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When I was younger, I used to get up in the wee hours of Sunday morning to watch a little known cartoon called Dragonball Z. It didn't remain the unwanted stepchild of network programming for very long, exploding into a merchandising fest with manga, DVDs, toys, and even videogames. The first games were obvious (and rather poor quality) Street Fighter 2 clones. Today, they're still making games for DBZ, but the developers have stepped up to produce games that both fans of the series and fighters in general could sink their Saiyan teeth into. Now Noritaka Funamizu, the producer of Street Fighter 2, has christened Crafts & Meister with their very own SF2 "clone" in the form of Super Dragonball Z.
Going for the more fun style of the manga, rather than the gritty feel of the anime, Super DBZ has large eyes and bright, cell-shaded visuals. It spices up the combat with dust clouds and large "BLAH" and "WHUP" when hard blows connect, sometimes knocking the fighter right through the semi-destructible environment. The music is fitting if forgettable, while the American voice cast of the anime once again lend their talents, including in the form of unlockable narrators. Overall, it's colorful, but not really as flashy as you expect a DBZ game to be. It only really kicks in to high during the cut-scene based Dragon Finishers, where you can knock your opponent straight through the moon. It's a pure arcade game, so it's all about the action.
Punch, kick, side step, dash...mix them together with super moves and ultimates, and you've got a tasty combo salad. For example, Vegeta unleashes his multi-shot G. Slicer, so Gohan side dashes to avoid the blasts, then homes in with a light dash attack that leads into a fury of punches and kicks, sending the Saiyan prince flying, fires his dad's trusty Kamehameha to strike in mid-air, and then super cancels into his powerful ultimate before Vegeta hits the ground. That's only one of many options, with other characters having abilities and play styles of their own. In the same scenario, Vegeta could have been quick enough to dash away to avoid the attack, gone Super Saiyan, smacked Gohan with a powered up energy blast to send him flying, dashed up to him as he was starting to get back up, and finished him off with a throw. The ability to move freely in eight directions helps to open up the possibilities, but dashing and staying in the air will drain away your action bar, forcing you to fall back to earth. Energy blasts can also be dispersed or reflected back at their source, but this leaves the fighter open to a quick sucker punch to the gut. So you need to thick fast and act faster.
Anyone who has seen DBZ knows these fighters didn't get to be world-destroying warriors by being born that way...except for Goku. They need training. That's where the character cards come in. They allow you to take any character, and start bulking them up by earning experience to buy various skills on their skill tree, from upping their attack power to gaining more super abilities. If you collect all seven dragon balls (which boils down to winning seven battles), you can wish for additional powers, including the skill of a rival, or just a new outfit. Max out your character card after many battles, and you can even gain abilities from another fighter's skill tree. This gives the player a large amount of flexibility in customizing their character to suit their playing style.
The only thing Super DBZ really lacks is content. The roster is limited to eighteen characters, including a few clones and some shared moves. There are no fusions, and Super Saiyan are limited to the first level, except for Majin Vegeta whose stuck on SS2. The modes are Original, Survival, Versus, and Training, the latter lacking any sort of tutorial to those not used to Street Fighter gameplay. Not that it's really needed when the AI won't give the average player many problems, and the difficulty levels only scale the damage against you, which doesn't really make for more interesting battles. Things get tougher in survival when any damage from the previous battles carries over, but you have a roulette wheel of power ups after each match to give you a fighting chance. Still, versus against another human opponent is where the gameplay truly shines, dueling and refining your own customized version of Chi-Chi until she's a fighting machine surpassing Android 18.
One would think that being based on a juggernaut of a manga that story cut-scenes would be required for at least some of the main characters...but no. Just short, generic cut-scenes before and after your final battle with Cell, which isn't even changed when you choose to play as Cell himself. I've held off the comparisons to other DBZ based games until now, but Bodukai 3 offers a rich story mode recapping the action of the anime to give much more weight to the battles as they unfold. Super DBZ could have really used something like this to extend Original Mode. Personally, I would have blown up the Earth for a four fighter brawl mode, especially if they threw in more characters, a couple of fusions, and online play. Maybe in the sequel. |
