Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku

"I'm sickened and dismayed that games like this exist..."

Call it the whim of a silly girl. Who else would waste eight hours of her life trying to disprove the legacy (no pun intended) of bad DBZ games when ten minutes is more than enough to prove that this game redefines bad? Who else would struggle through this horrible, disgusting, wretched, evil excuse of a game searching for a single redeeming feature? This game is so bad that just writing about it makes me consider drowning myself in the bowl of strawberry jello sitting beside me. Let's look at it a bit closer, shall we?

I may as well cover the very little that's good. The game's opening and ending have cool little clips from the show. Granted, they're pixilated as hell, but I've seen worse. Peppered throughout the game are screenshots from the show. They're cute, in a nostalgia-inducing kind of way, but contribute little, as the story is beyond the hope of any screenshot. The music when you first arrive on Namek is sad and beautiful, and made me want to cry. I actually wanted to cry many times while playing this game, usually from desperate attempts to claw my eyes out or in sorrow that the show I love was given a game that doesn't even deserve the title of ''game'', so it was nice to actually find a good thing about the game to cry over. And that's about it for the good.

Now for the bad. The only problem is where to start! We'll start with the most important aspect of any RPG: story. The story of DBZ: Legacy of Goku is a shattered, unrecognizable shell of the anime I so love. I could list every deviation from the story, every senseless thing Goku does, and explain why this shouldn't have been put there even though it is a game and not the show, but that would take the whole review, and there's more to a game than story. But this game truly makes no sense. There's no explanation for what Goku does. There are no connections. ''Goku's son is kidnapped! Oh no! Let's go home!'' That's only one of the many, many, many parts of this story that make no sense. If I hadn't watched these episodes of the anime religiously for about seven years, I would have no clue what the hell was going on. There is no excuse for this.

You want me to tell you the gameplay is halfway decent? You want me to lie to you? This game plays a lot like a GameBoy Zelda game, actually. A butchered, no-fun version, for sure, but that's all I can think to describe it as. In this game, you have a total of four actions you can take in battle: punch, energy beam, solar flare, and Kamehameha. Collision detection is horrible in this game, so you have to be on top of the thing before you can punch it. And a wolf at the beginning of the game will tear you to shreds before you can get three punches in. Solar flare doesn't stop an enemy for long enough to be any good. Kamehameha takes a ton and a half of energy, isn't as strong as the energy beam, and has Goku saying ''Kamehame-Ha!''. No thanks. So that leaves the energy beam as your only weapon against all the baddies. You can also only move or shoot in four directions, limiting you further. And you can't run. Unless a level up earns you some agility, you're the same (slow) speed throughout the game. You can fly, but it just looks like Goku is lying on his stomach. You have an amount of ''Flying Energy'' that you refill by finding little bubbles with a wing on them. Your energy runs out so fast, though, and flying is so not fun, that you'll find yourself using it only when you have no choice, like when running from a boss that's WAY FASTER THAN YOU DESPITE A COUPLE HOURS OF TRAINING FIGHTING AND DYING AGAINST STUPID DINOSAURS AND WOLVES WHEN YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE STRONGEST MAN ON THE PLANET! And often it's almost impossible to die in this game. They have healing herbs all over boss-battle arenas, though supplies of them are slightly limited at the beginning when wolves are beating you like a redheaded stepchild. This multitude of herbs later in the game make me think that maybe they had to smoke more and more herbs to make their consciences shut up and allow them to finish making this game.

How about the graphics? They're alright. Goku's world is bright and colourful, and doesn't look half bad, though it's a little plain. The character sprites themselves are passable, though sprites have been done better on the GameBoy. Character faces (which show up next to the text they say) just look horrible. They're blurry, deformed and hardly recognizable. The graphics on this game do what they have to, but definitely won't wow anyone.

Sound and audio? Maybe it won't be horrible? Please don't make me laugh. Besides the one song I mentioned, the music in this game is boring and repetitive. Also, once Goku learns Kamehameha (from King Kai oddly enough), he says ''Kamehame-Ha!'' every time you use that move. For that reason alone I never used it.

Overall, this is a horrible game. There's no two ways around it. The graphics are mediocre, the gameplay is utter crap, sound and music are redundant and forgettable, and don't even get me started on the story. And the powers that be have seen fit to release a DBZ: Legacy of Goku 2. May God have mercy on us all.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 08/14/03