Dragon Ball Z: Sagas

""I'm not going to transform unless I get a countdown.""

Sagas was the game that many-a-fan had been waiting for: It was an action adventure game, set in the DragonBall Z universe, all in glorious 3D. However, soon after it arrived, the complaints began to file in. And while I'm not going to attempt to pass off chicken nuggets for veal, as this game does have its flaws, it is honestly not a bad game. It starts off quite slow -- In all senses of the word, as will be described -- but it builds momentum, and carries it throughout the game.

As the game started, with generic, unlicensed music, I had been a bit skeptic. And as I started the first level, having no special abilities to use, the skepticism increased. However, within the first five minutes of the game, you'll pick up an upgrade which allows you to use special moves; Moves that fans of the series will realize. For example, if you are Goku, you'll be able to use the Kamehameha. Piccolo has the Special Beam Cannon, Vegeta has the Gallick gun, et cetera. After that, you'll be able to steadily unlock combos and other melee attacks. Unfortunately, there are no other energy attacks, save for the basic KI blast, and a few smaller tricks, such as Teleporting, and of course, the big one flying.

Sadly, flying was not pulled off in a successful way whatsoever. How it works, is you press the A button once to jump, and then again to fly. And while flying you can move around with the control stick. Now that sounds pretty good, I thought. However, after trying it, two glaring errors just bulged out, and speared me. The first, was that you go at incredibly slow speeds killing the effect. Thankfully, I was able to find a remedy for this in the second stage: There is an upgrade that increases your speed. The second problem was not so easy to overlook. You can not fly up or down. In other words, if you were to attempt to fly from the ground, to a ledge that you can't jump to: It wouldn't work. This leads you to have to jump off of cliffs or raised ledges, to fly to wear you actually want to go.

Sagas does balance out, however. The graphics are superb, in my opinion; Avalanche Software took an artistic approach, rather than a realistic approach; And no, "artistic" doesn't always translate to "cel-shading." What they did, were use high number of polygons for the characters, objects, items, attacks, and what not, but used a lower count for the scenery; Not an abundantly low count, but a lower count. And though I can't imagine that would look good in mesh, with the textures applied, the scenes are absolutely beautiful. And the fact that the ground and rocks can have craters and dents blew into them, adds to the effect, and makes you truly feel like you are playing a real Dragonball game.

Being a beat 'em up, this game doesn't put a large portion of its focus on story. That being said, actual clips from the television show have been used between stages, to help convey a story. And while this does get the job done -- at least enough so that you know what you are doing -- it makes the story feel very improvised; Someone who hasn't followed the story, will not completely understand the details of what is happening, and someone who has will lose count of the number of inconsistencies, and large portions of story that were left out. Which sums up to the fact, that this game is short, when it could have been much longer. It's only about five or six hours long, and the cutscenes that tell of battles that you did not take part in, kind of make you wonder, if the game could have been longer.

As mentioned, however, this is a beat 'em up. And while it doesn't tell its story as great as it could have, it does do a great job in the gameplay department. You use the simple system of Punching, Kicking, and KI Attacks at first -- Each have their own button -- but it quickly expands, to many more of the techniques that define what DBZ is. As stated, you'll pick up special attacks in the first level. Later on, you'll be able to pick up a few more tricks: Such as the ability to teleport, perform strings of combos of up to ten hits, and a few stronger attacks like Uppercuts and Roundhouses. The thing is, these are more like jigsaw pieces, than complete puzzles. You'll get the most out of the game, when you combine these; Dodging an enemies KI barrage, then warping behind them, uppercutting them into the air, and blasting them with a Gallick Gun -- or hammering them down into the ground again, if you prefer -- will become second nature to you, and that, is what I wanted in a DragonBall game.

And as a final piece of information: Yes, Avalanche did take out many of the features they had promised. You Broly fans, however, have nothing to be disappointed, about, the man is in here, as an unlockable, among other characters, several of whom, were very unexpected. This adds to the replayability of the game, which is a good thing, due to its length. It doesn't add much however; As good as this game is, it was not meant to be the next bust-a-move: It will get old after a play-through or two.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/28/05