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Review: Dragonball Z: Legends |
Of the hundreds of Dragonball games that have been made over the last decade, there have been very few actually worth playing — DBZ: Hyper Dimension on the SNES wasn’t bad … and … uh …
Oh.
In fact, Dragonball Z: Legends, or to give it it’s proper title, “DragonBall Z: Idainaru Dragon Ball Densetsu” isn’t really a fighting game, not as we’ve come to know and love them. It’s sort of a fighter/scrolling beat-em-up/rpg hybrid thing. I’m only reviewing it because having the word “Dragonball” on the front page will get us lots of hits. Hi there.
But it’s still quite entertaining (for a while anyway) and it does have some things in common with the fighting game genre. Plus, as a big fan of the manga/anime - it’s fun re-enacting/ruining some of the big battles of the series.
Trying to categorise this thing is tough. You pick up to four characters (or less, depending on the particular point in the story) and fight. The character you control can move up and down, and circle around. To advance, you push “up”, and “down” is retreat - a bit confusing at first. You can fire projectiles with the ‘Square’ button, and punch with ‘Circle’. Each character has a life meter and a power meter. The power meter decreases whenever you do anything, and if it empties, you just stand there, exhausted and vulnerable. Pressing ‘Triangle’ allows you to charge up this bar. The ‘X’ button is block - although there’s hardly anything worth blocking really, it’s not like a proper fight. Lastly the L and R shoulder buttons switch between selectable characters.
So, you fight your enemy - punching away, throwing fireballs and using the “grab” (F, F + P) and the much more damaging attacks that follow it (though they can be dodged by the other player). At the bottom of the screen is a meter, half blue, half red. As you hit the opponent, your side of the bar gets larger, and when it is completely filled, the action will stop, and cut to a “meteo combo” animation - where your character will do a relevant special attack of some description to the enemy (they can’t be skipped… grr). This will reduce their life bar at the top by about a third. You do it all over again until they’re dead. Woo.
The numbers of players on screen at once varies depending on the scenario. You can team up with three CPU allies against a lone enemy — which is pretty much a walkover, the same way fighting two or more enemies by yourself is almost impossible.
In story mode, you fight over eight stages (some with multiple enemies), with the option to save after each stage, until the last boss (Kid Buu) is defeated. Credits roll. The end. There’s also a VS. mode, and a “SP mode” which is just a new series of fights. Eh.
In some respects it’s like a shoot-em-up, but it also has aspects of wrestling games; the counters that require perfect timing and the need to keep your meter up. It also reminds me of Treasure’s treasure Guardian Heroes — not only because of the pixelly scaling graphics, but the way as you beat enemies and progress in the story, you can choose from more characters in other modes.
It’s a strange mixture of genres, but not really all that successful. There are several areas where the game falls down. For a start it’s incredibly shallow and repetitive. Sure, there’s 33 characters (woo!) and they all look different (woo 2!) - but they’re all identical. Everyone has the same moves - the punches, the grab + kick/punch thing … really the only difference between them comes after a knockdown, where they’ll do their meteo attack. And then there’s the fact it’s just incredibly boring. Press “Circle” 200 times, watch ‘meteo’ attack, repeat three or four times until enemy is dead, then go on to the next one and do it all over again. As you progress through the game, the opponents do get tougher; in the sense they do more damage quicker, but there’s never any “tactics” to use. You could play it with your eyes closed.
And then there’s the aesthetics. The 3D backgrounds are terrible - all four of them. Flat, glitchy floors with the occaisional rock or tree in the way - real 1st gen crap. Then we have the sprites, tiny, pixelly things with minimal animation and sparse detail (no faces!) They zoom in and out as they dash around, enlivened by a polygon fireball or beam or forcefield every now and then.
The music is bland, and I was disappointed to find that none of the funky Japanese DBZ theme songs had made it to the game, bar I believe one at the very end credits. While the “fight” sound effects are pathetic (the attacks you make have a machine gun sound to them) - all the characters are voiced by the proper seiyuu - which adds a touch of excellence to the proceedings. As if that wasn’t enough, the between-fight slideshows of images (some coloured-in pictures from the DBZ manga) are accompanied by the voiceover introduction guy from the Japanese anime - yes ACTUALLY HIM. Score another for DBZL.
There’s so much to dislike about this game, but there are touches that stop me from hating it. For a start - there are times when the fighting is an accurate recreation of the anime fights. The same sounds, the same bad animation … it’s not often, but there are moments where a particularly well-choreographed punch, kick, dodge sequence really gets you going. Or … me going. Ahem.
And then there’s the little touches … the transformations, the 100% story-consistent costumes (more than one for each) and some of the introduction animations (Goten and Trunks’ fusion dance is wonderful)
Special kudos to the programmers for implementing the system that monitors events, and scores them appropriately, and the closer to the manga storyline you stick (regarding who fights who, who beats who etc.), the higher your score. Neat.
The coloured-in manga images between fights are also a nice touch…
So many little goodies … but they can’t make up for the fact the game itself is incredibly shallow, ugly, tedious and hard on the fingers.
Like I said, it’s not really a fighter in the traditional sense, but it’s fitfully entertaining for a few hours, and the enjoyment is enhanced for the DBZ fan. It’s hard to grade in the traditional sense, but I’ll try my best.
BIG BANG ATTACK!!
