Nightmare Zero 18 years 9 months ago wrote:

With the 3rd installment coming out next month for the PS2 and the Wii, I decided to review the 2nd's PS2 version. First of all, I consider 2006 and 2007 to be the "dark age" of fighting videogames. While a slight few were coming out, you have to realize that all Capcom has contributed to the fighting game scene has been re-releases of old games. They haven't made a NEW fighting game since...I think...Onimusha Blade Warriors? If you could actually CALL that "ok" game a fighting game. And SNK, well, they make a game whenever they're not busy being bankrupt, and, while King Of Fighters XI has gotten good reviews from what I've heard, King of Fighters Maximum Impact 2, or, upon coming to the States, King Of Fighters 2006, while it was 3-D, it wasn't all that fulfilling. We had to suffer through clunky fighting animations, REALLY shitty voice acting, no replay value, and barely admissible music and stages. Oh, and the story sucks and blows at the same time, and, while you think that would cancel it out, no, seriously, the story is terrible. Tekken 5 was an ok game, but it left me wanting more at the end of the day.

And, no, Soul Calibur 3 sucked hard. God, that game was terrible, and there is NO WAY you could convince me otherwise. Unbalanced fighters, stupid story, VERY SHITTY controls, and glitches galore. Damn it, that game was terrible.

With all of this disappointment, one who normally is a fighting game fan is forced to either go throughout the various foreign sites and forums for M.UG.E.N. to get a good fighting game fix, or they have to start looking for new genres of games to play. Now, the thing is, there ARE fighting games that come out that I didn't mention, but these games are anime games. Yes, and games based on anime have a tendency to be just vile. Like that Gundam SEED game...man, that game left a bad taste in my mouth.

Ok, well, in a mountain of stupid and terrible fighting games, a few decide to shine above the rest. In particular, the DBZ Budokai games. Budokai 1 was "ok", Budokai 2 was utterly terrible, but the 3rd game was stupidly awesome. Then Atari and Bandai decided to do things differently; their PS2 DBZ games would attempt to emulate the show in terms of visuals AND gameplay, while the PSP games continued Budokai 3's fighting game feel and improve upon it greatly, which it has and I'll review those games later.

Now, Budokai Tenkaichi(Or DBZ SPARKING! as its known in Japan) was an "ok" game. It was a first of its kind, so I wasn't really expecting much, but I was angry that I bought it and believed it would fill me with immense joy. As a matter of fact, I think I hated it, so, lets move on to the good part! Its sequel, DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2 was an EPIC game.

Graphics
These are some of the best PS2 graphics you'll ever see. The characters look like they're actually from the show and, some of the character portraits actually LOOK drawn. I mean, after a second glance it should be obvious its a 3-D model, but when you first see it, well, when I first saw it, I thought it was merely a drawing. The areas all are beautiful, as are the fighting animations and various blasts.

Gameplay
Like the previous Tenkaichi game, this one involves full 3-D fighting, flying, and blowing shit up. The areas are bigger than the last games, and this one has more objects in it as well. The controls are simple, you have button, a guard button, a dash button, and an energy blast button, and the L and R buttons give you control of bigger energy blasts and up and down flying, respectively. Everyone has signature moves that emulate them from the anime, like Vegeta has Final Flash and both moves that he used to kill Zarbon and Cui. There are also different versions of some of the characters, and this is used so they can put in more moves for everyone. Now, that might seem confusing, but it really isn't. Maybe someday they'll be able to create all of those moves for one character instead, but this is nice too. Everyone fights a little differently, but its balanced enough depending on how good you are. Like, Super Saiyajin 4 Gogeta is the fastest and most powerful character in the game, and Tao Pai Pai is, I think, the weakest. But it all depends on the player. Seriously, you can have the highest stats in the game, but if you don't know your left from your right, you can still get your ass handed to you.

The versus mode allows you to pick 3 modes, One-on-One, Tag Team, or Free Team(I forgot the actual name ). That Free Team thing allows you to pick a team of 1 to 5 fighters, so you can have one fighter fight against the entire Ginyu Force, or you can have Androids 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 fight Vegeta, Piccolo, Trunks, Gohan, and Goku.

The story mode's gameplay involves you flying around and fullfilling parts of the story from the show. Its pretty simple, and the game gets more and more difficult as you proceed. There are times where you might be put in a no-win situation, such as the part where you have to play as Yamcha and fight the two Androids until time runs out. But if you DO beat those types of levels, you sometimes get bonuses.

You can also level up your characters and make them more powerful with items you equip. Most of these items aren't at their fullest power though until you level up, and you can do that via story mode, or this other challenge mode, called Ultimate Battle Z, where you fight a ladder of opponents. Most people already know this, but an easy way to level up is to go into a Tag Team Ultimate Battle Z and pick the same character as yourself for your partner and you get double the XP.

My only real problem with this part is that the AI is never really all that challenging, but its a lot more fun than a cheap and dirty AI which knows every move you make before you make it.

Story
You can go through the entire Dragon Ball Z story all the way to the end of GT, and even the movies. The only problem with this is that they don't really tell the story fully or show you everything, but mostly fans of the anime play these games, so its ok...I guess...

Sound
All of the music is great. It would've been epic if they put in the original music from the DBZ like they did for the Japanese version, but its still very decent. At least its not the same music from the first 3 DBZ games all over again. If I had to sit through that shitty music ONE MORE TIME, I'd kill everyone and their families!

The voice acting is all there. Funimation does rather well, and they don't really sound as stupid as they did in previous games. And, yes, we do hear some "cursing" every once in a while. A character will say "Damn" or "Damn it" sometimes, or some say "Go to hell!" or "I'll see you in hell!". Its all PG, so don't worry. The Japanese voices are also available, but the subtitles don't match the Japanese audio and they even rudely tell you that, as the game POINTS OUT that the Japanese audio is "inferior" to the english audio. Of course, if I fucked you over with the changing of a few plot points and never corrected them, I'd point out the uselessness of Japanese audio too. Most people don't know this, but Funimation makes Goku out to be a hero in most of the things he says, when, honestly, he's not supposed to be like Superman, in terms of morality. He just doesn't do evil things because he just doesn't want to. But this is a whole other story I don't want to get into.

Replay Value
There are tons of characters and items to unlock, and with a decent AI and lots of leveling up, it'll keep you busy for a good while.

Overall A.K.A. tl;dr
Its a good fighting game, and it won a "Fighting Game of the Year" Award last year, so that's saying something. I've yet to play the Wii version, but I hear its pretty much the same with the exception of playing with the Wiimote. If you're a DBZ fan, you've probably already bought the game by now, if you're a fighting game fan, you should give it a try, and if you're neither of these, I think you should also give the game a try, but I'm less adamant about getting to you as you'll probably hate it anyway.

I give the game an 9 out of 10. Can't wait until the 3rd game.