Dragon Ball Z: Taiketsu

"Have you ever had that feeling where you just know you made the wrong decision?"

Although the Dragonball Z gaming franchise has never been seen as masterful, they usually exhibit some sort of fun factor. Taiketsu could not have been made by an educated human being. No person with a half a brain would have left this game the way it is, completely unfinished. Taiketsu brings nothing new to the world of gaming except a new definition of the word “bad”. Not only is the character selection horrible, but it doesn't even have a fighting engine. Most games fighting games will have one of two things, a good fighting engine and a limited character selection, or a mass amount of characters and no fighting engine.

Taiketsu offers four initial modes of play, tournament, endurance, time challenge, and sparring. Each one as boring as the last. There is no goal to beating any of the different modes since the unlockables contribute nothing special to the game. There isn't even a way that you can transform and stay in that state, which is odd for a Dragonball Z game. Normally there is always a way to transform or pick a transformation so you can fight with it. Wasting your time going through this game is not recommended to anyone. You might as well eat your own brain with a spoon because it's the equivalent of playing this game.

The gameplay is horribly ugly. You can't even use a decent combination. Every attack is out of sync with the next one which allows for no variation. The battles consist of jump, kick, punch, punch, jump. Not too exciting. Each character also has their own special attacks. You would think something would have been done to these to make them truly special, if that is what you thought well, you thought wrong. The way you unleash these attacks is simple. You have to power up using the “L” and “R” triggers. Then you have to input a simple button combination that will allow you to use this so called “special” attack. It does a considerable amount of damage and then you proceed with the battle. There is no way to add on to the attack and create an even deadlier combo, it just ends. The worst part is they took out transformations. This is probably what made Dragonball Z famous. Each character will transform into a more powerful state to use their special attacks and then immediately transform back. This was one of the most disappointing factors of the gameplay since Dragonball Z games are famous for their in-game transformations.

The character graphics actually weren't too bad. They could have been better, but since the other aspects of this game were no good it makes this look a lot better than it normally would. It looks as if they used claymation to create each character. They actually put a considerable amount of detail into the faces and clothes of the characters though. The environmental graphics however, are a different story. Not only do they have almost no color but they are flat as well. There is nothing going on in the backgrounds just a still image. This shouldn't be happening with the power of the Gameboy Advance. The environmental graphics of a game should in some way always be moving, and making things look better. Even a simple movement of the clouds would have made things look a lot better than they did.

How can fighting games lack in good music? This is the genre of games where music can be taken up a notch to create an angry feeling and actually make the person want to fight. Instead this game offers a techno beat that doesn't even stand out from the horrible sound effects. When a character is injured, they make a simple, “Ugh..” and it sounds muffled every time. Not only that, but when someone is hit it makes a really ugly “smack” sound which is muffled as well.

This game is strongly recommended to anyone who likes to kill games because after about twenty minutes of playing this game you realize the money you just wasted and literally want to kill. This game would have been ten times better if they would have implemented a simple combo system. Is that too much to ask for a fighting game, really? You can't even get into the battles with the lack of music and the horrible battle sounds. The character graphics are the only thing saving this game from eternal damnation. They at least had a decent amount of detail put into them more so then the environmental graphics anyways. If you're a huge fan of the fighting genre I urge you to stay away or you will most likely cry.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 03/06/06