BAD with capital CRAP.
Graphics: 5/10
Budokai's graphics are a mess of both good and bad, more of the latter, but non-the less; there is some good here. Perhaps the best thing about Budokai's graphics is that they try to imitate the show's style. The characters look well drawn and in accordance with the show. Their muscle mass increase as they transform into USSJ and some rudimentary morphing graphics allow some villains like Cell and Frieza to change shapes during battle. Another small plus is that the hair animation is pretty well done.
The game's overall animation work, however, leaves much to be desired. Characters feel stiff and seem to move more like tanks then SSJ2 Gohan. Kicks and punches sometimes feel like they're ''broken'' and, on several occasions, the bad animation got in the way of the already horrendous gameplay... more on that later.
Other graphical problems deal with the fact that the character models, while pretty accurate, are far from good looking. Some small clipping problems are also present.
Sound: 1/10
Let me make something clear from the beginning: The US/English/Canadian DBZ voice actors are so bad that I don't think they'd be able to act if their life depended on it. There are better voice actors in games than these idiots, and it should come as no surprise that DBZ's sound is exactly as ''good'' as the show's.
Botched ''Ghuarghs'', repetitive ''taunts'', utterly idiotic catch phrases, you name it, Budokai has it. The sound effects are just as bad, it seems like they were put together in the 5 minutes before the game shipped.
Music is composed of the same butt rock and keyboard crap that litters FUNiBall Z. You’re better off turning the music off and playing some MP3s or CDs from an outside source.
Then, to add insult to injury, as is FUNimation's style, there is no Japanese language option... this, after the fact that all other versions of Budokai are voiced in Japanese. Arrgggh!!
Gameplay: 2/10
Have you ever played a good DBZ game? I haven't. No, not Legends. Not Hyper Dimension either. Don't even bother to mention DBGT: Final Bout by me since I may vomit. As a result of all of those failures I had high hopes for Budokai when I first heard about it. You could transform to SSJ mid-battle, the battle system looked great and it seemed like one required real skill to battle, and the characters, oh boy, the characters... lots of 'em and for once you got Yamcha and Tien and such other worthless deadbeats.
Boy, was I wrong.
Let's get the few good things about DBZ out of the way.
By far the games best feature is that it is extremely show accurate. It has the same arenas, the same characters, mid-battle SSJ transformations and show-like battles. The second good thing about DBZ: Budokai is that it has one of the best ''Create/Modify Your Warrior'' systems ever created. Too bad it's wasted (I'll get to that in a while).
OK, now that the good parts are out of the way, let's start with the bad. I'll start from the beginning since, well, there's A LOT to say.
The first thing that hits you when you pop in the DVD is the God-awful intro, a fully digitized version of the DBZ intro for all the pre-Buu sagas. This intro is so bad, that when I first saw it I thought these guys were clearly insane to put this in a game. After the awful intro you get a glimpse at the interface, which isn't that bad... until you discover there's only THREE unlocked modes at the begging, and there isn't even a survival mode.
The games three unlocked modes are: Story, Duel, and Tournament. It also offers a practice mode, but I'd hope that they at least have the decency to offer that in a modern fighter. By finishing the story mode you can unlock another utterly pointless mode called Hercule's (Satan's) Legend. This mode is useless... finishing it doesn't unlock anything in the US version and in the European version it gets you a password to a poorly made 3 page DBZ website; how exciting! The mode offers a few difficulties and involves beating enemies at the Cell Games culminating in the defeat of SSJ2 Gohan by Satan. Great, that was my dream ever since I watched DBZ, to see an idiot (Satan) defeat another over-powered brat present in almost all anime (Gohan)!!
The main mode is Story Mode. This is quite a nice creation and is probably the longest story mode, sans Soul Calibur's Mission Mode. The other modes are Tournament and Duel. Duel offers the possibility to fight vs. the CPU a Human or to just have 2 CPU's fight each other for your enjoyment.
Tournament is clearly the games deepest mode. Here, you fight a series of foes in either 8 player, 16 player or 20 player tournaments similar to the Tenkhaichi Budokai in DBZ. All the players are computer controlled so you can forget about having a huge tournament with your friends. By fighting and winning in this mode's tournaments (based on 3 levels of difficulty and amount of players) you earn money with which you buy capsules.
Capsules allow you to customize your characters any way you want. You can make a defensive tank who only knows how to kick and punch or a svelte fighter equipped with double Kamehamehas (effectively doubling the power of the blast) that starts out fast, doing a great deal of damage yet is very susceptible to attacks since he has little defense. You can also wish for a mega-powerful Breakthrough Capsule from the Dragon (granted you bought all 7 DBs), which allows your character to have ALL the moves he could possibly have and also to do 2x the normal damage with his moves.
Too bad Tournament mode is a total waste due to the fact that this game has the worst fighting system ever created in a vs. Fighter. I played beat'em-ups with a more in-depth system than this fighter. All moves in this game center around the use of up to 3 buttons... yup THREE buttons. You wanna pull a Warp Kamehameha? Easy you just hit -->PunchPunchKickKick and, voila, one of the most powerful moves in the DBZ universe comes out of your controller with about as little difficulty as hitting a punch. How about pulling a Big Bang attack, a Super Kamehameha, a Cell Spirit Bomb? Just do the exact same combo since most characters have the same key combinations for a completely different move.
And that wouldn't be half that bad if the combos would require any skill... combos are as easy as hitting the punch or the kick button 5 times. No really, I mean it. I can link a 10 hit combo together in 3 seconds without even looking at the screen, I just need to know to stop after 4 punches and 6 kicks. Grabs are equally unimpressive, not only by the fact that the game does the simplistic combo by itself (just hit R1) but because they do little damage and are about as useless as they get.
The gameplay is slow and unbalanced. Since you can neither jump, nor duck the block is horribly over powered. You can try to run and charge at the block, but then the defender can dodge your charge and blast you to hell, or you can try the even more useless ''Charged Fist/Kick'' attack which takes 4 seconds to charge and gives the opponent enough time to slap you around with a 10 hit combo and a Kamehameha. Oh and don't think you won't notice the lack of a jump or a duck move because as soon as you'll be floored by a combo you'll have the intent to try to hit your opponent with a sweep kick as to give yourself some more time to prepare, but since the game has no duck option you'll just sit down until you realize you gotta get up just to be slammed by a barrage of hits and beams.
SSJ transformations, while nice, are totally useless since they only increase your power by 10% while other capsules increase it by 30% and don't require the Ki to transform yourself. The game also has a ''float'' mechanic where, if you get launched in the air you'll stay there and the other player can charge at you. This fly-mode fells HORRIBLE. You always have the impression that you’re on the ground instead of the air and movement is even SLOWER in the air then it is on the ground.
Characters have little move variety and it becomes impossible to keep awake during fights when the only thing you do is block and throw a 3 hit combo for about 20 minutes at a time. Characters also seem to very easily be beaten against the outer wall leading to some animation glitches and an absolute impossibility to escape the attacker while he is pounding you against a wall. Add to that the idiotic AI and the game becomes a complete bore fest... especially knowing there are so many other great fighters out there for the PS2.
Finally the game is short and is a total insult to DBZ fans. The lack of any Buu Saga characters, even though the saga was already out on tapes in the US, shows that this game was rushed and made just so that Atari could hook people and then have them pay $50 for each new release that introduces 3 more characters, which is completely pathetic. Also, there are only 9 arenas for you to fight in and, much like this game, they're under developed and badly made with little detail given to the whole picture and the aspect of the levels. The ''Burst'' Mode, which tries to imitate the quick fights scenes in DBZ where no hit is landed you just see punches being thrown, is horrendous for it requires that you disengage your key pad and start rotating the left analog stick. Not that it should matter since there is no use of this mode through about 95% of the game.
Multiplayer: 3/10
Nothing special here except your average 1 v. 1 mode that is endlessly long due to the fact that the block is so over powered and trying to disengage it will end in your ass getting kicked.
Overall: 3/10
This is yet another failed attempt at trying to capitalize on the DBZ license. This game is bad, boring and absolutely outdated in both it's gameplay mechanics, graphics, and content. And it seems like the saga of outdated games is continuing with all other Atari DBZ releases including it's now famous-for-being-horrible DBZ: Taiketsu for the GBA.
If there is hope for DBZ, it doesn't lay in Atari, it lays in the hope that someday this series either won't be popular and people will give a rest at trying to make bad games out of it and even worse anime, or with a company like Capcom, Sega or some other producer that gives a rats ass about the quality of their games.