Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3
More Goku goodness
Tags: Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Travis on Feb 22nd, 2005
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 (title page) | 1 - 2 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Fighting | No | ||
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The Dragon Ball Z: Budokai series always seemed to start off as a GameCube game that was designed as nothing more than a lure to get DBZ fans to buy stuff. It was quickly padded out with more and more games, with even more for the GBA. While the GBA games have been utter rubbish, and should be avoided at all costs, the PS2 and GC games have been a different story. With each new installment, the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai series has gotten better. A big reason for this is because the developer, Dimps, actually pays attention to fan feedback and wants to do everything it takes to make DBZ fans happy. That attention to detail amd obvious love of the DBZ universe, as well as commitment to their fans pays off big time in DBZ: Budokai 3.
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The core fighting in Budokai 3 isn’t all that different from past Budokai games, though there have been a lot of little details added that make the experience a lot better overall. Combat itself is quite a different experience, even for the veteran beat-em-up fan. Battles are staged across a big platform – it’s 3d but other than stepping into the foreground and shifting sideways it’s not hugely utilised in the way that some of the games that have marketed heavily on that feature are. Instead, the characters make their spatial awareness in another direction – upwards. Initially it looks like you have very few moves to your name – a punch button and kick equivalent, with a basic guard posture and a ‘Ki blast.’ It’s quickly apparent that this is not the case at all, the ‘Saiyan Overdrive Fighting System’ being the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.
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Combinations of the buttons and control stick send your character charging across the screen to deliver powerful uppercuts, flying kicks and multiple combinations. The Ki blast releases energy bolts towards your opponent that can result in some devastating damage and debilitation for a period of time. Good timing is a very definite requirement of play, perhaps more so than who’s got the biggest strike, and without practice you’ll almost certainly have no idea as to why things happen when they do. Fights are often quite long and include a very smooth teleportation manoeuvre and often allow you to take to the air in a quasi-Matrix style, gravity defying shift, leading to some pretty sore thumbs on this reviewer. It’s this latter point that I think is one of the game’s strongest features – it feels like you are faithfully recreating an episode of the series and that the publisher’s claims of cinematic action are not misplaced.
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Another new move is the dragon rush. Dragon Ball Z is all about power levels and hulking up and stuff, and in order to do a dragon rush you have to enter hyper mode by pressing all four face buttons. When you do this, you enter a special powered-up state. When in hyper mode, you can press the circle button immediately after you knock your opponent back – this puts you in a situation where you and your opponent have to press a face button and if your press is different than your opponent, your character will launch some devastating attacks. If the opponent chooses the same button as you, then they will block and counter with an attack of their own. There are up to three rounds in a dragon rush if your luck holds out and it’s a lot of fun.
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Energy attacks are a big part of DBZ and shooting massive balls of “ki” at each other has never been more fun than in Budokai 3. You fill a ki meter by connecting with attacks and you can then use the energy to do things such as transforming to the various levels of Super Saiyan, as well as shooting projectiles at your opponent. New in B3 is that when you and your opponent fire your primary special move at the same time, you enter into a beam struggle. When in a beam struggle, the combined energies of your attacks join together into a giant ball of energy, which you try to throw back at your opponent. You do this by simply mashing buttons or rotating the control sticks and hoping you are faster than your opponent. These beam struggles are very simple, but it is just another thing that is exactly like you see on the show.
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The Dragon World board game from Budokai 2 has been replaced with a more standard story mode for B3. Dragon Universe is the new main simgle-player mode and it is especially interesting because it presents a unique story for each of the Z warriors. It gives you some different perspectives of the DBZ story, which is nice. One problem is that if you aren’t familiar with the story already, nothing in Dragon Universe is going to make any sense whatsoever. These are super abridged versions of the story where you don’t fight in every major battle, and huge chunks of the story are skipped entirely. You are just thrust from one conflict to the next with very little in-between to set the stage. One interesting aspect of Dragon World mode is that you are free to explore a large overworld map. Each new fight is represented by a dot on your map and you have actually have to fly there in order to continue the story. All of the major areas from the show are on the map and it’s pretty cool to fly over the cities, Buu’s little hut or Roshi’s house.
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Budokai 3 features some limited RPG elements that help keep the Dragon Universe mode interesting. You gain experience points for each fight and you can then use them to power up your fighter. When you start the game, you are fairly weak but you work your way to full strength by the end. It is rather satisfying to build your character. Like the other Budokai games, your skills are broken down into little capsules. You earn capsules by winning matches, but you can also buy them with money you win in the World Martial Arts Tournament mode (ou can find them on the world map in Dragon Universe as well). You then assign capsules to your character and that is how you build your move list. It is a fun idea that works just as well in Budokai 3 as it did before, and it’s fun to be able to customize your character in order to fight the way you want to.
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In addition to the Dragon Universe mode, you can also enter the World Martial Arts Tournament, practice mode, versus mode (which allows you to set up human v. human, human v. computer, and computer v. computer matches), skill edit mode, and Dragon Arena mode where you can continue to level up your Dragon Universe characters. These modes would mean nothing without a great cast of characters, and Budokai 3 features a lineup of 40 fighters from DBZ, DBGT, and the DBZ movies. The different Buu transformations as well as all of the fusion characters are included in that number, making it a very impressive lineup. All in all, this is a pretty extraordinary feature list that should keep fans very happy.
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What holds everything together and makes it work so well are the fantastic graphics. The cel-shaded character models are spot-on representations of their counterparts on the show and they are very well animated. Special effects for all of the energy attacks look really nice as well. Tying all this together and really sealing the deal is the game’s camera which delivers a perfect shot of the action in every situation.
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The sound is also really nicely done in Budokai 3. All of themare taken right from the show and work just as well here as they do on TV. A lot of the music was also taken from the show, but there are a few new themes that are of a similar style. They fit right in. Most of the voice actors for the American version of the show have recorded new dialogue for B3 and all of the voicework sounds just like you would expect. The great graphics and sound are a big part of why Budokai 3 is so enjoyable.
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Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 is the best DBZ game ever. A lot of care was taken to ensure that you can recreate pretty much anything you have seen on the TV show, and this attention to detail makes Budokai 3 an absolute blast to play if you are a DBZ fan. DBZ Budokai 3 is highly recommended for at least a rental, but it is big enough and fun enough that fans of the show can buy it and be very happy with it.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Graphics + Improved gameplay |
7.9 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Still very simplistic at times - Appeals mostly to DBZ fans |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| My opinion of the DBZ games seem to be changing. I appreciate the series, but have always felt that the games are boring. Now, they're at least well done, even if a little simplified for a true hardcore game. | |
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Tags: Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3
Posted by Travis on Feb 22nd, 2005 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
