There are some details that should be worked but so far, they don’t seem to be a very serious problem.
The environments in the game could be much larger than they really are, with more destructible places, objects, etc. Some battle arenas are bigger than others, but battles enjoyment is compromised because of those almost invisible walls that prevents the player to get out of the area and fly any further, also watching your opponent flying far away after a strong punch and hitting those walls in the air is not nice at all. On the other hand, the environments are very detailed and close to the battle locations from the Tv Show, being almost satisfying to play in, if you don’t consider the limitations and that the developers, designers, producers or anybody, could have built really huge or more interactive places for the battles.
The game’s graphical presentation is good. It looks a little better than DBZ B3 but there are details on some characters that should be worked better. The animation is bad, mainly in the short cutscenes before the fight start, because the movement of the mouth is a disaster and some other parts of the bodies also doesn’t convince. There are the ultimate attacks animation which are not completely poor but if you compare to the other Buokai’s, it’s not as nice as It could and should be. The menu options and game modes screen are great and easy to explore. The game modes especially will guarantee hours of gameplay and battles, in other to unlock the incredible and huge number of characters and the Z Items that were placed as a innovation of the old good capsules from the other Budokai games.
If there’s one thing that really can be dissapointing for the most hardcore fans is the no saiyan tranformations during the battles and other alternate costumes for the characters. For example, kid Gohan and Yamcha should have long hair in the Saiya Jins Saga or in Freeza Saga, Kid Gohan and Kuririn should be wearing the armor used by Freeza’s soldiers and other Saiya Jins. These are simple details that doesn’t directly interfere in the fun of the game, but It’s a disaster in terms of story mode and not being able to completely recreate the most exciting or favorite battles from the Tv Show. It’s just a small detail but comparing to Budokai 3, which was the almost prefect and complete DBZ game, this empty and “It’s missing something…” feeling could have been avoided.
The voices every body knows that come straight from the original japanese and american actors that gave their voices to the tv show. There’s nothing new about their dialogues, phrases, sentences, whatever, but the same old lines from “kamehamehaaa!” to “You can’t beat me.”, are still there. The music in the US version of the game is the same from the previous games, but for the fans, the japanese version brings the complete music from the anime that is spread in the game menus and during the battles. The sound effects are simple and nothing different that call the attention. If you played the 3 previous Budokai, you’ve heard everything.
The game is satisfying and because of it’s quality on the graphics, complex gameplay system, great game modes, huge number of fighters, good battle arenas, music, sound, voices from the anime, It’s possible to have a great idea on how hard work all the members of the team that developed this game had, also you can consider that it’s easy to verify more positives points than negatives. Dragon ball z budokai tenkaichi or Dragon ball z Sparking, will provide fantastic hours of game and dbz experience that the fans will certainly love and dedicate their time to complete every single part of the game, however, if you don’t have patience to learn it’s complex fight system, or some small camera issues bothers you, or you don’t like Dbz at all, you should avoid this game for certain. That said, There are some details that should be worked but so far, they don’t seem to be a very serious problem.