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

System: PlayStation 2 Started: 2005 Ended: June 26, 2006 Flashback Review DragonBall Z: Budokai 3 was clearly the best of the Budokai games and sure it revisits the sagas once again after playing through Budokai 1, 2 and even the Tenkaichi game and it does get tiring of going through those arcs again. But the gameplay feels different as it tries to avoid being too mundane. There is even more content as well such as character balancing tweak and more characters than the previous two Budokai games, they include the movie characters like Broly, Bardock and Cooler. as well as the GT Characters. Definitely I remember me and my bro playing this and sharing the controller a lot when playing the single player mode to try to unlock all the characters. Compared with 1 and 2 with Single Player Mode, At least the dev team tries to make each single player mode different and that is a good thing. The Original Budokai had only a cinematic Story Mode with actual 3D Animations. Budokai 2 is basically a Board Game setup. And Budokai 3 has ‘DragonUniverse’ where you select characters and fly around an open world map and arrive at a destination to progress their side of the story or do some side missions and locate Dragon Balls so you can unlock characters and gear. The game does have light RPG elements. As you win battles, you gain skill points to level-up your fighters. Even the gameplay was different. Transformation sequence can be used during matches was a huge deal at the time. Budokai 3 has you pit against the other player and perform a lot of action-paced mini-game segments. For Example, if both players make an energy beam at the same time, you get to do a mini-game where you have to rotate the analog stick. Another segment is called the Dragon Rush when a player makes a move where it makes a cinematic mini-game where players have to do a rock-paper-scissors or timing game by using the buttons on the controller. Each wins, depending on the player, will get an upper hand until the Dragon Rush segment ends. With these mini-games, it easily captures the essence of an actual DragonBall Z Match perfectly. The best Budokai game and possibly one of the best DragonBall games. I would consider this to be the best official 2D DragonBall Fighting Game until FighterZ came out. You can give this game a shot but I say the Tenkaichi games and DragonBall FighterZ are far superior than this since those games have more characters and more fun gameplay. It's good if you are curious to try this game out with a friend or At least you can get the HD Version of this but I heard that Budokai 2 wasn’t included in the package so you only get 1 and 3. Furthermore, used pricing has remained the same as full price as I’m typing this. At least the PS2 version is cheaper. Sadly, I never played Shin Budokai since that is on the PSP and I preferred to play a fighting game that has local 2 player mode.