Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2

"Even with the new additions to the gameplay, it still comes as a major letdown"

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 is the follow up to Dragon Ball Z: Budokai. As I was actually impressed by the first game, I had higher expectations for the second one, I expected it to have better gameplay, another cool story mode, and alot more extras to collect. However only some of these things were improved, and some of them were downgraded so much its almost sad.

Story: 5/10

The story mode in this game is really poor. Why they ditched the cut-scenes from the first Budokai for this lame board game I have no idea why. The main reasons why this new single player mode is so poor, well I will explain. First off all they put you back into square 1. You start out at the total beginning of the DBZ story like you did in Budokai 1. But for some reason, all of the events that happen are completly different from the real story. Everything happens completly different, and some things happen that never even happened. This creates an extremely weird single player, because of how inaccurate it is to the real story. The board game is also really basic and no overly interesting. It seems drawn out and very blan. You move your characters around a board-gamish map 1 space at a time. But theres no real point to it. Because you have to fight you opponents anyways, so whats the point of delaying everything with board game pieces. You will continually find yourself chasing your opponents down so you can defeat them. You have to fight most enemies at least 2 times before they are defeated. The only other thing you do on the board game is look for dragon balls and get minor amounts of money, and you can also get some capsules. There really isn't anything interesting about the single player mode, and its more of a chore to get through then something that should eb fun. The other disapointing thing is that you have to go through it several times to get all the characters, which really prolongues things.

Gameplay: 7/10

There are several nice new additions to the gameplay that do make it alot better, but there are also some things removed that I found disapointing. Such as in the first Budokai Frieza had several power ups he could do, in this one they are all removed and he starts in his final form. Same with alot of other characters, there power ups are removed, and only have 1. A couple characters were also taken out, which I see no real reason to remove them, like Zarbon was actually a interesting character, he wasn't super popular, but he had some cool attacks, a cool monster form, and shouldn't really have been removed in my opinion. Dodoria on the other hand wasn't that interesting and I don't think anyone would really care about him being removed. There are some new cool things to like Gotenks, and Gogeta that you can use which really make things kinda cool. Theres also ways of reducing damage from special attacks by pressing as many buttons as you can, and if the person being attacked pressed the most buttons reduces teh damage, or if the other person wins the opponent takes full damage. You can also dodge some attacks, each player presses a button, if they both press the same button then the person takes full damage, but if the opponent presses a different button they can dodge the damage. However there is nothing all to revolutional in this sequel to really boost its gameplay score.

Graphics: 8/10

The graphics are virtually the same as what was in the first game, no real improvements or changes, everything still looks nice however and it all comes into place and looks pretty fluid. But overall nothing really new here.

Sound: 7/10

Same with the graphics its all pretty much the same. There are some new tracks, but nothing has really changed. Most of the sounds are the same, it could use some new sounds, but overall its not to bad, so it doesn't really affect the game staying pretty much the same.

Replay Value: 6/10

The single player mode definitely won't keep the average person interested very long, and comes off more as a total bore, but the core action of the game will keep you interested for awhile, with some new cool features, and the whole capsule thing still in the game you can get some good replay value out of the fighting. But the new single player really drags down the game.

Overall: 6.6

Overall its fighting is good, but I don't recommend this to people who arn't interested in Dragon Ball Z. The first game, in my opinion is much better, even with the small amount of new gameplay features, it just can't compare to the originals single player mode. Stick with the first one. If you are really interested in the game then rent it, but overall it ain't nothing new or spectacular.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/24/04