Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 review

Dragon Ball Z is a Japanese animated series (that’s animé to those familiar with the format) that’s been crying out for a decent videogame conversion for years. Colourful characters fighting endless martial-arts battles using superhuman powers. Surely that’s the template for a decent workable game at the very least? It may seem generic, but does anyone remember what happened to that horrible game with forklifts doing kung fu?

But almost as if they’re afflicted by some unavoidable curse, licensed games never tend to be shining examples of their respective genres. Sadly Dragonball Z has shared this heritage with literally years of mediocre (at best) titles under its belt.

But Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, the game preceding Atari’s latest offering, managed to just about tie together modern fighting game conventions into something that was passable fun for a little while. And this new version goes some way in adjusting that formula to keep it up to date.

This review is useless

Not that any of that matters to the hordes of screaming fans out there. And I am familiar with quite a few of them. Some of them will have already bought this game without reading a single review and for the rest of them champing at the bit, let me make this clear: Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 is the best graphical and gameplay representation of the battles of Goku and friends ever to grace a console, so far. So there. Be happy with your purchase.

Now that’s taken care of, the rest of you probably want to know what the game’s like.

The main thrust of the game is like a simplified version of Tekken or Virtua Fighter. Strings of basic kicks and punches form combinations which in turn can unleash more elaborate moves when done in sequence. The twist is in the special moves that involve building up “ki” to execute them, triggered by an extra button.

When you analyse it, this just comes down to a simple test of timing and a little (compared to other games of its type) memorisation. I won’t insult fans of fighting games out there by trying to break down the complexities of the fighting system because they’re pretty transparent to anyone who’s reasonably into their beat ‘em-ups.

You could argue that a lot of games follow this system and you’d be right. It’s just that Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 makes everything a lot easier to execute, which brings me to my next point.

Punch, kick it’s all in the mind...

The point of many popular animé series is to portray an almost unstoppable fighting machine of a hero, so we can cheer as he crushes armies of terrifying foes, without breaking a sweat. Except for the last minute when he sweats a lot and then does some special move that flattens buildings. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 lets you be that hero. For some, this seems cheap, but for non-fans there are many better games to be played. For the Dragon Ball Z fan, or even the casual fighting game fan, this gives you a combat system that you finally will be able to master and wring all the special moves out of.

By not making the combat too challenging, but still giving it some level of complexity, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 allows casual players to get some satisfaction. And for everyone else, it’s fair and playable for a while.

The game further wraps up its illusion in clever graphics (which I’ll get to in a moment) and a story mode that works like a board game, allowing you to reposition your fighters and learn new moves while playing through a simplified version of the series’ plot. But repeated play shows this mode to be a little limited, except for fans of the series, who will delight in recreating key battles from their favourite episodes (along with accurate dramatic dialogue by most of the original US cast!).

The game of life

The graphics make use of cel-shading, which mostly succeeds except for some rough edges and “shiny” surfaces. But they do work in creating an atmosphere that’s very much in line with what you’d expect from the TV series in its heyday and some moments really do impress. The same applies for the voice acting, which is true to the American dubbed versions, although fans of the original Japanese voice acting will continue to be disappointed as usual.

One thing they won’t be able to complain about is the music, which is weird and wonderful, even for those who’ve never seen the TV show. A bizarre fusion of rock and jazz that’s actually quite engaging and fits the strange mood of the show.

It’s hard to complain about Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2, because it obviously succeeds where it tries to and just aims low in other areas. I could bemoan the lack of any true flying ability or deeper combat system, but what’s there works perfectly well. It’s just nothing spectacular. But maybe a series of this magnitude does finally deserve something spectacular. Almost sadly, I declare this the best Dragon Ball Z game ever.