"A decent RPG, but nothing compared to the likes of Seiken Densetsu 3 and Tales of Phantasia."

I first encountered this RPG at the late Plasticman's Emulation Site, long before in a time when ZSNES was only at about version .800, Tales of Phantasia was playable only by fluent Japanese readers, and a translation patch for Seiken Densetsu 3 was a distant dream. I downloaded it and prayed that it would be playable. Unfortunately, in Japanese, it was completely unplayable, and I didn't know who was attacking what, or ANYTHING. I quickly discarded it and went back to my Crono Trigger and Final Fantasy 3 ROMs. Last month or so, I went to OML and on the front page, were two fat pictures describing ROMs: a Japanese Tenchi Muyo! game translated, and DBZ RPG translated also. I downloaded both, and loaded DBZ RPG first. I ignored the horrible misspelling of Goku's Saiya-jin name, the awful dialogue and advanced foward after taking a little time to get intimate with the difficult-to-understand battle system. After the translated ending which resembled more like the mess a psychotic baby would make with its lettered blocks than actual WORDS, I sighed and put in the much better translated Tenchi Muyo! RPG. A few months later, I'm writing this review. Onwards!

Graphics: 3/10
Graphics? Animated CRAP is more appropriate. Blocky, pixilated, horrendously small sprites which have NO detail are the norm on the map, and the map looks more appropriate for late NES games. The battle cards and the item cards are practically the ONLY thing that has any amount of detail in the entire game. Also, when SSJ Goku does a flying attack, his eyes turn red! Yikes! Did I also mention the flying attacks? It's SO obvious that the lazy programmers just enlarged the already pixellated sprites to the point where they were horrendous that I, an amateur programmer still learning the LINE INPUT commands in QBasic could have done a better job! The animations and the beams striking the enemy, especially when the user has a Ki rating of over a million looks cool, though. They also did a nice touch that they had every character do a random kind of attack, like leaping back and flying into the character, or knocking him up and then back down, or forcing the enemy back and then leaping at him and punching, etc. Also, when the characters fighting physically have a Ki rating of over 10,000, a lame-looking energy field surounds them. If they'd put more detail into the sprites, the graphics would've been perfect.

Gameplay: 4/10
At least the gameplay's slightly better. The card system has been taking to an extreme. The characters all have different attacking styles, and the cards have different symbols representing fighting styles. While any character can use any particular fighting style, if you match up the symbol on the card to the symbol under their portrait, then the character attacks every enemy. Also, randomly, Ki cards will show up which allow someone to do an attack. Unfortunately, most of the characters only have two or three attacks, rendering it more or less worthless. The random encounter rate is ridiculously high, also.

Audio: 5/10
Blarg. The sound sucks, the music sucks. 'Nuff said.

Story: N/A
If you've watched the show through the Saiya-jin and Frieza saga, you know the story of DBZ RPG. Even then, it's inconsistent with the story, although it gets a vague gist of what happens through to the unfortunate player.

Overall (not an average): 5/10
It's okay, but it's NOT the best RPG out there. It's a chore to slave through the mini-games, especially with the training sessions, and when you have to fly with Gohan while dodging Ki blasts from the big, pink fat dude, if you get hit, you have to fight him, so the penalty is WAY too serious. Overall, it's a poorly-thought out RPG which lacks any real effort. The SNES can do soooo much more in the graphics AND sounds department than this game belches out, and the gameplay system, while new, doesn't work too well since you have so little control over it and leveling up is basically rendered useless because you can't learn any new attacks and the only REAL bonus is a bigger number under ''Power'', along with a small HP and KI gain. So, in summary, this game is okay, but it was rushed and another year of tweaking the graphics and the gameplay system would have turned this into one of the best RPGs you could ever hope to play. A spiky-haired martial artist named Son Goku and the Dragonball name, as this RPG so aptly demonstrates, can't cover up the blatant flaws of a rushed game.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/28/01, Updated 10/28/01