Dragon Ball Z: Sagas

"Hmmmm.....what is this supposed to be?"

Games for DBZ have never been that great. When Budokai came around, that was a whole new thing for the franchise and sure, it wasn't the greatest fighting game around but it was pretty decent and it was DBZ. Then when they went further with it it started to move downhill. They finally got it right with Budokai 3 from what I hear. So, this had me thinking, wow they got DBZ right finally, this game is probably gonna be great. Well, I was wrong.

Story: 9/10

Just the regular old DBZ story except done better this time so it's actually cutscenes from the show. That actually works for this game so I give this one of the only high scores for this game.

Graphics: 7/10

Eh, could be better. The models look decent but there is something about them that just doesn't seem right or proportionate.

Gameplay: 5/10

The game kind of bombs here. It starts out being really fun until after the first 5 minutes. You have your basic B=punch, Y=Kick, A=Jump, and X=Ki Blast. Those are pretty much the basic controls for a good DBZ action adventure game. There are some nice twists where you can get upgrades which is where the RPG aspect comes in (I don't consider this an RPG at all after playing it though). You can get upgrades so you can teleport and fly faster and things like that. You press jump twice and you get a little flying action going on. The flying wasn't executed that poorly in my opinion. I mean, you have to be high up to get height for flying because you can only hover the distance you were off the ground when you jumped. So, yeah, you can't technically fly up and down but the controls would probably be sloppier so I am glad that they left that out. Beat the game and you unlock characters in Pendulum mode which is the story with character selection because normally the characters are predetermined to fit with the story. The plus side to the game is that there is a co-op mode but that can get pretty annoying. Another beef I had was that a few of the bosses, while Atari tried to switch it up a bit, got tedious and took forever to beat. You will see what I mean when you fight the final boss. None of the bosses or hard but they get tedious and boring I almost put the game down cause the final boss took so long to beat. But, that might be something people like. All I know, that ticked me off a lot. The difficulty is pretty low, I can say that I might have died twice and when you can carry around 3 easy to find senzu beans that bring you back to life instantly, you most likely won't have to even use all of them. Overall, I think this area could have used much more improvement.

Sound: 9/10

The sound you can never really complain about in Atari's DBZ games. Starting with Budokai, the sound has been great and they use the voice actors so it really works well. Something about how the energy blasts and sound effects in general sound weird but that could be because it might be compressed in the Gamecube version (like Prince of Persia Sands of Time for people who have played that for the Cube----man that was annoying----but it's not nearly that bad). Overall, no complaints really.

Replay: 1/10

The co-op and Pendulum mode might last you another hour or so but there really is no reason to play this game again. It takes about 4-5 hours at the most for people that actually search for all the items and stuff to play through the game. There really isn't much to do when you beat the game.

Overall: 6/10 (not an average)

I really have to recommend a rental with this one. Unless you don't play it at all, you should be able to beat it the first day you get it. It took me about 4 hours total to beat it with breaks and everything so I have to recommend renting it. If you think going through the game over and over again with unlockables like Broly and Krillin then maybe you should buy this but even at the Cube's low $40 price tag, it's still pretty much a ripoff. If you wanna get this I recommend rental then wait for player's choice. I really hope they do a much better job with Sagas 2. It's probably gonna be Buu saga and everything so I wanna see huge improvement I wanna see people rating the next one in the 9's. Fingers crossed....

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/29/05