4/5 ★ – KHFanXIII's review of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3.

And then there were three... We have at last arrived at the final game in the Budokai trilogy. This was THE series talked about in fan circles. It was a solid 2D fighting series that many fans praised, and when making these praises, extra praise was always directed towards this game. Does this game live up to those expectations? I would say so. This is clearly the best game in the Budokai series. It has the largest cast of characters, refinements to the gameplay, transformations up to SSJ4, it has it all baby. However, there are some things holding it back from being truly definitive. Firstly, once again the story mode pales in comparison to the original Budokai's. In this game, we return to the more traditional style of story with cutscenes instead of that weird game board we had in the last game. This is good, and it's still a big step up from last game, but the issue is that every "cutscene" is presented visual novel style. Static portraits, switching between a few expressions depending on what they are saying. This isn't horrible, it's just hard to enjoy them knowing what could have been. The first Budokai's animated cutscenes will forever be the golden standard that every DBZ game should follow, and having two games in the same series refuse to bring them back is disappointing. That being said, there was clearly effort put into this new style, despite it not being to my taste. A good 90% of the dialogue is voiced, something that is quite impressive. Even without including the Buu saga, this game has WAY more voiced dialogue than either of the previous games, possibly even still if you were to combine them. It's really neat that they were able to have so much in here. Also, there are several different portraits per character. Throughout the DBZ story, characters change how they look or what they wear, so it's very cool to see those types of changes reflected in the artwork of the portraits. It was only once or twice I counted when they showed someone looking a certain way they shouldn't. Props to them for that. Aside from that though, this style, while better than the last one, just doesn't do it for me. Gameplay-wise, the story mode is split between multiple different characters. This isn't a structure I'm usually a big fan of (SuperSonic Warriors was something that showed me that), but honestly I didn't mind it that much. Mostly every character's story tells chunks of the DBZ story, but they way they separate the content between them, there's really not much of any repeat content between them. Like obviously the major things still happen (Saiyans show up, go to Namek, Fight Androids/Cell, etc.), but the fights and cutscenes with each story are mostly fully unique to that particular character and that (along with the huge amount of voicework) I think helped me feel a lot better and actually not hate my time with it. Speaking of the story mode, they decided to take a page of the Legacy of Goku's handbook and gave us an overworld to fly around in. This is very neat seeing in real 3D for the first time, especially as there is a boost flying mechanic. Flying around at super fast speeds around the map really helps sell that Dragon Ball fantasy. As a kid, I would spend hours just flying around the map. There's even a bunch of side-activities you can do like collecting the Dragon Balls, or viewing little extra scenes with less important DB characters, or picking up extra capsules or money, etc. It's quite robust for a fighting game. Difficulty-wise, this was the easiest in the series, no contest. I dunno if it's just me getting better and understanding the game mechanics more or what, but I played all of these games on Normal and this one was the most well-balanced imo. Still challenging, but offering a fun challenge and not a frustrating one. A part of the reason I might have had an easier time with this, however, could be due to the new leveling system. In this game, fights will give you experience in order to level up. This means if you do happen to be having trouble, you can just grind. There are repeatable battles in the story mode, so they make it easy for you. This system isn't super deep, but this combined with the returning capsule equipping system does make this feel very RPG-esque, which is pretty neat for a fighting game. You can also go through the story of each character a second time for some extra content and what-if scenarios. They actually add in movie villains and (believe it or not) a very abridged version of the last saga of GT. There is just so much content, and this is only in the story mode. This feels like a game that can last you for a very long time. Oh, I guess I should also talk about the actual mechanics. Well, this game is the cream of the crop in that regard. Firstly, they FINALLY added beam struggles. When you and your opponent activate a beam based special move, they will collide and you both will rotate the analog stick to see who wins. Very cool and super fun. That along with the teleport counters (which allow you to expend Ki in order to teleport behind your enemy to dodge attacks), and the Dragon Rush moves (a new system which allows you to hit your opponent up into the air, both of you choosing a button in order to change the outcome of the attack) help this game feel the closest yet to the show. At times it really feels the type of fights you see in the show, and that is awesome. Aside from the story, there are two other single-player modes: the returning World Tournament mode, and a new Dragon Arena mode. World Tournament mode is the same as it ever was; just compete in a tournament to see who comes out on top. Dragon Arena mode, however is very new. So after selecting your character, you will be greeted with a long list of characters with a level next to their name. This list goes on and on until you hit characters who are about level 100. You can challenge any of these and upon defeating them, you can gain experience. Really, I didn't care a ton for this mode. It doesn't feel like it offers anything super significant outside of a way to grind your characters up to max level (which I mean, I appreciate they put this in for that, but it's just not super interesting to play). I honestly only touched this mode in order to unlock the two characters locked behind this mode. Overall though, despite the lacking presentation of the story mode, this is clearly the best Budokai game and one I would honestly revisit with friends just for fun. Super excited to see what the future of Dragon Ball fighting games looks like beyond this.