"Geting Closer"

In my opinion the Budokai games have been mediocre at best, at least until Tenkaichi one. The first handful didn't really make me feel like I was playing a DBZ game, more like a game that had DBZ characters. The Tenkaichi series has really cranked up the Budokai series and its getting closer, but still no cigar. The biggest problems I have with this game is its glaring technical problems and its load times.

Positive Side:

1.) There are over 120 fighters in this game!!! Just about every character in the DBZ universe is here to throw down, save a few minor characters like the Spice Boys. Not only that, each character has a relatively unique move set with moves they used in the show. The characters also feel relatively unique, which is hard to pull off with so many characters.

2.) It spans all of DBZ continuity, most of the movies, and several what-if missions that are very fun to play through since you don't really know whats going to happen next for a change.

3.) Multiplayer is awesome. I love beating my friends with little known characters like Jeice when they are using SS4 Gogeta.

4.) I actually have to do the moves :D. This makes the special attacks a lot easier to perform, even for a beginner, and its a lot of fun in multiplayer to call out the attack as you're doing it.

5.) Control setup. You can learn it in about 15 minutes and then take another week to actually master it.

Bad side:
1.) First of all, what's with the caged in arenas? In the show, battles would span for miles and in this I have about a city block to work with. I absolutely hate it when I knock my enemy into one of these walls and they just bounce off nothing or when I get pinned against it.

2.) Newton said that any object will remain in motion unless acted upon by another force, yet when the fighters are hit hard enough, they go into a straight line and just fall out of the air. I hope in the next Tenkaichi that a punch from Goku would actually feel like Goku punched someone. Of course, this problem is more or less an extension of the invisible walls.

3.) Small pieces of rubble and cliffs can block a fully powered wave attack? A hill once stopped my Spirit Bomb attack. The attack destroyed the environment and turned it into a Wasteland, but that one hill stopped my enemy from taking any damage.

3.) To many load times. At least there's a mini-game.

4.) Z Items are more tedious than Junctioning in FFVIII. It takes forever to scroll through all the Z items and I don't really care. When you actually do max out your Z items, you encounter another problem:

5.) The difficulty settings. 1 is too easy, 2 is too easy, 3 is waaay to hard. I want a challenge, but I don't want to get my butt kicked completely either. It would be better if there was a more noticeable difference between 1 and 2. The only real difference is they don't stand still when you attack them from a distance.

6.) The Story mode gets a little repetitive. You fight the same villain like 10 times before you beat them. I'm all for playing through the entire anime, but it doesn't need to highlight every small change in the fight.

Recommendations for the Next one:

Tenkaichi Three could put the Budokai series on par with Soul Calibur in my opinion if it changed some of the following things

1.) Eliminate Physics problems such as the invisible wall (its not really invisible though), the hill that blocks my spirit bomb, and the dropping out of air without anything to stop it. I would imagine the next-gen processors are up to the task of creating a free-roaming arena. As for having someone drop out of thin air, if you allow people to teleport close to their enemies and allow players to tap A really fast to recover like you do now. It would be truer to the show and game play would make a lot more sense. Also when someone gets hit with a special attack, the attack shouldn't just stop, it would be a lot cooler if the enemy was being pushed along by the attack like in the show, instead of the attack just stopping when it hits someone, even if they're in mid-air (Newton's rolling in his grave). Of course that is probably another extension of the boxed-in arenas.

2.) Budokai games have always had a mini-game at the load screen. But the mini-game always sucks. Try something like Wario ware, multiple small random mini-games at the load screens. I was hoping this generation would eliminate load screens all together.

3.) A retry button would be nice. Instead we have to go through three load screens to get back to a battle, and if we lose, we have to go through three more load screens.

4.) There were some characters missing. All-be-it those characters weren't that great, but it would be beyond awesome if everyone who ever participated in a fight would make an appearance. Also, the Z fusion system is unneeded and unwanted,

5.) Make the Z item system more user friendly. A "remove all" button would be nice, also would it be too much to ask if you could share Z items between fighters or at least make switching them out take a lot less time. I think they're on the right track with the password system, but just saving it would be easier.

6.) Auto-saving would be nice. Especially since this is the kind of game were any advancement is strictly better than a current save file. If you want to replay a mission you can, so prompting for a save is unnecessary and only adds to the load screen problems. In a fighting game, you want to get the player to the next fight ASAP.

7.) The world map is a little unnecessary and doesn't add much game play content. Especially cause you can't do much on it. You can go to the item store and that's about it.

8.) More arenas. That one mountain road where they met 17 and 18 was used once in the show and about a hundred times in the game.

Of course some of these are just minor fixes that think would make the game play a lot smoother. But the first few would increase the quality of the game dramatically.

Rent or Buy:
If you have the means, and have already beaten Twilight Princess (probably going to be one of the best games that will ever come out for the Wii), I would suggest buying this game. If you've never played a Budokai game, I suggest renting it first to see if you can get over some of its tech problems for the love of DBZ. You can easily beat the game in a rental period with plenty of extra time to play with your friends. One of them might get it themselves and you won't have to.

Summary:
I think that the Budokai games are coming along nicely. Each one is a lot better than its predecessor and Tenkaichi is definitely the best to date. It just needs a little extra push to get it up to where all the fan-boys claim its at already. If you are a DBZ fan, I highly suggest getting this game, but if you're not, watch the show and then buy this game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/14/07