Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3
December 13,2007 - Dragon Ball Z is back on the Wii and it’s time for Wii owners to step back into their favorite fighter’s shoes for some more rounds. With even more fighters, stages, and modes to play in, it looks like Budokai Tenkaichi 3 has the makings of the best Dragon Ball Z fighter yet. Is this a fighter that’s worth checking out or should you look elsewhere for your fighting action?

While DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2 was more of an introduction for the series on the Wii, it’s sequel goes a bit further in ease of use for the gameplay and added content and modes to extend the game’s lifespan. Though Tenkaichi 2 included an obscene amount of characters, Tenkaichi 3 adds a few more to bring the total to more than you can count. The number of fighters doesn’t necessarily mean they play differently, as many of them can really be considered clones, aside from the obvious clones of certain fighters from different parts of the show’s run. With all of these characters, the customization aspect of the game becomes a huge part of the game. With Z points you get from playing through the various modes in the game, you can buy new abilities to attach to one of three available set-ups for each character or use the Z points to upgrade that fighter’s basic stats. Quite frankly, just thinking about building up every character in the game is such a daunting task that only the most diehard gamers will attempt. It’s certainly best to just pick out your favorites to build up first and move on from there.

The actually fighting gameplay in Tenkaichi 3 has improved a bit but that doesn’t mean you’re in for huge changes. The game is still fought in a large arena with the camera behind the fighter, like you’d expect for an action game instead. Each fighter has up to seven bars of life and five bars of Ki that are used for special attacks and Ki blasts. Fighters also have a few specials mapped to the d-pad, so pressing down will make your fighter charging his or her Ki until you can pull off that special move and the animation in the bottom corner lets you know the motions you need to do to pull it off. Usually, there are two steps to each move, say pulling the Wii Remote and Nunchuck to your side, then forward for the Kamehameha blast, but you only need to pull off the first motion while getting the second motion adds a boost to the damage your opponent endures. Of course, with the free-roaming nature of the game, blasts are easy to dodge, but rush attacks allow you to rush your opponent and get an automatic combo off on your opponent for a good amount of damage. Though there are a large number of fighters, the special attacks aren’t all that varied, with maybe a handful of different specials that have different names depending on the character or how powerful the attack is. Add that you only have one attack button and a Ki blast button and you can see that the fighting is not that varied on the most basic level. There’s a bit more depth for those that can brave through the tutorials and understand how to pull off the new techniques, but that’s not really all that necessary, as you can usually spam the same attacks over and over to beat your opponents to win your matches.

Where the game really shines is in the number of modes that Budokai Tenkaichi 3 offers. From story mode to tournaments and online play, there should be plenty of stuff to do depending on what you’re in for. The online play is the big new feature, allowing you to take your custom fighters online to see who the best fighter in the world is. Unfortunately, lag does hurt the experience quite a bit, not so much that the matches are slideshows, but the fighting turns into a game of who can get their attacks through the lag quicker rather than who’s the best fighter in the world. Just on your own console, there’s the standard versus mode, a series of tournaments you can fight for money or with friends, some mini-game-esque modes, and the main event story mode. The story mode does a nice job of summing up the story of each arc of the show or movie into a few fights, though that does mean that you’ll have to fight several fighters in a row or that there will be several stages of a fight that you have to survive in order to win. The presentation’s quite nice, so that you can press the 1 button to move to the next part of the fight or call in the next fighter, which keeps the action moving quite well. The Ultimate Battle mode offers a few extra modes that don’t really seem like full modes themselves. Sim Dragon offers an RPG-like mode where you train, explore, and rest using a menu system for 10 days between fights that only offers a diversion from the story mode. Mission 100 offers a series of challenges that are more for difficulty seeking gamers that want more action. The third mode here is the survival mode, which is pretty self-explanatory. It’s disappointing that there’s no adventure/RPG mode like in previous Budokai games, which makes the appeal to the game a bit underwhelming for DBZ fans with the previous installments in the series.

Being a Wii game, DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 3 looks pretty good for what the hardware can do. The cel-shaded look fits the anime quite nicely, but after seeing the blocky graphics up close, you can’t help wondering how good the game might look if it got a Rise of Ninja-like upgrade that the Naruto series got on next-generation consoles. It’s not much of an improvement over Tenkaichi 2, visually, but the variety of added stages serve as most of the visual improvements. Loads times are decent, with simple, little mini-games to help you pass the few seconds of loading before matches. Menus are narrated by DBZ characters, a new one for every mode you enter, so it adds to the fan service that the game definitely appeals to. Environments are quite large and destructible, but the Matrix-like boundaries just look unsightly and make you wish that the levels were designed with more natural boundaries around each arena.

With so many characters, it’s certainly a testament to the developers that very fighter has Japanese and English voice acting included along with some decent music to liven up the fights. Sound effects are what you’d expect from DBZ along with the over-the-top dialog that makes up the dialog for cutscenes.

When it comes down to it, DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 3 is certainly a good game that could probably use a fresh, new developer’s perspective on the series since this action fighter is starting to get a bit stale. The game doesn’t really improve in any one area by any great means, so there’s nothing that really sticks out as a solid reason to upgrade your copy unless you’re desperate for a laggy online mode or a more complete roster of fighters. You might as well rent this to see if there’s enough new stuff to warrant your $50 purchase, otherwise, you can get your DBZ fix for a few days and move on to other games that are more worthy of your time.

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