Dragon Ball Z: Taiketsu

"We thought it was over......."

INTRODUCTION:
Dragon Ball Z: Taiketsu is the first DBZ fighter to hit the Gameboy Advance. This game was created by Webfoot, yes, Webfoot, the same company who made the infamous Legacy of Goku, and the better-renown Legacy of Goku 2. Well, anyway, let’s get to the review.

SOUND: 1/10
Ok, I don’t think that terrible sound would persuade me to not buy a game……if you don’t like the sound, turn the volume down. Well, the story here is the annoying music in each level, and the lack of sound effects. When I say lack, literally, there are NO sound effects. No dialogue that you can hear, no exclamations of pain, nothing. This is only a sample of what is to come.

GRAPHICS: 4/10
Well, this is a 2D fighter, and I think the stages looked miserable, but, the graphics in Legacy of Goku 1 and 2 were better than this.The characters were alright, but also, could have been worked upon. These graphics were less than admirable, and I think that there could have been more effort put into this aspect of the game.

GAMEPLAY: 3/10
This section, to me at least, is what really matters. Well, you have several modes here, Tournament, Sparring, Multiplayer, Endurance, and Endurance 2x. Tournament would have been alright if it actually was a tournament, but, in fact, it was just one fight and going to the next fight, no process of elimination or anything. Sparring is your basic training mode. Multiplayer is when you link up with your friend and battle. Endurance and Endurance 2x are the exact same thing, beat the enemies in a limited time. The modes are almost completely identical, and, as for playing them, you can unlock various things. I unlocked every character in 1 day, and after I did, I found no point to the game. Sure, there is a Z Store where you can buy biographies on the characters, images from the show, bonus settings, and extra music. Yeah, I decided to buy all the images, a couple settings, some bios, but nothing was fun to work for. It just got repetitive. This game is the exact same from when you buy it to when you unlock everything. That’s why this game suffered so much.

STORY: 1/10
Now, the reason why Budokai 1 was so popular: Story Mode! They totally ruined Taiketsu by not including a Story Mode. Taiketsu could have at least been a mediocre game with a Story Mode, but, there was none, so, Tournament Mode was put in place of it. And as far as a story to go with the tournament, there was none! No reason at all! Just to unlock a bunch of images, and some characters, woohoo. Well, at the end it gave maybe a 5 sentence paragraph of what happened after, but, just didn’t flow together like it should have.

OVERALL: 2/10
Overall, I’d say that this was a big fluke on behalf of Webfoot Technologies and Atari. Anyone who was gone through tons and tons of miserable DBZ fighters, when Budokai was released, it seemed as if our turmoil had ended. With the release of Taiketsu, let’s not hope we have fallen into the same pit as it had seem we had gotten out of, just less than 2 years ago.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/04