Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku

"A game that does not honors the name it carries..."

Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku is the first Dragon Ball game released outside Japan. When Infogrames announced that the Webfoot Technologies was going to make a DBZ game, fans all around got excited, as they would have the chance to control Goku in a RPG game. Then, some screenshots were showed and people though that the game was going to be awesome. They didn’t know how wrong they were…

The game tries to be as the cartoon is in the story: the earth is in peace for five years, since Goku defeated Piccolo Daimaoh in the 23th Tenkaichi Budoukai. Then, a strange alien called Radits appears. He claims that Goku is not a human, but a Saiyan, a group of Warriors that fights throughout the universe to get stronger and stronger. He also tells Goku that he is his older brother. Once again, it is up to Goku to save the earth of the Saiyans.

In order to proceed through the game, you need to complete as many objectives as you can, as they give you some good experience to improve your level. Talk to everybody you see, as they have various things for you to do. Also, there are enemies for you to defeat and the battle system here is in real time, which means that you and the enemy move an attack in the same time, in the middle of the places. This is a really good point of the game (and probably the only one).

But, as you play the game, you will see why people say that this game is horrible. Moving Goku is difficult, as he is slow and you’ll need to level up a lot to notice a good speed increase and you’ll need a lot of training to notice that Goku has become any stronger. Also, Goku can’t move in the diagonals, which can prove to be really a big mistake when you’re in a dead end and a strong enemy is chasing you.

Goku has three Ki attacks in the game: the Ki Blast, which is a small fireball and is a good way of attacking from a distant place; the Solar Flare, which stuns all the enemies in the screen for a limited time (the more you charge it, the more time enemies will stay stunned); and the Kame Hame Ha, the strongest attack in the game that can kill lots of enemies with a single gem. As you can see, there are only these three Ki attacks. Webfoot Technologies could have improved this part a lot, don’t you think?

This game is classified as a RPG. But, this game is everything you want to call, but it is not a RPG. I’m telling you this because there are some reasons: in many RPGs, other characters join the main hero. In Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku, nobody joins Goku in his quest. In a RPG there are lots of special attacks, and here, as said in the paragraph above, there are only three special attacks.

Another bad point in this game is that the game is too linear. When you finish the objectives of a specific area, you don’t need to return there, ever! Even if you want to, you can’t. Which means that, when you leave a place… bye-bye! You’ll never return there, unless you start a new game.

And the two last bad points about this game are: this game is too short! Believe me, players who sit down and only stand up when they beat the game won’t take more than 5 hours in the first time to beat it with all the objectives completed. Also, you might think that people will take some time to beat bosses like Vegeta and Frieza. These people are wrong! There are only one strategy for every single boss, which I won’t tell here, that can easily take them down in a couple of minutes!

The graphics are not awesome, but it’s not disappointing. It is good, but could be better. The places and the characters are well designed and there is a big variety of colors, making the game beautiful. There are even some videos taken from the cartoon and they appear during the game and there’s also one that you can see as you turn the game on. The sound is not bad, but is not good. There are one or two good musics, but the sound effects are really bad. There’s only one good sound effect (which is, by far, the best one): when you get the Kame Hame Ha spell and you charge it, you can hear Goku say: Kame Hame Ha!!!

If you are a really big fan of Dragon Ball, buy it, because you will like it and have fun, since the game is the almost the same as the anime. If you are a person who likes Dragon Ball, rent it to see if you like it. If you definitely hate Dragon Ball, stay away from this game!

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/07/04