Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi

"Tenkaichi is a relatively fun game for fans of Dragon Ball Z, but it is ultimately disappointing."

The Good: Tons of characters; a lot of different gameplay modes; most of the battles from the show are in the game; beam struggles and power struggles have been included like they were in Budokai 3.

The Bad: Dull fighting mechanics; no in-game transformations; cut scenes aren't that great; battles are over too fast; a lot of the extra modes aren't really that great; you can win against the AI by spamming the same moves over and over again; the camera can be extremely annoying if you are backed up against a wall making it impossible to see; still no Garlic Jr saga; all of the music is recycled from Budokai 3.

Score:
Gameplay: 6
Graphics: 7
Sound: 5
Value: 7
Tilt: 8

Overall: 6.8

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi is a very innovative idea for a Dragon Ball Z fighting game. Having the opportunity to duke it out in realistic Dragon Ball Z style, instead of as a fighting game is a great idea. Unfortunately Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi leaves a lot to be desired.

The game follows the story line fairly well, however the cut scenes aren't really that great, they are just there to explain what the upcoming battle is about and why the two characters will be fighting. Pretty much every fight you can think of is in the story mode, so long as the required characters are in the game. However, that is all there is to the story mode. You pick a saga, and then you play out all of the battles that take place within that saga using all of the hero characters, fighting against all of the bad guys. So for example, at the beginning of the game you pick the Saiyan saga, and you end up fighting Raditz, and then a whole bunch of Saibamen using the Z fighters. You do this until you finally get to the climatic battle between Goku and Vegeta, and then the saga ends. The cut scenes are disappointing because they don't really do that great of a job of conveying the story. They are only ever there before and after a battle and usually just show the two characters standing there while they mutter some dialog similar to the show, and then it goes back to the menu where you pick the next battle. Some of the battles also have specific battle conditions for victory, where you have to survive a time limit, or you have to end the battle with a certain special move. For example, in one of the fights where Goku faces off against Frieza, you have to defeat Frieza using Goku's spirit bomb attack. If you don't defeat him using the spirit bomb then you will not complete the stage.

The fighting mechanics in Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi are actually quite confusing at first, but once you get the hang of things it is actually relatively easy. It took me about an hour in the training mode to fully get the hang of things, and understand exactly what I was doing, however it may have taken me longer than normal because I tried changing the controls to make them more similar to Budokai 3. This proved to be useless however, because when you pause the game to look at your move list the controls are still displayed as the default controls. Because of this I ended up changing everything back to the default settings, which I recommend for everyone, as customization is pretty much pointless and will just end up confusing you. There is a training mode that explains how to perform everything in the game, but the annoying part is that there isn't a lot of interactivity, it's pretty much just reading things on the screen with some pictures, and then you have to actually go into the practice mode and try and remember everything that you read. So you are basically better off going into the practice mode, screwing around for a bit, and then reading all of the training information. Once you've done that you can go back to the practice mode where you will need to spend some time until you get the hang of things. So the game does have a somewhat steep learning curve, but in the end the game turns out to be pretty easy once you know what you're doing.

All of the characters play relatively the same in Tenkaichi, that is part of the reason why it isn't very difficult. Each character can perform attack combos by pressing the square button, ki blasts by pressing the triangle button, and blocking and dodging by pressing the circle button. The x button is used to fly towards your enemy, or if you push the control stick in a direction and press the x button at the same time you can fly around or away from them. You use the shoulder buttons to fly up and down, and you also have to use them to lock onto your enemy before you can actually attack them. The majority of Tenkaichi's depth comes from the ability to charge up powerful hits that send your opponent flying. To do this, while you are attacking your enemy you can hold down the square button and point the control stick in the direction that you want them to go, and you will send them flying. Depending on how long you hold down the button for, the hit will be weak or strong. A weak hit will stun them briefly, while a medium hit will send them back a little bit, and a strong hit will send them flying. It's hard to judge what kind of hit you are going to use though because the meter that shows you how strong your hit will be is in a poor location, and the meter isn't very large. So the type of hit you get is sometimes luck, depending on what you were going for. You can also use the triangle button for a ki stun, which will stun them, and then you can keep them in a combo. It is a really annoying attack to have used against you, but it is possible to break free from it. This is used in the same manner as the charged up attacks.

Each character's special moves are separated into two categories. There are "favourite moves" and then the regular blast moves like kamehameha. The favourite moves use anything ranging from one to three orbs that fill up on one of your display meters dedicated to favourite techniques. They usually add some sort of bonus to the character's attack or defense. They can sometimes instantly charge all of your character's energy so you can perform your ultimate move. The favourite techniques aren't really usually that useful but for some characters they can really turn the tide of the battle. The regular energy waves like kamehameha use your ki energy bar, that you have to charge yourself. The annoying thing about this is that you just have 1 giant energy bar, and you really have no way of indicating how much of that bar you need to be full in order to use the move, sometimes it's almost the entire thing. If you have any favourite charges stocked up you can charge beyond your maximum capability to charge up to maximum strength. You only have a certain amount of time in the maximum strength mode, which makes you much stronger, but you will probably want to use your ultimate move, which after performing reverts you back to normal. Your character's ultimate move is usually their strongest attack.

There are several disappointing things about Tenkaichi. The first of which is that the game is too easy and doesn't really require much thought to play, and the AI is also really dumb. So you basically just sit there and launch a kamehameha, recharge, and by the time the AI gets back up you launch another one. For many of the battles you can just keep spamming this over and over again. There are also special attacks that some characters have access to, and they are called rush attacks, usually by the name of "high speed rush". What happens is your character will fly towards their opponent at super fast speeds and then enter into a small cinematic with them of you pounding away at them, and they will usually be sent flying afterwards. The annoying thing is that you can just keep spamming this over and over again and it's really hard to avoid, especially if you have no energy to launch one of your own attacks at them.

Tenkaichi has pretty decent graphics, and the levels do a good job of replicating locations from the show, but they look a little drab from time to time. The special moves don't always look that good, and they seem like they could be a lot flashier, with more effects going on at once, and the levels are also kind of small. In reality, they aren't actually that small but there are magic barriers on the outsides of the level that prevent you from going any further and it really takes away from the realism of the battle which is quite frustrating. It's also funny when you send and opponent flying near the edge of the level and they go flying away from you in a straight line, and then start to curve into another direction because they are following the magical barrier that circulates the level. It would have been better if they made it so that when you reach the edge of the level you just go back to the other side, like how it was in Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 when you were flying around the world map. If you went to one side and kept going you wouldn't be stopped, instead you would just be doing laps around the world. If they incorporated this effect into Tenkaichi it would do the game wonders.

The music is perhaps the worst part of Tenkaichi because it is all recycled from Budokai 3. This is really disappointing because it just seems lazy on Atari's behalf when they localized this game for a North American audience. It's also annoying because the Japanese version of the game has all new music, so there is no reason why they couldn't of given the North American audience all new music as well if they didn't want to leave in the Japanese music. It's worse too because in Budokai 3 the music was all assigned to a specific level, and in Tenkaichi it is completely random. So you can imagine how annoying it must be hearing random Budokai 3 music in all of these different levels. The voice acting is up to its regular standard, but it is irritating because during the battles it's almost impossible to hear the characters when they talk. For example, when a character pulls off a special move they usually say something but it's incredibly quiet, and there is no way of making it louder so you can understand what they are saying. During the regular cut scenes it isn't quiet, but the recycled music and messed up voice volume during the battles makes the sound department of Tenkaichi extremely unimpressive.

Tenkaichi has pretty much every major battle from the television show, but ultimately none of them are all that interesting. There is a ton of extra battles and characters from movies, which is cool, but they are extremely half baked. Half of the battles from the movies are completely absent, so when you start the Cooler story line you automatically have Goku fighting an already transformed Cooler with little to no explanation of what story has developed. So in this regard it's pretty silly. The main portion of the game is enough to keep you occupied for some time, and there are some neat things to unlock, but pretty much every extra mode is pointless and uninteresting. The ultimate battle mode is extremely pointless, as you try and climb your way to the top of a ladder of 100 fighters starting at the bottom. But every time you lose a battle you lose a point, but you can also earn points. If you lose all of your points you lose and have to start all over again, so this mode isn't very appealing, interesting, or rewarding. The main attraction of this game is the story mode and the vs mode if you want to fight your friends, which can be pretty fun, which I have done quite a bit.

Ultimately Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi is a decent game for fans of Dragon Ball Z, but I highly recommend that people otherwise uninterested in Dragon Ball Z avoid this game completely. The only people who will get any enjoyment out of this game are people who like Dragon Ball Z and already understand the story line, anyone else will be extremely confused. It's a shame that a game like this is so disappointing, when the basic idea behind it had so much promise. Fortunately the sequel Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2, which is already released is much better than this game, and I strongly recommend that you skip this one and play the sequel instead. The only people that should play this if they haven't already are collectors who want to own every Dragon Ball Z game, or hardcore Dragon ball Z fanatics.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/07