falsetokaiba

An overall pretty decent game. I'll break my review down just to look at a few major areas: -General Gameplay: Simple but pretty fun. Simplification in activating some special attacks compared to Budokai 1 which makes using some moves easier, so you'll get to use all your favourites from the show. Also new interactive elements in fighting including button combos to power up certain moves makes the gameplay more engaging. Overall it's a solid Mortal Kombat-esque fighting game of its time. -Graphics/Audio: BIG improvement on the plastic-looking Budokai 1 character models, with cel-shaded graphics making them look way better. The use of Finnish band Stratovarius' music for the soundtrack without consent may have made the gamemakers infamous, but the songs are pretty good :) Also all releases for an anglophone audience feature the voices of the cast from the Funimation dub of the show, which is a great improvement for fans. -Story Mode: Probably the best remembered feature of this game, it's quirky and generally divisive. The story mode is set up like a board game where you move your characters around as pieces on the board, collecting power-ups and battling opponents. A disproportianate amount of the story mode focuses on the Buu Saga, and they play it pretty fast and loose with the story from the actual TV show/manga, which is a bit of a disappointment. Some bits aren't especially self-explanatory either, e.g. collection of the Dragon Balls, which I had no idea how to do as a kid playing it. But it's still fairly fun anyway, and has quite a lot of replay value as you'll need to complete it several times to unlock everything- different characters, moves and extras are unlocked by fulfilling specific scenarios and beating certain villains with certain heroes, and some can only be unlocked with wishes with the Dragon Balls. -Other Modes: What you'd expect. There's a versus mode where you can battle other players or the computer, likewise on World Tournament mode. Some extras can be unlocked here too. There's also a Capsule Shop like on Budokai 1 where you can buy capsules containing attacks, transformations and items for characters (money can be found in Story Mode or won at the World Tournament.) There's also a tutorial/practice mode, and a hidden mode called Babidi's Spaceship which you can get from Shenron, and which also is needed to unlock some extras. -Character Roster: 29 characters which is pretty good. Disappointingly some characters like Android 19, Kid Gohan and Zarbon don't return from Budokai 1, and Cell and Frieza don't have any of their early forms. But on the other hand there's plenty from the Buu Saga, including all of Buu's forms and new fusion characters. A lot of the character moves are admittedly fairly generic, but most have at least some unique or signature moves to keep it a bit more true to the show rather than just another beat-em-up. Overall, if you want a game that stays very true to the DBZ story or dislike games where you need to go off-topic to collect extras along the way, this game will probably disappoint you, but in general it's a fun fighting game with plenty for the fans on top.