Video Game Blog 053: Dragon Ball Marathon Part 2

And we’re back, continuing my ongoing coverage of Dragon Ball fighting games! As mentioned in the previous post, I have a ton of these games— more all the time— so I figured I would take you through them one by one, including the titles I haven’t gotten to play yet. Here is the previous entry in the series:

Video Game Blog 049: Dragon Ball Marathon Part 1

Last time there was a lot of set up to get through, so we only covered the first Budokai game. This time we’ll look at the two sequels. Just like with the previous post, I’m going to talk a bit about the games, discuss my impressions of them, and give them a rating from 1 to 7 Dragon Balls. I will also talk about how well they convey the spirit and feel of the Dragon Ball franchise, as well as how they stack up with the other games we’ve discussed. With that out of the way, let’s look at our first game!

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 was released for PlayStation 2 by Dimps in 2003. It was later ported to the GameCube. I played the PS2 version for this post. This was a direct sequel to the previous game, improving many aspects and fine-tuning the gameplay.

The gameplay is much the same as the first game in the series, but with many improvements. Just as before, the basic moves are punch, kick, Ki blast, and blocking. Depending on the skills you have equipped, you can achieve various transformations or fusions, and perform special moves. These advanced moves require Ki, which can be charged by damaging your opponent, or charging.

Some other improvements: There are some battles with multiple fighters. If you battle Saibamen or Cell Jrs, there can be 1-3 of them before you win the battle. Taking a heavy hit can fling you or your opponent through the scenery and into new areas to continue your battle. If you hit your opponent at the same time as they are hitting you, you enter a mode where you have to rapidly press buttons to win the skirmish and knock your opponent back.

Character roster. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

The character roster has grown from the first game’s 23 characters to 29 characters. There is no longer a Young Gohan, but Adult Gohan appears. Dodoria and Zarbon are also left out. The new characters are: Android 20, Kid Trunks, Goten, Videl, three forms of Majin Buu, and Dabura. Just as before, there are alternate costumes you can select before starting the battles.

Some characters are unlocked by default, others have to be unlocked by fighting specific battles with specific characters in story mode. There are also some that need to be unlocked by playing Babidi’s Spaceship. Note that while Cell Jr and Saibamen are opponents in story mode, they are not included as playable characters in this game.

Just like in the last game, many characters had different transformations, that have to be equipped as capsules. A few new transformations appear, such as Super Saiyan 3, and Majin Vegeta. But interestingly enough, Freiza and Cell now appear only in their final stages, without transformations. (Although Frieza can still become Mecha Freiza with the Spaceship capsule.)

There are nine stages to battle on, one of which has to be unlocked.

Again, there are several different game modes you can choose from.

Dueling is the PvP mode where you can play against a human or CPU opponent. This mode works much like the one in the first game.

Training allows you to learn the game and practice with different strategies.

Dragon Ball Z: the Board Game. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

Dragon World is the new story mode, and where the bulk of the play happens… at least for those trying to collect everything. Instead of playing a chapter by chapter format like in the first game, the different sagas of the story are laid out in stages that resemble a board game. You move your characters around the board like game pieces, gathering Dragon Balls, capsules, Zenie, and stat upgrades. Some things are on the board, others have to be dug up. Encountering allies can raise your stats, but encountering enemies triggers a battle. Everyone has a certain number of lives, which decrease when you lose battles. (It goes down by two if you lose a battle while stunned from a previous loss.) There are spaces on the board to gain more lives or teleport around the board. Some spaces give any battle that occurs there special rules, such as cutting your health in half, disabling blocking, etc.

To pad out the opponents, they take some liberties with the story… most notably adding Freiza and Cell to the Buu sagas first as mind-controlled soldiers and then as fodder for Super Buu to absorb.

Poor Krillin. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

This mode has nine stages going through the major story arcs of Dragon Ball Z. Where the previous game ended after the Cell Saga, this one extends through the Majin Buu, Fusion, and Kid Buu Sagas. The stages get progressively more difficult as you go, with the last two being extremely tough. In fact, one of the only strategies for defeating Kid Buu in the final stage is to gang up on him with all your characters, since his health carries over from one battle to the next.

Having played through it so many times to earn all the capsules, I developed a pattern, learned where all the stat upgrades were, and the best combinations of characters to use. There are different difficulties to Dragon World, with higher difficulties being unlocked after winning on the previous difficulty.

Looking for balls. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

Aside from unlocking characters, one of the big reasons for completing Dragon World is to gather all the Dragon Balls. Once you have all seven and finish Dragon World, you summon Shenron and can wish for one of three things. Two are Breakthrough capsules for random characters, and the third item is Babidi’s Spaceship, which adds a new mode to the game. Just like in the previous game, Breakthroughs allow you to access all the character’s transformations and abilities. The downside of this is that you have no skill slots left to equip items. You can also unlock some of the fusions this way, as well as alternate costumes for Bulma to wear in the shop.

The Budokai begins! (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

World Tournament is the titular Budokai. This works much like the original game, with three unlockable difficulty levels, each awarding more Zenie than the last. Just as before, there is Novice, Adept, and Advanced, with 3, 4, and 5 rounds respectively.

Look at all these capsules. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

Edit Skills is where you can customize your characters and chart your progression to 100% of the possible capsules in the game.

Bulma just wants your Zenie. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

Edit Skills also has the Skill Shop, where Bulma sells you capsules for your hard-earned (or found) Zenie. There are randomized selections for the different characters, as well as a 5,000 Zenie “gamble” capsule that can sometimes give you rare or pricey capsules at a bargain.

Who’s this charming fellow? (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

Babidi’s Spaceship is a new mode for this installment. In this mode, you do different challenges across four modes. These are things such as defeating a certain number of opponents in a time limit, endurance fights, things like that. Doing these tasks earn a currency called Kili, which lets you unlock Dabura, the three versions of Buu, and their skills. I didn’t like this mode very much, as it was a bit of a grind, but it was nice to see some gameplay variety.

Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks battles Super Buu, who absorbed Frieza. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

One of the big inclusions in Budokai 2 is fusions, which were integral to the plot of the Majin Buu Saga. There are five fusions in the game. The main story-related ones are Gotenks and Vegito. There is also Kibitoshin, which is the Supreme Kai’s fusion. In fusion, your Ki gauge is replaced by a timer. When outside of Dragon World, once the timer has expired, you de-fuse. You cannot use fusion in the World Tournament or outside of plot-required portions of Dragon World.

Our new favorite hero, Tiencha. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

This game included some original fusions that never appeared in the source material. This fella is a fusion of Yamcha and Tien named Tiencha.

This one just coughs when you try to do moves. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

Just like in the anime and manga, if the fusion dance is not done correctly, you get a decrepit or fat version of the fusion with weakened fighting power. You have to input the buttons just right for it to work out. The cut scenes for these mistakes are amusing.

Gokule kinda rocks. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

My favorite original fusion is Gokule, the unlikely fusion of Goku and Hercule/Mr. Satan. While he was shown as a nightmarish vision to Goku in the manga, here he is a playable fighter as long as you’ve earned the potara capsule for him.

Super Buu, “powered up”. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

Similar to fusion is Super Buu’s Absorption ability. There are six different versions of this, and it’s randomized. The move is difficult to pull off, as the controller doesn’t always register Left + Kick. The Absorption shown above is Super Buu after absorbing Tien and Yamcha. This is the only one that gives him a decrease in stats, because this game really likes crapping on the weaker characters.

Upsides: Dragon World was a huge upgrade for the story mode, involving a lot of strategy and trial and error to master. The inclusion of characters and story from the later sagas added another dimension to this game. Transformations were my favorite part of the first game, and seeing them return here— and with more of them— was welcome. I liked the fusion mechanic, as well as Super Buu’s Absorption. The gameplay and graphics were better.

Downsides: The writing on Dragon World was a bit weak, and it was overly long. To add to that, there were no proper cut scenes like there were in the first game. Many aspects of this game were horrible grinds— earning Zenie and Kili for unlocks, and playing Dragon World dozens of times to get all the Dragon wishes. Pulling off some of the more complicated moves— including Super Buu’s Absorption— were needlessly difficult. Similar to this complaint, some of the controls were unintuitive— Dragon World didn’t tell you how to dig up items. I had to look it up. (In the process I removed all of Vegeta’s skills. Oops.) Leaving Saibaman and Cell Jr out of the playable roster list was a shortcoming to me, as was the exclusion of Cell and Frieza’s weaker forms.

With all that in mind, I give Budokai 2 a rating of 5 out of 7 Dragon Balls. (1 higher than the first game!) This game took everything that made the first game fun and expanded on it. Story mode is huge, the controls are better, and there are many more options for customizing your characters.

For how well it translated the spirit of the franchise, I feel it did a better job than the first one. The lack of cut scenes hurt it, but the immersive story mode and raising difficulty of the opponents in Dragon World made me feel much more like I was a Z Fighter, raising my skills but still finding myself outclassed as the enemies grew in power. Having to weaken Kid Buu with one character before KOing him with a second one felt very Dragon Ball as well. Putting the Dragon Balls in the story mode (instead of randomly appearing for sale in the shop like in the first game) was a much better method, making you feel like you really were searching out the Dragon Balls and gathering them to earn your wish.

For completion, I got 100% of the capsules, and considered this game finished.

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 was released for PlayStation 2 by Dimps in 2004. This one did not receive a Gamecube version. This game includes some aspects from Dragon Ball GT and the movies, including Super Saiyan 4, the Gogeta fusion, and characters like Cooler and Broly.

Vegeta unleashes an attack. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

As with Part 2, this one adds and expands on the game mechanics in several ways. The most notable way is in the upgrade to how Ki works. Ki now has a base level and is marked by several bars rather than one long gauge. Your Ki can still be charged, but when below the base value, it will continually charge itself automatically. If above the base, it will drain until it reaches the base level again. When transforming, the base value goes up.

Another interesting addition is fatigue. When hit too often, failing at performing moves, or losing struggles, your character can become fatigued and be unable to act for a time. You can speed up their recovery by spinning the analog stick, but until you recover, you’re vulnerable to attack. There are four levels to fatigue.

There is a charge attack that can hit with more power, but it takes a bit of time to charge up. You can do a pursue attack where you chain attacks together in mid-air, continually hitting your opponent as you knock them away. This game also includes consumable items as capsules. These are used by pressing down twice while guarding and provide benefits in the battle, but are usable only once per battle.

Beam Struggles is when two death moves hit each other. Each side has to spin the analog stick to move the gauge towards their opponent. Whoever loses this struggle takes damage from the attack and is knocked back.

Ultimate Moves also give you button inputs, as you attempt to hit a button when your gauge is nearly full. The one who gets the most of these wins, either performing the move, or defending against it.

Punchy punch. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

There are two other major additions to the game mechanics. The first is Hyper Mode. When hitting all four buttons, you’re surrounded by an angry red aura and your Ki starts rapidly decreasing. You become immune to normal attacks while in this mode and can perform some ultimate moves that require being in this state. Fusion is performed while in this mode. Once the gauge depletes or you miss two attacks, you become exhausted, so it’s best to do this with a high Ki charge.

Dragon Rush! (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

While in Hyper Mode you can perform a big combo attack called Dragon Rush. This involves inputting one of the four main buttons as offense while your opponent presses one of their buttons to defend. If the inputs are different, the attacker gets the advantage and adds another level to the Dragon Rush. Getting all four of these to connect does major damage to your opponent. If the opponent selects the same button at any point, they’ve defended and the Rush ends. Depending on the capsule you have equipped, you can do different finishing moves in the Dragon Rush, such as Goku’s Warp Kamehameha or Broly’s Gigantic Meteor.

The character roster is up to 38 characters. All of the characters from Part 2 return, including Kid Gohan from Part 1. New characters are: Kid Goku, Omega Shenron, Broly, Uub, Bardock, and Cooler. Pan is not a playable character, but shows up in one of the menus.

The weaker forms of Cell and Freiza reappear from the first game, and are joined by a 100% power form for each of them. Freiza also gets his Second Form, which was left out of the first game. Cooler gets a metal form just like his brother when you equip his spaceship capsule. Goku and Gogeta get Super Saiyan 4 transformations. Vegeta also gets one, but skips the Super Saiyan 3 level.

There are 12 stages in the game, some of which need to be unlocked as you play. The stages again have destructible areas and can get trashed by bigger moves.

It’s feeling a little GT in here… (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

Fusions return from the previous game. Vegito, Gotenks, and Kibitoshin return, but sadly Gokule and Tiencha are absent. There are two new fusions— Gogeta (from the Fusion Reborn movie) and a Super Saiyan 4 version of Gogeta.

There are two types of fusion. Dance fusions require button inputs to work successfully. Potara fusions require just one button, but when done successfully, last the rest of the battle.

Bwahaha. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

As before, when done incorrectly, fusion can result in a fat or skinny version of the fused character. And other characters look on in shock during the cut scenes.

Maxed out. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

A big addition to this installment is levelling. By playing Dragon Universe or Dragon Arena, you can earn Z-Points, which is experience that can be used to level up your custom character. I got Goku up to level 99 in the course of my original playthrough. You can see that I favored Health, Ki, Attack, and Guard in my character creation, because my play style is just outright offense. There is a capsule set called We Gotta Power that multiplies your earned experience at the expense of taking up capsule slots.

Now THAT’S a carpool. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

I won’t go over most of the game modes, as they’re the same as the previous two games. I’ll just go over the notable changes.

The new game mode added was Dragon Arena. This area is presented by the Red Ribbon Army Commander and involves a battle royale with the entire roster of characters. This mode is unlocked by playing the main ten scenarios in Dragon Universe. (Not counting Broly’s.) In this mode you battle opponents to earn experience. Experience is shared between Arena and Universe. The higher the difficulty of your opponent, the more experience you earn. Occasionally a more difficult character will “break in”, taking over as your opponent. This mode is the only way to unlock Cell Jr and Saibaman, by defeating Piccolo and Nappa respectively as Break In opponents.

Zoomies! (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

The new story mode is called Dragon Universe. There are 11 different characters you can choose from to play Dragon Universe, including Goku, Krillin, Broly, and others. Playing certain battles with certain characters unlocks new characters for the game. Defeating characters with certain moves, or exploring different areas of the overworld can also give you access to new characters. The length of the different Dragon Universe scenarios depend on the character chosen. For instance, Goku’s goes through all the sagas, where Uub’s only covers a very small portion.

Just like in Part 2’s Dragon World, story mode is where you locate the Dragon Balls. You can search around the overworld, dig up the Dragon Balls, and once you have them all, summon Shenron to wish for various things such as Breakthrough Capsules, Memories, and other capsules.

Another thing that can be done in Dragon Universe is called Story Reenactments. By fulfilling certain conditions that align with the original story, you can unlock voice clips or earn Z-Points.

So cool. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

I won’t go over all the various things that are done and unlocked in Dragon Universe, but I will say that it’s somewhat open-world and very expansive, even when compared to the extended story mode in Part 2. You can fly freely around the world, visit iconic locations in the Dragon Ball universe, and engage in multiple story-related or optional fights. There are secrets to find, Zenie and capsules to earn, and the usual Dragon Balls to seek out.

Story Mode felt like less of a hassle this time around, since there were 11 different characters you could select and different paths you could take in playing through. (I still had to play it many, many times to earn everything, but it was quicker knowing where the Dragon Balls were and which battles were necessary to advance the plot.)

The tournament begins! (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

World Tournament works the same as the previous two games, but this time there’s a fourth level added— the Cell Games. This is a tournament that takes place in the Cell Game Arena and has no Ring Out win condition. You have to win by KO. Also, fusions are allowed in this mode, but not in the other difficulties.

One nice inclusion is the Sparking! capsules. There were several capsules dedicated to multiplying the amount of Zenie you earn, the trade-off being less room for transformations, moves, and items. I earned most of my Zenie with Broly equipped with the highest level Sparking, just playing through the Tournaments over and over. The only bad part was the Sparking capsules were very, very pricey themselves.

Remember her? (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

The Skill Shop is now tended by Lunch (Launch if you’re going by the anime name.) She alternates randomly between her girly and gun-crazy personalities. Some of the available capsules can be found in Dragon Universe, earned in Dragon Arena, or wished for by the Dragon Balls.

Got ‘im. (Credit: Akira Toriyama, Dimps)

Upsides: More characters, more moves, more gameplay options. The graphics and gameplay got another upgrade with this one. I was happy to see they added back Frieza and Cell’s transformations and brought fusion back. Story mode went a little quicker once I got down where everything was. There always seemed to be new stuff to discover, and that extends to outside Story Mode as well. The new combat options added another dimension to the already frantic battles.

Downsides: The battling got repetitive, even with the new options. Many times it felt like I was relying too much on Dragon Rush to get through the more difficult fights. Dragon Arena was a horrible slog… in order to unlock everything, you have to play that mode quite a bit. Dragon Universe was a grind, but to a lesser extent. Gathering all the capsules and earning enough Zenie for everything continued to be a grind, made slightly better with the Sparking! capsules. Story Reenactments felt like a good inclusion, but I didn’t really do much with it since they didn’t count for the completion percentage.

All things considered, I give Budokai 3 a rating of 5 out of 7 Dragon Balls. I had a lot of fun with it, but I feel that it’s pretty much on par with Part 2. It adds enough to be worth a 6 score, but the seemingly endless grind drops it another point, evening it out. Plus, I know that later games do it better, so I need room for better future scores. Still, a 5 is a solid score and Budokai 3 is a high point in the series so far. More characters, more combat options, more customization. More is always better with Dragon Ball. (Dragon Ball is all about the power creep! It’s baked into the concept.) And although I’m not a big fan of the Dragon Ball GT series, I do think it had a few fun ideas, and seeing it included here, along with some material from the movies was definitely welcome. Omega Shenron was a cool character and I liked the Super Saiyan 4 transformations. Broly was hands down my favorite character though. It was satisfying to take that big pile of muscle and just beat everyone else down with him.

As fun as the game was, I do feel the developers were getting to the edge of what they could do in the Budokai series… the 2.5D format was limiting and didn’t give enough freedom. So it makes sense that they switched to full 3D with the next games, completely overhauling the game engine.

For how well it translated the spirit of the franchise, I feel it did even better than the first two installments. The battles feel more pitched and difficult and there are more options. Adding in pursuit attacks, Hyper Mode, and Dragon Rush certainly gave the game more of an intense Dragon Ball flavor. Being able to level up your characters added a lot to the sense that you were training them, surpassing their previous limits and building the strongest fighter you could.

For completion, I unlocked all the characters, got 100% of the capsules, completed Dragon Universe for everyone, finished Dragon Arena, and moved on to the next game.

And that was the next two games in my growing Dragon Ball coverage! We have a long ways to go, but I’m having fun replaying these and breaking them down for you all. I hope to be back soon with the next installment, covering the first two Budokai Tenkaichi games. While they’re not my favorite of the games, I am looking forward to revisiting them and looking at them with fresh eyes. (And I’ve barely played Tenkaichi 2 so far. It’s on this year’s Game List.) Until then, thank you for reading, I appreciate you all, and never stop working to be your best self!

Hi.

Aug 26 Video Game Blog 053: Dragon Ball Marathon Part 2

Hi.

Aug 26 Video Game Blog 053: Dragon Ball Marathon Part 2

Jun 7 Video Game Blog 052: Mario Kart World!