Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi (PS2)

...collected, you will summon the Dragon Shenron, and he will grant you one wish per collection. If you remember where you found the Dragonball, it will always appear in the same place, so it is pretty simple, but first you have to find them.

Goku (also known as Kakarott) is a Saiyan, which is a race of fighters that take over planets and then sell them. As a baby, Goku was sent to Earth just before the Saiyan race was destroyed by the ...
...by this old man called Gohan, who took Goku in, and one day Goku fell off a cliff and bumped his head (as he is a Saiyan, he is able to take damage with very little effect), and forgot about his race, and the desire of destruction. There is a legend, that in the royal bloodline of a Saiyan, they can become a Super Saiyan, which is the ultimate warrior of the universe, which Prince Vegeta (the son of the King of Saiyans) desires most to reach this ... more

This is a review of the newest Dragonball Z game called DragonBall Z Budokai Tenkaichi. Released 21st October 2005, created by Atari and Spike which have made this one hell of a DragonBall Z game. Loads of characters to choose from, with different transformation forms for you to play with. This game has nothing to do with the Budokai series as this is done by different people and is why it has different characters and different way of gameplay.

Experience the most complete DragonBall Z game ever! There are lots of decent features on this game. 50 unique characters in 90 powerful forms, each with his or her own strengths and strategies. Brand new 3D camera angles allowing for freedom of flight like never before, so you can just fly into the sky whenever you want without any problems, can fly in many different directions too. Totally destructible 3D environments, so if your opponent is hiding behind a giant rock, then just blast your way through it and catch your opponent easily. Real-time damage to characters, so every character has stronger or weaker attacks like from the hit TV series. Original Japanese voices. Faithful to the DragonBall Z Universe, they go through the TV series bit by bit in its whole new mode called Z Battle Gate. A total of 147 cut scenes, which is pretty impressive considering it, is a fighting game.

There are lots of modes in the game to keep you occupied, like Z Battle Gate, Ultimate Warrior, World Tournament, Duelling which is all great fun for you to play with. Z Battle Gate is the step by step through the story of DragonBall Z, so even if you are new to DragonBall Z, this game will give you all the information you need on it, where it starts from the beginning of the series, and by time your finished, you will be a DragonBall Z pro.

Z Battle Gate is the main story of the game, which you should do after you have done training with Piccolo (green Namek). Go through Shenron's (Dragon summoned from Dragonballs) memories and follow through the entire series of DragonBall Z. You will follow the story of DragonBall Z, some from DragonBall GT, some from DragonBall and the DragonBall Z feature length movies fulfilled with amazing cut scenes. There are many different Battle Gates for you to travel through, and many fights you will need to accomplish, which makes this a big game to play.

There are 100 great power fighters waiting for you to battle. This is where you pick a fighter and battle through 100 opponents to become the number 1 fighter. You rank through, you will have invitations from higher ranked fighters to battle, but watch out, and they will be tuff. You start off with 15 points, when you loose a battle, you will loose 1 point, and when you win a battle you will gain 1 point plus bonus points like from beating the opponent under a minute, a perfect win, a super finishing move (using you best attack) win and a near death win, which will make your points rise even more. The more points you have the more chance you have in surviving. If your points get to 0, then the challenge is over, and you will need to start from scratch, so don't go into battles you know where you will loose. There is also training mode on there, which allows you to fight opponents but if you loose you won't loose any points, but you still gain points, you can only do a maximum of 20 battles in the training though.

The World Martial Arts Tournament is now open to all fighters, you can pick a fighter and enter into the tournament to unlock the harder tournaments, you will start off with Novice, then you will have Adept, Advanced then a secret tournament. The harder the tournament, the more rounds you will be fighting in. The opposition is chosen randomly, so you won't be fighting the same fighters all the time. The aim of World Tournament is to knock the person out of the arena, which you can only do if the opponent hits any of the stadium walls, or lands on the ground off of the tournament fighting ground, or you can just defeat your opponent in a vicious duel so you can become the World Champion. World Tournament is for 8 players, so you and a group of friends can place this, which is really good fun.

This is where you are able to face the computer on a one on one battle on any fighting ground you wish, if it be earth wasteland, or even go to the extent of fighting on Planet Namek. You can choose a warrior you wish to fight as, then either choose normal (your basic warrior, with basic stats) or do custom (fight as the powered up warrior, but need to sort out evolution Z to add skills). Then once you have chosen your fighter, choose your opponents fighter, and do the same as you did previously, then when you're done there, pick your fighting ground, then the hardcore battle begins. You can also play against a friend as this is too the two player mode, which has the same basics, accept, you won't share the same screen; it will be split screen… how cool is that? Also you can have computer VS computer if you just want to watch a fight.

This is where you will be able to learn how to play the game, you will be able to read up on how you do techniques, how the move around and fly. There will be a step by step training program, which will help you become a pro at the game. You will be able to learn how to move around, while reading how to do it, it also shows you how it is done by showing you what buttons to use and showing you it actually happening on the screen, so you will have a fighter doing the same action you are learning. You will be able to learn the basics all the way up to the hard stuff and the powerful moves so you can become the ultimate warrior.

Practice your skills against any warrior you desire. Here is where you come to try out your moves, and train your speed and fighting abilities so you can fight better during the game and make your senses better to the game. By fighting in practice will not just be a place where you can fight without dying, you can train your skill to become a pro, if you cannot do story, then this is the place to go for a while so you can get use to the controls yourself and learn how to play the game just fine. Good place to start if you are new, but recommend doing Training first.

Now for the more experienced part, this is where you will be able to look at the items you have collection during Z Battle Gate / Ultimate Battle, and be able to equip the items to your desired fighter, and make them stronger in battle. You can also do Evolution Fusion here, which enables you to fuse two skills together to make a better skill, you will need to do this to get more characters, like by fusing the skill Super Saiyan with Super Saiyan Gotenks, will give you the character Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks. So it is useful to know how to do this, when you first click on edit items, it will go through a tutorial on how to use Evolution Z throughout the game. Some of you may be still wandering what is a Z item? Well a Z Item increases your characters stats, so will make him stronger, faster and tougher then your normal fighter. There are two types of Z items, there is Ability, which are the items that increase your fighters stats and then there is Support , which is improved abilities like your Lock On (will discuss further in the review), so you will be able to detect the opponent faster / easier.

Here you will be able to change settings of the game; you will be able to reduce the difficulty with Easy, Normal and Hard. You will be able to set a time limit to your duelling battles or turn it off. Also enables you to change language of the game to the desired language you want, but you can choose the language when the game loads up. On the Options menu, there are Game options, which will allow changing the difficulty, duelling time, COM Level and being able to return it to default settings. Then you have Save/Load, which allows you to save your game at any time or load a game. Then there is Controller, which allows you to change the controls, to make the game easier for you and then there is Screen, which allows you to change the position of the screen, and change the camera angles for your fights. Also there is Sound, which allows you to change the sound settings of the game, and will be able to change the language to the original Japanese language which is cool.

There is a whole new entire battle system to this game, unlike most fighting games, this allows you to roam freely around the massive fighting grounds, allows you to hide from your opponent, dash around and dodge enemy attacks. Normally at the beginning of a battle you will need to detect your opponent, then once done that you will be able to go into battle, either fight them on the ground, in the air or even under water, using your abilities to destroy the scenery that your opponent may be hiding behind, or you can hide behind rocks or whatever so you can do a sneak attack on your opponent. You are able to go in flight at any time, and have access to do whatever in the air, you can fly around, use it to take advantage of the battle, or go into the air to be able to detect your opponent faster / easier. The battles in this game are like that your are actually in the fight, and will be able to do as you would if you were in the fight yourself.

Most of this game takes place on the battlefield, the information of the battle is showed at the top of the screen, there is the health gauge, which is the top bar which starts off as green, then there is the Ki (energy) gauge which is the yellow bar under the health bar, this bar goes down if you use Ki attacks or special attacks, but you can make it raise by powering up. Then there is the Favourite Technique gauge, which when full allows you to use certain techniques, this is the three circles you will see just under the Ki gauge. The time will appear in the middle top of the screen, it will be telling you how long you have left, if you have it set, if not, it will be just there anyway. You will also have a Radar on the bottom right of the screen, which shows you where your opponent is, and if not detected, you will see a ripple on the radar, which is you sensing a high power level.

Dragonballs are mystical spheres which if collected all seven will enable you to grant any wish you desire, well in this game, if you collect all seven of the Dragonballs, will allowing you to unlock more secret characters, or new game modes. You can get Dragonballs by fighting in Z Battle Gate, they could be anywhere on the battlefield, you will need to destroy the scenery to find it. Each Dragonball is different, as they have a different number of stars on them. Once collected, you will summon the Dragon Shenron, and he will grant you one wish per collection. If you remember where you found the Dragonball, it will always appear in the same place, so it is pretty simple, but first you have to find them.

Goku (also known as Kakarott) is a Saiyan, which is a race of fighters that take over planets and then sell them. As a baby, Goku was sent to Earth just before the Saiyan race was destroyed by the evil Frieza. When Goku landed on Earth, he was founded by this old man called Gohan, who took Goku in, and one day Goku fell off a cliff and bumped his head (as he is a Saiyan, he is able to take damage with very little effect), and forgot about his race, and the desire of destruction. There is a legend, that in the royal bloodline of a Saiyan, they can become a Super Saiyan, which is the ultimate warrior of the universe, which Prince Vegeta (the son of the King of Saiyans) desires most to reach this ability, and become the strongest. That is the background story of Saiyans, so you know what Saiyans and Super Saiyans are now.

I thought this game was great, and bought it on the day of release, and have played it loads. It has an in-depth story, which goes through the series of DragonBall Z, covers some of DragonBall and some of DragonBall GT plus covers the feature length DragonBall Z Movies. It has awesome gameplay, the whole new battle system rocks, and makes you feel that you are actually in the fight, which is so cool. It is very enjoyable, all the things you can do, is just great fun. I thought it was very addictive, I have played it every day since purchased, and still have the urge to play it. It is very original also, as it is done by new people called Spike, and have done the whole new battle system, the whole in-depth story, the new style of graphics, it is just a great game. The graphics are brilliant, the opening movie rocks also, as it shows the different aspects of battles that the Z fighters have to fight, and how it all mixes together near the end of it, it was pretty epic. The in-game graphics are sweet, its not blocky or anything like that; it is smooth as ever and is one of the best games I have seen graphically. The sounds are great; the music is from the TV show itself, and has different language voices for you to choose from, and can also have it in its original Japanese voicing too. The game was dubbed by Toei Animation, like the TV series is, which is great also. The game is very difficult at start, as it is difficult to get use to the new controls if you don't do Training first, or some Practice, but gets fairly easy when you get use to it, but every battle is different so the difficulty varies. I give this game 5 star * * * * *, as I loved it to bits, still play it now, and will do for months to come, I have not got bored of the game, or tired of it. I recommend this game to all DragonBall Z fans and all Beat-em-up fans, as they will probably love this new battle system. Also recommended to everyone as you never know, you may just like it.

RATED - 5 Star
CERTIFICATE - 12+
CREATER - Spike
LANGUAGES - English, Original Japanese, Suomi, Svenska, Portuguese
PRICE - £29.99

THIS GAME CONTAINS

Mild Violence
Mild Language

THIS GAME IS

Epic
Brilliant
Graphically Awesome

THIS GAME IS NOT

Like Your Regular Fighting Game
Just To Do With DragonBall Z Series
Short

Thanks For Reading, I hope that this review is useful to you, If you have any suggestions to make this review more useful to you, then please let me know, will be looking forward to reading any comments. Thanks!

DBZKing

 

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