"The best DBZ game made up to date"

Prologue

Budokai Tenkaichi 3, or Sparking Meteor! which it is called in Japan is the third installment in the second trilogy of fighting games for the PS2. Or well we can just presume it is a trilogy since the Budokai series never got any major releases after Budokai 3 we can almost assume that this will be the last major release of the series before a possible jump to the Next Generation of consoles.

BT3 is more of a DBZ simulator than a fighting game. You can fly freely around the maps, the special attacks are easy to execute and there are no super-fancy moves which are really hard to exectue. But just because it is easy to learn does not mean its easy to master and this is where you will spend the most of the time when playing. Also we have a large roster of characters with over 20 new characters that has been added since BT2. New characters include nice additions as Future Gohan, GT Goku and Nuova Shenron. And we also get Arale, General Blue, Tambourine, Nam and Eighter (yay!!!!111)



STORY 7/10

In BT2 we had possibly the worst story mode ever. Around 140 battles, really horrible cutscenes in which the story was told from. The story mode has thankfully been properly revamped and remade for BT3. Since this IS a game for the DBZ fans Spike knows that we have played through the DBZ story dozens of times by now and they have considerably shortened the Story Mode by only having the most major battles in which works in most cases. However you wonder how they reason when the short fight Trunks had with Cell in the future is more important than all of Gotenks and Gohan's fights against Super Buu.

All in all the story mode is exactly 48 battles this time around. I personally like that it is short, I dont want to play through the DBZ story for the fiftyeleventh time and a short story mode is great since it is quite poor. Spike made improvements to it in general but there is alot of unused potential in it. Instead of cutscenes we got characters commenting on the events in the fight (well not directly towards your actions but in general) which means that the cutscenes and gameplay is one in the story mode. However something Spike has not improved is the dullness of the actual cutscenes that appears when you press R3 when told so. The R3 icon usually appears a short while into the fights but pressing it is optional except in some fights like SSJ3 Goku vs Hirudegarn where your attacks doesnt deal damage, in other cases it seemingly does nothing, in some cases it will make your character transform and in some cases it will make your character use their Ultimate Blast for 99999 damage. The cutscenes however are as I said dull. The characters are just standing there, their lips move but otherwise they stand in the same pose all the time.

Now using R3 is optional, if you use it you will progress through the game as you would expect it to. You can create your own What-If's if you want like Tien beats Nappa and you'll be awarded with some really anticlimatic comment like 'I won...' and it won't have any impact at all on the story further on, in this case Tien, Chiaotzu, Piccolo and Yamcha will all be dead in the next fight between Goku and Vegeta. Nothing can alter the flow of events in the game. If you beat Baby Vegeta as Kid Goku GT it will have the exact same results as beating him as SSJ4, you won't unlock anything extra or anything, in fact in some cases its faster and better to not press R3 at all.

All in all the Story is not what you buy the game for but it makes up a significant part of the game since you will go through it to unlock things. If you are hardcore you can go through it in just a few hours and this is where it picks points in the review: it is short, it does not take up too much time like the story mode in BT2. Sure there is less sense of accomplishment since all characters (minus GT Goku, SSJ4 Goku, Vegeta and Gogeta and the rest of the new characters) are unlocked from start but I prefer this any day over the story mode of BT2 where we have to do every single little fight in the series and movies like Goten sparring with Gohan and Yajirobe & Roshi fighting off a Meta-Cooler.



GRAPHICS 9/10

The graphics are just wonderful. The characters are celshaded and the models look great. The special effects looks great and the game just looks generally great for being a PS2 game. There really is not much to complain about here, everrything looks like it should. In some cases things look blocky like the fingers but thats only in close up. We are going to be spoiled with the graphics and effects in this game and hope that the next DBZ fighting series which hopefully (not hopefully for me as I dont have a Next Gen console :<) will be Next Gen will look as explosive and great as this but even better. On a further note the intro looks quite ugly but its nothing major.

A thing I'd like to point out is that the transformations looks fantastic for fighters with unique transformation sequences. The facial expression of Goku as he goes from SSJ2 -> SSJ3 just looks plain awesome. On top of that the auras when charging up looks awesome and a lot better than those in BT2 (I never understood that blue crap that flew around the character when you charged up in BT2)



GAMEPLAY 10/10

Boy this is where you will see the biggest improvements. Just like BT2 completely revamped the system and BT3 does the same. If you played BT2 you will get how most of everything works already but there have been a large number of changes, some general changes like the lock-on which is now automatic, taunting is automatic after a few seconds of standing still (which is quite bad at times, but in all honesty you should not stand still at all and if you do and want to prevent the automatic taunting just hold guard) aswell as general changes.

Mostly the changes are stuff that Throwing is now done by pressing X twice instead of X + Up in close combat, Ascending or descending fast is now done by pressing R1 or R2 twice instead of L2 + R1/R2. Dashing is also infinite now and doesnt stop after a few seconds which means you can glide around the whole map by just holding X. It takes some hour of playing to get used these changes but it all flows quite perfect when you learned it. On other hand some changes seems to be done for no reason, deflecting Ki blats is now done by holding Guard and tapping Left and Right on the left analog. This has made it alot easier for characters like Androids to absorb attacks easier so in a way its a change for the better since the timing needed in BT2 resulted in more not absorbed attacks than absorbed attacks.

Enough about changes, more about the new stuff. This time around we have a few new features. The two major ones are Z Boost Dash (or something, its a dash at least) and Z Counter. Z "Dash" is done by pressing X an extra time after you started a faster dash. This will consume extra Ki (quite alot in fact) but it will take you behind your opponent within a second, excellent for closing great distances but risky to use due to the power usage (which means that it works best in Max Power where Ki is pretty much unlimited when it comes to dashing). The other new major feature is the Z Counter. They come in two variants, #1 and #2. Now I dont know which is which but one of them is quite easy to perform and one is quite hard. The Z Counter is one of the charactheristic things about DBZ, the ability to avoid an enemy melee attack and teleport behind them and deliver your own. Z Counter is very useful in general and works in a sense abit like the Blast 1 move Wild Sense.

Then there is a last addition, the Sonic Sway. This one was abit of a disappointment. If you press O + /\ on the non charged attack thrown at you a short cutscene will play and your character avoid all the attacks of it as he drains his opponents Ki slightly and knocks him away. This was one of the cooler things in DBZ Budokai 3 but I must say this is my only real disappointment with Sonic Sway. Sure it is quite useful but I personally wish that you could simply avoid single attacks instead of activating this short cutscene.

Other than that the previous gameplay has been greatly improved, there is alot of functions to make looong combos for MASSIVE DAMAGE (sry). The melee system recieved a minor overhaul as there is no longer a charge meter (your character blinks white when it is fully charged though) and some attacks like Rolling Hammer cant be done at free will (which is good as in this case any character that had Rolling Hammer in BT2 could be considered a tier character). The gameplay was dull in BT1, in BT2 it was made better and in BT3 it was even better. It is perfect for this game, apart from a better Sonic Sway I am perfectly 100% happy with it.



ROUNDUP OF NEGATIVE ASPECTS

Instead of sumarising the audio and some of the new features I gonna round it all up in a paragraph or two. First off we got the Dragon World Tour mode. We now have 5 tournaments to choose from. A normal World Tournament with Ring-Out, another World Tournament which is done at different arenas, the Cell Games which is all done at the Cell Games arena in a Survival Mode where you dont regain health after each battle, the Otherworld Tournament which is just a harder version of the non Ring-Out World Tournament and finally the Yamcha games where you dont get to pick your own character.

Now the problem with this is that there is a clock at the tournament menu. Tournaments are only available at certain times and at a certain difficulty and some stuff like King Cold is only unlockable at level 3 Cell Games. This means that if you dont get a level 3 Cell Games when it is around you have to leave the World Tour menu 24 times to get a new round of Cell Games and see if it turns out to be level 3, if its not leave the menu 24 times again and hope for better luck. Now at start you won't have this problem but when you for example only got King Cold left I promise you it will be frustrating. And then there is the Yamcha games, the character is random so it will either be crap, okay or great. The problem is that the tournament is only around for 2 hours on the clock so if you end up twice with crap characters you will have to leave and reenter the menu 24 times to get access to it again. That means its just good game if you get Guldo and Garlic Jr

The audio is mostly good, everything sounds like it should do. However the voice direction in story mode is quite bad at times and the actors in the english audio sounds quite unenthusiastic at times and the delivery of lines ends up like crap. I havent played it on japanese but from what I know Cell sounds like crap in the japanese story mode.

Disc Fusion. We get to play the 2 quite crappy Ultimate game modes from BT1 and BT2. This really isnt any compensation for us PS2 owners who miss out on the online mode for the Wii since if I want to play those modes I can just play the original game.



SUMMARY

+ Further improved graphics, gameplay and character roster
+ The best DBZ game made up to date
+ This time around it really feels like DBZ
+ The Story Mode isn't too dragged out this time around...

- ...but it still is not much better than last time either
- At times the delivery of some lines in the Story Mode is just bad
- Disc Fusion is a disappointment and crap compared to a Online mode
- Unlocking stuff in Dragon World Tour

All in all, this is the best DBZ game for the PS2, best DBZ game on any console and best DBZ game ever made (up to date that is, I am sure the next fighting game will be even better). IF you are a DBZ fan this is a game for you, this game is fan service. If you are a fan you will get alot out of this game, if you are not possibly not as much but it is still a great game.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/21/07

Game Release: Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 (EU, 11/09/07)