"The Dragon Ball franchise deserves more than such a mediocre fighting game..."

As with so many other licensed video games, the history of Dragon Ball based titles has been full of disappointments and abhorrent, quick cash-ins, with amazingly dreadful and catastrophic games such as "Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku" still being released these days. There are some exceptions, fortunately, like the enjoyable Budokai fighting games for the PlayStation 2, but apart from them, there´s little hope for DBZ fans, and the infamous "Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout" ranks as one big letdown for the franchise in terms of video games.

As the title suggests, the game follows the events of Dragon Ball GT at least roughly, which already affects the variety of characters you can choose from. You´re not only limited to the "usual suspects" such as Goku, Vegeta, Freeza or Perfect Cell, but you can also choose from new GT characters like Pan, young Goku and Goku in his Super Saiyan 4 form, with the overall selection of characters being pretty solid. The number of game modes is standard at best, offering the modes every beat´em up should have at the very least, like the arcade/story mode or the time attack mode, but apart from those standard modes, there isn´t much else to be found in this game. That´s not the problem "Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout" is suffering from the most. After all, the game could have still ended up being good with solid gameplay mechanics and controls, but they´re missing here completely. All characters are basically way too slow and sluggish too control, with even simple kicks taking too long to execute. It unfortunately also serves to make the execution of special attacks too difficult and annoying as well, since you never really feel like you´re in full control of your character. There´s also a flying option for all of the characters, but again, the clunky controls make it quite an issue, too, draining even more fun out of the game. Normally, you´d think that this means that the game´s difficulty level is pretty high, but that´s not the case here: you´ll be able to fight your way through the story mode without too many problems in the process, since you don´t even need appropriate tactics to beat your foes. It´s really disappointing to see how flawed the gameplay in Final Bout really is, since this game could have been much more with better controls and more challenging enemies.

Unlike in the horrendous Ultimate Battle 22, "Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout" actually makes use of the 3D technology of the PlayStation and displays all fighters and arenas as 3D polygonal models. Considering the age of the game, the graphics don´t look that bad and could actually be considered to be decent, since they rather faithfully recreate the characters we all know from the show, but the character models tend to look pretty blocky - a problem many early 3D titles have been suffering from, admittedly. The highlight in this department, however, certainly is the fully animated intro sequence of the game, drawn in the typical Dragon Ball style and featuring some cool glimpses at battles such as Goku vs. Freeza, and for an anime-intro, it looks great.

The music fares rather well, too, featuring some nicely composed themes for the various battles, fitting the atmosphere of the Dragon Ball battles as we know them from the series excellently, reaching from evil and somewhat eerie in Freeza´s stage, upbeat and heroic in Goku´s stage to mysterious in the final stage of the game. I also liked the Japanese opening theme song, being a good way to lead into the game, and needless to say, there´s also quite some Japanese voice acting before and during each battle, and there´s hardly anything to complain about, seeing that the voice actors do an excellent job as always - in Japanese games at least.

Final Bout is not a horrible game by any means, but it´s still a huge disappointment for fans of the anime that does not live up to the legendary name at all. The controls are just too flawed to allow this game to be rated higher, despite the decent audio and visual presentation. Only hardcore fans of the series should take a look at this game, but then again, there are the aforementioned Budokai games for PlayStation 2, representing a better alternative than this utterly disappointing beat´em up.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/10/07