"A MUST-HAVE for any DB/Z/GT or fighting game fan."

Although it's been several years since I was into the Dragon Ball series, I decided to check this game out since I had heard it was good, and what a great decision that was!

Gameplay: Well, it's a fighting game, so you might already know what to do: kick the other guy's (or guys') ass as hard and fast as possible using overly-complex combos. DBZ:BT2 combines the essential fighting style of typical fighting games by allowing use of the Wii Classic Controller or a Gamecube Controller, and it demonstrates great usage of the Wiimote by allowing usage of that with a Nunchuck. Battles are fast and intense with all sorts of physical and ki moves you've either seen or never even heard of from the series, and with a huge amount of unique characters (120 if you include transformations like Super Saiya-jin, Oozaru (giant ape), Freeza's million different transformations, etc.), it doesn't get old. Each character can power up their ki (in the typical 3-episodes-of-the-anime-grunting fashion) to perform three different classes of ki blast attacks.

However, if you want to be the ass kicker and not the ass kickee, you'll probably need to go through the game's training mode where it teaches you how to do pretty much everything you need to know to improvise an intense battle.

Besides the insanely long adventure mode (which is similar to an RPG as well), there are other modes like a tournament mode, dueling mode (1v1, 2v2, and 5v5; this is where you play multiplayer), challenge mode (i.e. survival mode), and training/practise.

Score: 10/10

Story: Guess what the story is... DBZ:BT2 starts off in the beginning of Dragon Ball Z with the first battle being Piccolo (you) versus Raditsu after he arrives on Earth. The story progresses throughout the series and includes most of the movies as scenarios as well. The story finishes up in Dragon Ball GT against the Shadow Dragons.

Score: 9/10 if you like DBZ/GT, 5/10 if not (far too confusing if you don't know what's supposed to happen)

Gr4fx: Finally, a DBZ game that tries to use the manga/anime-style drawings in 3d! With the exception of random close-ups during cutscenes, everything looks beautiful in the typical Japanese anime fashion. Ki blasts are done quite well in a more 3d fashion than they are in the actual anime.

Score: 9/10

Sound: All the characters have their own crap they say during, before, and after battle, and the database of said quotes is surprisingly large. You can switch the voices to their original Japanese counterparts if you don't like the US voice actors (or just want to hear Japanese women talk; don't worry, it's okay to like that). There isn't much music (if any) in this game, so it's kinda hard to rate that.

Score: 7/10

Replayability: Despite the massive hourage you'll have to put in to complete everything, once you get to that point, the game doesn't just get stale. Some fighting games suffer from the "f this game" mentality once you finally complete it, but no worries here as you can have some fun by starting anywhere in the story again in the hardest difficulty as your maxed out characters, or by just having fun kicking the crap out of the AI.

Score: Me play you long time/10

Rent or buy: If you like DBZ, buy this immediately; you'll thank me later. If you've never even heard of DBZ, or maybe you despise it, you should at least rent this, end up playing it for several hours straight, and buy it later on.

Score: Buy/10

Overall: If you disregard the DBZ RPGs for Super Famicom (which weren't released in the US anyhow; you'd have to get a fan-translated ROM of it), this is the best DBZ game ever. In fact, it's so good, you don't even have to like the manga or anime to like the game. This game takes longer than Zelda:TP to beat surprisingly, so no worries about length. If you don't like the Wiimote/Nunchuck combo, you can plug in a Classic Controller or Gamecube Controller and kick some ass with standard fighting controls.

Score: 9/10 (7/10 if you don't like DBZ, note that 5/10 means average).

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/02/07