DBZ: Budokai 3

[Hikuro]

that's right,

We remember back 2 years ago, DBZ Budokai was infact one of the most anticipated Dragon Ball releases since Ultimate Battle 22 back in the PS days.

The game was infact very much molded like UB22 except UB22 didn't have a storyline, it was a solid fighter base like DOA etc.

Budokai featured full polygon rendered designs and backgrounds giving a "3D" feel for the DBZ characters. A storyline was introduced loosey from the original series, following the events from the Saiyan Saga till the fall of Cell against Gohan.

People enjoyed the game even dispite its flaws such as not being able to jump, and how the fighting did get blah with it being difficult to perform certain combinational moves, not too mention people really didn't like the 3D poylgon characters, it just wasn't "DBZ" like.

Following that, Atari went ahead and produced Budokai 2 which was the next big seller for the DBZ marketing line. However, I passed on this game due to its poor ratings. While people thought the Cel shade animation style was a pleasent and needed touch for the game, it presented this "Board game" style of moving thru the storyline which was tidious and slow.

Finally last week, Budokai 3 appeared, presenting the same graphics style as 2, with a new setting, an RPG like battle system where you roam thru the Dragonball world aka Dragonworld, and pick fights to get experince. Once you reach a level you recieve skill points to make yourself stronger thru Health, Ki, Attacks, Guards, Abilities, Art, etc. You progress from the Saiyan Saga till the end of the Buu Saga very loosely. However, unlike the 1st game where the graphics went with a storyline as watching th echaracters animate thru, its replaced with a character profile and a word bubble. At times, the voice actors didn't appear to be speaking and just go thru the word bubble.

You move around the world, collecting items, meeting old characters and even finding the Dragon Balls which is VERY difficult without the Dragon Radar which you have to stumble upon.

Thru each moment of the story you fly around Dragonworld to go to the next point of the game. You'll seem to go thru Dragonworld in and out thru each story line till your able to fight. Following every heavey battle, you'll get sometimes 2-4 Skill points to add on to your Skills guages. You mostly want to focus on your Health, Ki and Attacks.

The fighting system hasn't changed much at all, except now you'll have the ability of "Dragon Rush" where after you go Hyper mode and do a combination of moves you'll enter a Cinimatic cut scene where you have 3 rounds to press either Triangle, Square, Circle or X to execute your power house move. In those 3 rounds your opponent has the ability to guess which button you pushed to counter. If your successful thru out all 3 rounds you'll deal a heaping amount of damage and possibly even instant killing your opponnent based on his health strength.

However, if you don't execute Hypermode correctly you can loose your Ki and be fatigued for a certain amount of time.

Also returned is the rushed attack where you and your opponent lock fists in a speeding combination of kicks and punches in which the fighter whose rotating his analog stick the fastest will win and have a chance to execute a powerful combination of moves.

Also in correct moments of game play while your fighting you can Zanzuken (Teleport) and play Pin Ball with your opponent taking a good amount of damage to him and also wiping out a fair amount of your Ki, every teleport you do will take 1 Ki gauge.

You also have the ability to do fast moving dodges at close range by using your guard. This will also use up your guage at vast amounts.

After beating the game with every character I have to say the Dragonworld is a let down, however knowing you have have ALOT of players in the World Tournament is exciting to say the least. However, it takes alot of work to prepare such a thing, afterall you wanna get every skill you can for your friends.

World Tournament modes are difficult, there are so many factors which can either help you win, or loose such as going out of bounds, being KO'ed etc, get anywhere behind 2nd place and you don't earn any cash to get skills for multiplayer modes really....so its fairly difficult.

My impression of the game is simple, its not for everyone, its your regular class of fighter games, it STILL has its limitations which were present in the first 2 games. However the improved Cel Shaded graphics to help authenticate the DBZ likeness is a MAJOR Plus.

Voice Acting is medicore at best, these guys have been voice acting the DBZ characters for 6 or 7 years now, you'll see t hey do seem to get fairly tired of it with nearly 300 episodes, 13 movies not including DB or DBGT.

40 characters to play in the game is a nice round number, more than UB22, or infact any DBZ game, featuring those from DB/Z/GT and the movies such as Brolli, Cooler and even a SSJ4 Goku WIIGII!

But the game does get rather tiring, and you might only be able to stomach 10 minutes of it at least

Music is rescored and the opening music is actually nice to listen too! How the hell did that happen?! Also it looks like Toei got up and did a nice opening sequence for the game with top knotch DBZ like animation just like mama use to make.

All in all, decent game, nice opening, decent music, and gameplay, its better if you got friends to mess around with however, otherwise its only a game to play when your bored as hell, there just really isn't much to do at all.

[areaseven]

AFAIK, the only decent DBZ games were on the Super Famicom.

[Hikuro]

I can't remember which game it was, but it was almost card battle like and very very old school. It was turned based and I must have stayed up 12 hours straight playing it, from the late night hours till the wee hours in the morning and what not going from the Saiyan Saga, training with King Kai, and than going to the Freiza Saga. I remember also there was a cheat when your fighting freiza, have one of your guys die and Goku will go Super Saiyajin and Walah! instant win!

[Effect]

Been looking to get Budokai 3 before it was released. Both IGN and Gamespot give it a score in the 8s out of 10 and are calling it the best DBZ game to ever be released. Personally I can't wait to play it.

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/566/566915p1.html?fromint=1

- Score = 8.0

http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/dragonb...ai3/review.html

- Score = 8.2

Edited November 22, 2004 by Effect

[Hikuro]

I can't say the game deserves an 8 of any sorts, I'd say atleast a 6.5 or a 7....while it will make your weekend go by quick, before I realized I was finished on the first difficulty level, it was already 2 AM Sunday morning....and I had picked up the game at 10 AM Saturday......so almost a full day of DBZ.

Like I said, 40 unlockable characters, but you gotta do ALOT of roaming around in the Dragon Universe field picking up items, fighting Seibermen, upping your difficulty level etc. Right now I"m playing Hard Mode and I'm going against Freiza after this. I personally wish you go against each member of the Ginyu force, Debora, Zarbon etc. Heck I even wish it would do some of the side stories like Bardock and Trunks since they're playable characters. Sadly characters like Bardock really don't have any moves besides his potential and moonlight. You can add things to him to try and make him a bit stronger, but nothing too grand.

One thing I REALLY want to do is try and unlock more levels to the game, like fighting Brolli in the Movie 8 settings, even some GT levels would be fantastic. But it doesn't seem like that's going to happen. It felt misleading towards that, you got all these unlockable characters yet you need to do all this stupid searching, and you got a rather large area to cover for such small objects such as Capsules......and the Dragon Radar doesn't help much at all, you can't zoom out the Radar blip from what I know.

But finding the Dragon Balls is a pain, I need one more for my Adult Gohan character.......or was it Vegeta.......oh man my Vegeta......oh.....god........STRONG.....I did alot of sub battles with him against other Z characters and those Seibermen.

[Mellow Yellow]

DBZ Tenkai Ichi Budokai 2 for Super Famicom was one of the greatest fighting games I've ever played.

Edited November 23, 2004 by Mellow Yellow

[Hikuro]

I still can't remember the one I really enjoyed but it was OLD in my opinion.

I did some reading this morning, in order to unlock ALL the special features you pretty much have too go into Hard and or Very Hard difficulty settings to unlock characters such as Brolli and Uub, and you have to do certain things to get SSJ4 and to unlock some of the GT story.

I was also shown that if you start a new game, select Goku, go to Kami's house I think, and keep training till you get too Level 21, get all the membership cards and walah you'll just about have everything unlocked including something called DragonArena...and you'll be able to continue playing thru Dragon Universe with all 11 main characters included Uub and Brolli.

I'm doing Hard mode now, and I just finished the Freiza Saga and it's tough as hell, AI's are smarter and use Hyper Mode more often, the only way to counter that is to stay away from them till they run out of Ki, or to go Hyper Mode yourself and atleast try to nail them 2 outta 3 rounds of Dragon Rush.....its also recommended if you can get it done quick enough, just Dragon Rush atleast 3 times and if you manage to atleast get the 2 outta 3 rounds complete, you'll just need 1 ki blast when their guard is down and you'll win. But its all about timing.

If you charge at them, more than likely they'll knock ya back further and drain your Ki.