3.5/5 ★ – KHFanXIII's review of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai.

Been meaning to write this for a while, but just didn't really feel like it. Been on a bit of a break from Dragon Ball after having a super binge of a bunch of the content, but I immediately wrote some notes right after finishing the game so I do still remember what I wanted to say. Firstly, I should note that I'm not a big fighting game guy. I've played some, I still play them to this day, but not in any serious capacity. I'm not very good at them and I usually only play them in a very casual sense and to play through the story mode. So this is going to be from the perspective of a Dragon Ball fan and not really a fighting game aficionado. I just want to say that this game has great presentation. The graphics, while basic, do a good job of capturing the style of the anime quite well (aside from the proportion and sizing issues). The story is presented via cutscenes and it's very neat to see these play out in video game form as a DB fan. There are three main single-player modes: story mode, tournament mode, and the unlockable Legend of Hercule mode. The story mode is as you expect, a retelling of the DBZ story up to the end of the Cell Games. It does a pretty decent job of telling the story while moving it along at a quick pace, unlocking new characters to play as in other modes as you progress. An odd issue with the story mode is that the characters mouth flaps are very much in the style of anime, in the worst possible way. The mouths just make very generic, large, non-specific movements for every word, making their jaws move up in down with each syllable, which does not work in 3D. This makes it feel very cheap and also looks very funny. I can't be mad though, because it *is* faithful. Something I should mention with the story mode is that it's oddly split. After beating the story mode, new chapters are unlocked. Most of these are just MORE of the Dragon Ball story that was skipped in the "main" story mode, usually playing as a character *other* than Goku/Gohan. Also added are what-if chapters where the villain of each particular saga beats everyone and wins. Somewhat shallow (as they usually are comprised of villain beats hero and all side characters show up one by one to be beaten), but neat if you're a DB fan, especially Cellin which had me legit laughing out loud. Actually playing through the story mode on normal difficulty, was pretty easy MOST of the time. I blew through most of the game aside from a few fights which served as HUGE difficulty spikes (or maybe I just suck). Compared to the rest of the game, the fights against final form Frieza and the final Perfect Cell fight took me 50 tries each AT LEAST. I had so much trouble on those two, I just don't know what I did wrong. Tournament mode is also fairly self-explanatory, being a mode where you can enter a tournament and fight to win your battles and claim victory in the competition. I think a character is locked behind this mode and it is a pretty neat one. The final single-player mode is the Legend of Hercule, which is unlocked through purchasing a capsule in the capsule shop. This mode is a what-if of the Cell Games, where Hercule takes on all of the Z fighters, and Cell (gauntlet-style), and wins. It's scored, and you can get a better score by beating it while losing less health. It's pretty neat, but a little challenging. The main issue with the gameplay that I had was the combo system. In the fighting games I've played, the combos are fairly easy to understand. Square, Triangle, Triangle, does THIS, Circle, X, X does THIS, etc. Well, this game does not do that. Combos are not listed anywhere on the menu, so you just kind of have to figure them out. They *seem* to be done based on pressing a button *and* a direction at certain points when spamming an attack. However, I just could not figure this out. I figured out one or two combos with Goku and stuck to that the whole game. I would've loved to experiment more, but it's too hard to figure out what combos exist, and I couldn't find any listings online. Also, the special moves in this game are all done only at the end of combos. You can't just pull out a Kamehameha whenever you want. You have to do a specific semi-long combo only being unleashed after pressing the last button in the combo. Meaning most fights are punch, punch, punch, Kamehameha. That and charging your Ki. All in all, this is a good start for the first major 2.5D DBZ fighting game (and I really enjoyed most of my time with it), but there's a lot that can be improved.