Successful and fun, yet with flaws.
The game's story mode has changed, since the last BT2 game. It covers all three series, from Dragon Ball to Dragonball GT. However you start off with Dragon Ball Z and unlock further the other two series. And the probably the most exciting story mode addition are the Special Sagas, basically fights from the official movies. Within certain sagas, you fight already decided important fights and as you progress with the storyline, you unlock more fights. The story fights offer a chance of a different ending, however this does not influence the following events in the story. For instance, there is a fight where you fight Raditz and as you press the R3 button, during the fight, the story will progress and set itself to a cutscene where Goku will sacrifice himself. However, you can choose to ignore this and simply fight him out and defeat him, although the difficulty is very harsh, so it kind of offers you a chance to save yourself by continuing with the story. If you manage to defeat him, nothing special will happen, there will be a different cutscene and the story will go on. The cutscenes themselves are very simple. In order to avoid long waiting and re-hearing the story, after the initial dialogue, characters will also have their dialogues during the fight. And also don't find yourself surprised if you hear a voice of someone who isn't even fighting. There are some minor flaws in the story mode though. For instance, as already said, only the really important fights take place. This somehow eliminates other interesting fights, simply because they don't play such an important role in the story. And the voice cast does its work superbly.
The actual gameplay elements are quite simple. With one main attack button, you also combine it with other buttons to execute vast forms of attacks, combos and energy beams. The probably most important attack feature is the Z Burst Dash, which allows you to pummel you enemy with little effort. It will take you a few fights though before you try to master or even gain the basic knowledge of how to use the controls. However in a few hours you'll more or less master the hardest game level and find yourself teasing with your enemies, since if you decide to win without a doubt, it won't take much. Although, the AI can surprises you sometimes and give you an actual challenge. This does happen often, so it's nothing to worry about. In any case, fighting is clean and simple, yet very fun. As you may know, the game is different from the often-compared Budokai series as they use a "behind-the-back" camera perspective. Adding a huge arena to fight in, it really does give you that free feel of movement. And of course you can destroy a lot of the objects in the arenas. There is a vast choice of them, from Kami's palace to Grandpa Gohan's place. In some levels you can also choose between day or night, which is pretty neat, since one of your characters can transform into a Great Ape at night. There are no major in-game cutscenes when you are fighting, like in Budokai 3, so the game isn't so action packed. Trying to have energy beam struggles can be a bit frustrating, since because of the large arena you have to be correctly positioned to brawl it out. The characters themselves do have a large array of beam attacks and other attacks, if you take them apart some of them and examine them closely, they do you'll see they isn't so much variety, but you can tell that the designers tried to be unique, where they were successful.
From a visual point of view, the graphics have been re-polished and are the characters appear very good. The Budokai games always dealt superbly with cell-shading, and this game isn't any different. But you could say that there isn't enough spark in the characters. The characters in Budokai 3 may have had some jaggy edges, but the game looked very fresh and appealing. You don't really find that with this game. But it is probably visually the best in the whole Tenkaichi Budokai franchise, without a doubt. The beams look very nicely, the characters respond efficiently and deliver painful blows that really do seem to hurt, which can be greatly pleasing.
The game offers other features, such as a level powering up mode, tournament mode, training mode and a customization mode. The tournament mode may be perhaps the most frustrating one. You have five different tournaments to participate in, but there's a catch. Each tournament "opens" at a certain time, that means that you have to wait for a desired tournament. You can also use saved data from the previous Tenkaichi Budokai game and use it in this game, by using a feature called Disc Fusion. The PS2 version doesn't have online support, but that isn't such a negative things, since there are numerous reports from the Wii that lag is almost always present. There's also a Replay feature, where you can save footage of your favourite fights and then watch them again.
Simply said, the game is definitely the best in the series. With new attack options, a character roster larger than 150 characters and lots of game features, that will surely keep you busy playing. However it does lack some of that spark and raw action, like Budokai 3 had, which doesn't make it so thrilling and amazingly fun. But it is a must game to get for Dragon Ball Z fans. Steady gameplay, levels, characters and visuals. An excellent attempt at recreating the Dragon Ball experience nevertheless.
-Shayo