All graphics, zero gameplay. The trend of increasing quality in each new Budokai has been broken.
The graphics are undeniably better, though not by much as everyone hypes on about. The faces look a little off when compared to Budokai 3. However, the graphics were already basically as good as they can get without slowing the game down.
I was rather unimpressed with the sound, since it's a shameless copy of all the music/sounds from previous games. Other than doing more studio time with the Dragonball voice actors, this game added zero to new sound.
You hear that there's a huge list of characters to choose from, but I actually felt like there wasn't much to choose from. The only reason the list seems large is because they make every transformation a new character. Speaking of which, that would've been a good idea if the transformed characters kept their abilities more or less the same (instead of losing abilities!) and if the transformations *actually made some kind of damage difference,* which it doesn't. Goku does the same or *more* damage than SSJ3 Goku. Budokai 3 did a great job with giving transformations advantages without severely killing game balance, while Tenkaichi completely nullified any benefit to transforming.
The storyline mode is alright in terms of following the sagas, but the lack of versatility in its presentation will leave those unfamiliar with the series completely clueless, and the story progression is choppy since the only time you see any plot is a few seconds before a fight begins while the 2 characters taunt each other.
Ok, now that I've already run out of "good" things to say, let's go ahead and start complaining about the millions of things that Spike completely ruined...
GAMEPLAY. The #1 thing about making a game great, and it's completely shot here. Ok, I can handle changing the game dynamics with flying etc, but the controls are completely unintuitive. The "mash button X to dash around to only 2 seconds" is really cumbersome and makes you realize you aren't really as free to soar around the stage as you think you are. The stages are also actually very small, making the game extremely cramped for such an "open flying game", as I *always* ended up either pinning my opponent or getting pinned at the stage's boundary.
The dynamics of executing moves are *completely* gone now. All you have to do now is hit 2 buttons in conjunction and you execute the move *presuming that the game actually registers it.* Even worse, your melee attacking is now lumped into the single square button, meaning that my wife stares at me hitting a single button for almost the whole fight. Maybe people thought Budokai 3 was too complex, (I loved it) but this kind of simplicity is simply insulting. Maybe they're trying to target 5 year olds now with DBZ?
Geez, I could go on forever about the horrible things done by Spike....
Let's not forget the CAMERA. Every single fight now starts with you staring at your character's back! Ok, Goku's back is nice, but I'd rather start by SEEING MY OPPONENT AT THE START. The computer always gets a free clobbering session at the beginning of every fight thanks to whichever genius did this to the camera without ever playing the game. Even worse, the camera does not clip through the terrain, meaning that if you're near a boundary, rock, etc, the camera will simply *zoom in on your character's lovely back*. Great, so now we have a small stage, and if I ever get near anything, I get beaten to a pulp as I watch some blades of grass sway in the wind. Real classy gameplay here.
How can anyone forget the wonderful TUTORIAL. Ok, so we now have this completely new style of gameplay for Budokai, so everyone immediately runs to the tutorial. What do we get? A PowerPoint presentation that quickly gives you a few slides *at its pace, not yours* that don't completely explain what you can do. Even worse, *you don't get to try the moves like you did in Budokai 2/3," you get to watch a canned clip in the slide showing Gohan dancing around, and if you didn't catch whatever button-stroke you needed to know, too bad, cause the business style presentation doesn't care and keeps going on. This is the most important part of introducing a new style of play, and Tenkaichi completely blows it off and makes a truly HORRIBLE tutorial. This part is probably what infuriates me the most about this game. And to think that they actually make money by NOT TELLING US HOW TO PLAY THE GAME.
Also, the Budokais had built a culture of collecting items over time, giving you reason to play for a very long time with a feeling of steady progression towards Godhood. Well, surprise surprise, that's all gone too. Collecting everything in the game takes almost zero time in Tenkaichi, making the game feel very hollow once you've only played about 10 hours worth.
There are also quite a few bugs in the game (hits not landing, instant deaths, english voices instead of japanese, etc) that just make you sorry that you actually paid money for this lack of quality and assurance.
I think I'll stop before my blood pressure increases even further. You get the point anyway. No complexity, all flash and nothing to back it up but a clear lack of Budokai understanding. Rent this game if you must, but don't buy it. If you have, take it back, get Budokai 3, and protest this game online until Spike gets the boot. People should be fired for this kind of poor work.