Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors

"Good idea: A fast paced fighting game. Bad idea: Making the fighters too similar"

Dragon Ball Z has been all over the place: anime, manga, video game, you name it. A franchise big enough where you can yell "Goku!" in the middle of the street and you're bound to have somebody turn around and either say "Kamehameha!", "rules!", or "sucks!". Yes, as with every franchise the good will come with the bad. Nonetheless, I'll judge this on the scale of a fighting game, which is what this game is.

Graphics - 7/10

There are some nice graphics in the game, nothing too exceptional though. The animations are nice, but a lot appear the same as another. Still, pretty good on the animation front.

Sound/Music - 7/10

While I do like the few themes in the game, there isn't nearly enough variety in the music. Just a handful of tracks that are decent or above average. What raised the score a bit was the small sound clips you hear, most noticeable one I saw was Goku saying his trademark Kamehameha.

Controls - 7/10

Consistent scores so far right? Yep. Controls are alright, but with only 4 buttons you can only do so much.

Speed - 10/10

A key factor for many a DBZ fan. Many have complained that the games aren't fast enough. Well, it is here. You can run in to smack him by pressing in the direction you wish to go and holding R at a huge speed, or you can double tap the direction for dashing. Melee combat is fast paced as well, but has its flaws (more on that soon).

Gameplay - 6/10

The only reason it scored this high was due to a bit more variety in some characters. Melee combat does come down to button mashing often, and you could always ignore a lot of it. Why? Well, you could defeat the enemy with your ki blasts. Charge up to 50% or so, you're ready to unleash one. 100% and you can do your strongest. Sure you could fly and move around at will (which is good), but the battles will come down often to many of the same things: How high your energy is, how quick you can press the buttons,if you can dodge the enemy enough, etc. And the same strategy can be used for most of the other guys in the game, reducing this score greatly. Fun for a while, but tedious after a bit of time. One upside is that many characters have different specials which are used depending on where you are compared to the enemy. If you're above them (there will be an arrow telling you when you are, sometimes you'll be above them but it'll still say left/right) you may use a different super than if you were at another position. This is a nice bonus, I will admit, but not enough. Many enemies have a special that goes all over the place, while many others have one huge wave. This leaves much to be desired.

Difficulty - 3/10

You could be low on health, but time a few blasts right, you'll take down the enemy. Wait enough time until they use a super, you can zoom right next to the enemy and smack them upside the head, or use a super of your own if you're fast enough to pull it off. The AI is rather weak of an enemy and you can handle most fights without even having to use ki. At all. Button mashing gets you too far in this game.

Replayability - 5/10

On one end you've got tons of stories and things to unlock. On the other end you've got the fact that you'll be doing a lot of the fights the same way. So the score gets split on how tedious it may be to unlock characters as well as stories, and the bonus of playing with a new character (whose gameplay may be the same for the most part...).

Rent/Buy - Rent definitely if you're considering getting this game to see how you like it. As always, you can't judge a game on the first 5, 10 minutes you play it. Judgement on a game should come in after a few hours of playing to see how you'll like it on a more honest level as opposed to a "OMG! New game!" level. Least, that's how I always managed that.

Overall: 5/10. Also is about the average of the combined scores, oddly enough.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/06/04