Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2
This should serve as the manual on how to port a game to the Wii.
Tags: Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 Categories: Reviews, Wii Reviews
Posted by Mike "Two Tone" McConnell on Feb 2nd, 2007
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (title page) | 1 - 2 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Fighting | No | ||
Dragon Ball Z has a huge roster of games under its belt. In Japan, this legacy stretches all the way back to the Nintendo Famicom. DBZ: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 is the latest to hit our shores. This is actually one of the better offerings in the series.
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The visuals are almost straight from the cartoon, and the action looks as great as the cut scenes. In fact the action actually looks better than the cut scenes. The camera angles are over the shoulder, which takes some getting used to, and until you play for awhile, you’ll lose to your opponents easily. There is a lock feature that functions as an “auto find”, but the arenas are huge, and this function doesn’t always work as intended. It’s really more of a handicap to the two player portion, as the limited view of the split screen is a real pain.
Part of the fun of this game is pulling off the most absurd cartoon energy attacks, but that’s hard to do when most of the match is spent chasing each other off camera. The tightened view also detracts from how nice the graphics look.
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The multi-player modes are far from the star of the show, the real diva of the group is the story mode, which fully covering the entire series from the original Dragon Ball through Dragon Ball GT. There is also a huge series of “what-if” scenarios that are spread throughout. The story plays out in sagas but are not exactly linear.
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There is an insane learning curve at work here. Early in the game there are some of the most difficult matches to be found in the game. Going from incredibly easy to hard and back again is not an great way to learn a game. The best I can tell is that you are supposed to go through and play some of the other game modes when you hit a wall. This lets you get items that boost your skills enough to get through some of the tougher opponents. This brings out the real problem here, is that the instructions just aren’t clear. The manual has most of the information, but it’s not well organized.
The story mode has a glaring flaw as well. Between each mission (even those in the same location) it switches to a map mode. The map mode is not really necessary other than switching locations and visiting the item shop. There could have just been an option to buy items between matches, and the locations would be displayed as you opened new missions. The map mode looks about the same as the in-game action, but you move at a snail’s pace. Even the a map like the Soul Calibur series would have been a better choice.
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While most of the ports to the Wii seem to have an arbitrary use of the motion sensing, DBZ raises the bar for adaptations. The best feature is the blast modes where you sequence out your movements after charging your Ki. The dashing and flying controls are mapped to the nunchuck attachment and they work intuitively. Be warned you will look like a complete idiot when playing this game. The controls here add a degree of fun that was missing from the PS2 version. It may serve to rope in players unfamiliar with the franchise.
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Beyond the few flaws this is a great game. Intense battles leave you with sweaty palms, and the crushing defeats will be met with a string of curses. While the first few forays into this title will be absurdly difficult, with some patience there is a great game waiting. For fans of the show there is everything in one place, including an encyclopedia of information from the show. Fans of fighting games will find a different kind of animal. The motion controls restart your experience at zero and allow you to relearn how to play a fighter from the ground up. While it is possible to return to the traditional control pad style with the GameCube controllers, why would you want to?
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Nice Graphics + Awesome Controls |
9.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Multiplayer setup is awkward - Learning curve is steep |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| This should be the template for translating fighting games to the Wii, while it is modeled around DBZ's strange combat with a few tweaks, there is a lot of potential. | |
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Tags: Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2
Posted by Mike "Two Tone" McConnell on Feb 2nd, 2007 and is filed under Reviews, Wii 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.
