Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai

"Portable DBZ"

When I first heard that DBZ was coming to the PSP I was overjoyed. Of course then I realised that trying to fit a game as large DBZ:B3 onto the PSP was rather unlikely to happen I waited with batted breath to see how the game would turn out.

Graphics: 7/10

Simple to say, the psp is good at doing great looking miniature graphics with ease, the fighters and stages all look fantastic and from the side the beam attacks look stunning for a portable game, having said that though, should you look at the beams from anything other then the side you will realise they are little more then a couple of flat sprites. Nether the less thanks to a reasonably intelligent camera this does not happen often and the illusion is not spoilt.
The generic cell shading looks almost the same as it did on DBZ:B3 which is a good thing for a psp game, although it would have been nice to see a bit of variety for once from this company.

Sound: 6/10

The in game music is an odd variety of tunes, some you will love, some you will hate. They also all seem to be streamed into the game and this will slaughter your battery life, so it advised to make a back up of your game and play that version to extend your playtime.

Also apparently the voices have all been rerecorded since the last game, but since it's still the same phrases over and over this is a pretty moot point, and with no variety to the opening and closing fight phrases you will be skipping them within an hour of starting the game.

Game Play: 7/10- multi 4/10- single

As with all fighting games, single play mode is almost worthless as a way to enjoy the game. I assume that since so much power was used to create amazing graphics, there was none left over for the computer AI and so to compensate they allow the computer to do things the player cannot, at the higher difficulty levels such as track opponents while charging attacks no matter how much they dodge and to break combo's and ignore attacks while making theirs, throw into the mix a super powerful block system which means you will take NO damage from attacks while blocking and you end up with a super powerful opponent who can only be defeated because they turned stupid and forget how to do basic things like fly forwards and charge KI.

Another problem, this time with the multiplayer, is that they neglected to add internet play, therefore you have to have opponents in close proximity to you to play multiplayer (which makes this part of the game useless to most)

Replay Value: 3/10

Once complete not many people would bother with the single player mode again and with only 18 characters to use (only 4 of which are unlockable) there is nothing beyond the stamp collection to give the game any form of replay value (and while some people would find stamp collections riveting, I don't)

Over all: 4/10

Great Graphics don't make the game great to, Rent it, get sick of the poor AI then never touch it again, unless you are making a DBZ collection and need it to add to the pile. Just don't play it again.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 10/19/06