dragon Ball like Yamcha and Tien (and they have their cool moves from DB, like Tien’s incredibly stupid-funny ‘Volleyball’ attack).
The music in the game is serviceable, but nothing really special. The opening of the game uses a really long and dumb version of the old ‘Rock The Dragon’ theme from DBZ’s early days on US TV. Why they would use this over the other openings they’ve used for the show is beyond me. But they make up for it with all the great voice-acting in the game, especially with Vegeta, #16 and Hercule. I’m biased a bit because I love the voices in the show, but still it’s better than getting Dave in accounting to yell in a mike for an hour.
‘Budokai’ is Japanese for ‘fighting tournament’ and so naturally there is a World Tournament Mode where you enter a one-player only mode that takes you through a tournament where you take on several opponents to make your way up to the championship. The tourney play itself can be kind of cheap since ring-outs count as victories and the gameplay is such that a ring-out can occur with just one more if timed properly. Overall, this mode probably isn’t as fun as the others, but it is necessary toward earning money for creating customized characters.
The customization process is kind of a hassle. As you earn money by winning tournaments, you can visit the shop run by Mr. Popo to buy ‘cards’ that have different skills for attacks, super moves, and defense to power up your character. There are a lot of cool moves and things to buy for your characters, and in some cases it is the only way to get their ultimate maneuvers. But it can so tedious to keep exiting/entering the store in order to refresh the limited selection, since the music just keeps repeating itself and Popo greets you every single time you enter. But it’s worth it to see a powered version of Vegeta’s Big Bang Attack, or to witness Hercule’s ultimate attack.
Ah, Hercule, DBZ’s comic relief. Someone at Dimps really likes him, because there is an entire mode of this game devoted to him. It’s a combination of World Tournament mode and Story mode, where he basically has to take on the whole cast. A lot of his moves involve some kind of sneaky attack or some kind of mess-up that works to his favor. And he’s got some of the best lines in the game, too. His Rules of Combat is one of the funnier things I’ve seen in a game for a good while.
Overall, DBZ isn’t really a deep, technical fighter, but it’s pretty balanced, the presentation is superb, and anyone can get good at it pretty quickly. If you’re a fan, you’ll just love this for a few weeks. If not, then take a dozen points from this review’s score.
