Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2

"All games are flawed but this ones pretty good."

Being a dragon ball Z fan from age 10, of course I love this game. It gives you a chance to take control of the characters you've grown so fond of over the years. All the way up to the point when it all ended. Even then still watching the reruns etc.

I think the game was great, of course no game is perfect, yes it is odd that you can kick around goku with videl, we all know thats not really gunna happen. But its a game of characters and story plot along with having fun being the characters you love. Lets face it no ones gunna wanna be krillin even if he is someones favorite character in the game if he's just a little wimp an gets knocked around in vs mode with a friend all the time. I will tell you this though, someone good with SSj4 Gogeta is hard to beat with any other character lol.

The games movements are pretty crisp an clean. The dragon rushes are beautiful. The controls were pretty good considering the number of buttons on a Ps2 controller would produce limited uses of DBZness. So they doubled up with the Power up// Ki Finisher button "L2 + Triangle". But sometimes you gotta multitask buttons so you can have the characters move quicker. I like it. Of course sometimes you lose track of your enemy, but thats just another aspect of DBZ itself. It gives you a chance to run an recover and execute a sneak attack. But thats also why they added the Search button "L1" so you can look around and spot//lock on to your enemy which I thought was a really realistic and good idea. + You've got your dragon radar which also acts as Ki Sensing. Those aspects kept it DBZish. Anyone who can't get a grasp on that shouldn't bother playing a DBZ fighting game, it might be embarrassing for them.

The graphics were ... well they were DBZ lol it looked great. It'd be odd to see Goku as a full 3D rendered creature with out tacking on that hand drawn cartoon outer shell. The environmental explosions and crumbles could of been better, but hey ITS PS2, whaddya want? I did enjoy watching part of a planet blow up into a wasteland wreck as your Kamehameha x100 hit the ground, that was amazing.

One other small insignificant flaw I'd say would have to be the fact that there is no OTHER WORLD environment created. Like when you fight Janimba, you're on Kami's look out tower I believe. And there was only one tournament stadium...There's supposed to be two, excluding cell games.
All games can use improvement, thats why they keep making new systems. Though if they would have added those 2 elements it would have given it a refreshing look instead of seeing the same backgrounds over an over.

The story is well... accurate for the most part as according to the DBZ//GT saga's... Well the GT saga is kind of short-lived lol but hey DBZ was better than GT anyway. Maybe in the next game they can have a create mode where you can create the look and moves all the way from clothes, hair, eyes, ears,body, height, to combo's,dragon rush styles and power moves. Now that would give it some more interest.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/26/07