Quick Look: Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z

I saw the new movie with the space Egyptian cat, it is dumb, the worst kind of dumb.

No wonder the DBZ narrative never made any sense to me. Good lord, man. o___o

KAYOKAYAMAYAMAHALO TO THE POWER OF 8!

CHA LA HEAD CHA LA!

@dooleh said:

Ohhhh man, you made the right choice. Everything after the Cell Saga is pretty horrible.

First there's a World Tournament set a few years after the Cell Saga, so Gohan (and other characters near his age) grow up, while all of the old cast are basically completely unaged somehow. Goten basically becomes new kid Gohan. Actual Gohan (in his late teens) becomes super lame and adopts this dumb superhero persona called Great Saiyaman where he wears a stupid visor helmet thing.

The Majin Buu Saga is like, the worst one in all of Dragon Ball Z. For a series that got pretty focused on machismo and muscley dudes, Majin Buu as a villain wildly clashes with the whole tone of the series. He's like, shitty Piccolo, in that instead of being a cool nonhuman villain, he's pink rubber with a super lame personality. He turns people into chocolate. That saga got into ridiculous fanfiction bullshit like fusing characters (Goten and Trunks into Gotenks, Goku and Vegeta in Gogeta, etc.).

Then a bunch of Dragonball GT nonsense happens that is its own separate series, and Goku is a kid again for some arbitrary reason and he's out on different planets in space or something, and my understanding is that A) they invent so many silly levels of Super Saiyan stuff, and B) the entire series is so bad, that C) everyone likes to pretend that whole series is just not canon because it's so dumb.

Arguably, everything after the Frieza Saga always felt really weak to me. It felt like a good ending point. The Android Saga goes on forever with what turns out to just be a bunch of bullshit precursor shit to Cell appearing. Having a guy from the future come and help them save the present was a cool angle, but literally everything else was stupid about the Android Saga. Cell was an alright villain and at least led to a bunch of cool fights, so aside from Frieza, Cell was another decent villain to end on. Everything after Cell is SO BAD.

It gets weird for me when I realize that Vinny must have been in his early 20s when he watched it during its original American run. Right? I don't know the ages of the GB staff obsessively, but if I was like 11-12 when it was on, and I'm pretty sure Vinny is at least 8 or 9 years older than me, that math checks out.

Like, DBZ holds up alright for 7-16 year-olds, but I feel like that show kinda wastes a LOT of your time, once you're old enough to not just be fucking around in high school.

I don't wanna ruffle any feathers here, but this doesn't look very good.

Even the storied history of Dragonball Z games doesn't deserve a game like this.

I love Dragon Ball anime...but this movie dissapointed me. I will be play on this game but only because it was anime from my childhood.

Funniest first two minutes ever!

Where's our sequel to Dragon Ball Z Sagas?!?!

You have to remember that there was a time in America when anything "anime" was super underground and cool unless you were living in San Francisco or lived near an import VHS rental shop. We were just starting to get decent English/American localization companies in 1994-1996 before Cartoon Network's Toonami and later Adult Swim came in and changed everything and introduced an entire generation to Japanimation.

I totally understand how a "video editor" would become obsessed with an already geeky animation format from a foreign country that dealt with subject matters and themes far darker and more adult than seen in 1970s-1980s American cartoons.

Okay, apparently no one else wants to defend this, so I will.

Hell no, it is not worth the $60 bucks, and it kind of astounds me that they thought that was okay. I'm also appalled that they didn't have any sort of offline mode beyond story mode, where they force you into situations with certain characters. I love playing as Trunks w/ Sword, but I can't play as him in most missions before his arrival at the beginning of the Android Saga. Even in co-op, while they let you play as whoever, you still have to select missions out of the story, which can limit what this game could possibly be, and undermines what they seemed to be trying to prevent in single player mode when the first confrontation with Raditz is with a team of Trunks, Majin Buu, Android 17, and Captain Ginyu.

That being said, this game is fun if you just let it be. Yeah, it's telling you the same story, lazily, but you've seen the story a billion times, you know how it goes! Unless they wanted to do full on cut-scenes like the way the first Budokai handled it, great! Otherwise, it's not that necessary. And yes, it's dumb, but that's part of the fun. Jeff will never admit this, due to it being anime, but DBZ is like professional wrestling. There are buff, half naked dudes screaming or standing off across from each other, letting each other get their finishers ready, standing in awe, doing dumb shit. That's how it goes, and there's a lot of fun to be had in that.

Onto the game itself, the game mode, though it is only one and a simplistic one at that, is a lot of fun. I understand why the Dark Souls, Dota 2 crowd that frequents this site doesn't like simplicity, and thus don't like this game. You guys probably don't like DBZ anyway, and that's fine! But it delivers on fun, fast action where I can combo from my main combo, into a Unique attack, into a Special. Or I could Combo, then Unique hit into a chain attack with the other members, depending on what and how they're doing. They try to go deeper with classes, which doesn't do a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but sometimes it's necessary and those times are cool.

I also really like the sharing energy bit. The Spirit Bomb has always been a cool thing in DBZ, but it was a simple and long process and no one really thinks about. Now with this, someone else in the world is using a Spirit Bomb or another Ultimate, you give energy with your username and an auto-generated sentence (because otherwise it'd be "penispenispenis" or whatever), then the person gathering energy for the attack watches as they charge, seeing usernames from across USA, Japan, France, Spain, Germany, etc fly in to help your attack. This also creates a cool moment where the others have to protect you, to keep you from being knocked down before you finish charging, which makes the payoff so sweet.

One thing I don't enjoy about it is that dashing in the air is sloooooow. If you have a character that can use some form of teleportation, it likely doesn't go far, and you can't HAAAAAAAAAAAAA your way back up, which is the wrestling equivalent of not allowing Hogan to hulk up. It's not right. I imagine there's a strategic reason to all of that, but still.

The biggest issue, but the one that I find most exciting, is that this game has a lot of potential. Depending on how well it does (or maybe not since DBZ games are still getting put out despite the show ending and only getting the occasional movie, like the one that made its way into this game), you could see more game modes centered around this play style, with more action-strategy rather than traditional fighting, going up against bosses like in an MMO. The maps are also, while mostly just rock, the best I've ever seen in a DBZ game, and if they can open that up to be more of an open world, rather than the older games where you flew around a miniaturized planet, so much could be done! Like I'd love a mission in story mode based on the episode where Goku and Piccolo have to test for their drivers license, so you get in the car and actually dri--...okay, this is reaching GTA levels of ambition...I can dream, though...

Anyway, this game is like a 20 dollar purchase, at most. But it is a fun game I can sink hours into, and it has seeds of potential that they could build off of and make even greater games based on this idea, as long as they include offline play and all that. And dear god, please no board game like Budokai 2 ;_;

This may be the best comparison ever. It rings true.

"Whose his mom?"

"Chi-chi."

"What?"

"Chi-chi, is the mom."

"You're fucking with me."

I died.

This still isn't Budokai

Vinny was spot on about way more things that you would think for how unsure he sounded of his story catch-up. I'm surprised and...something like impressed, but not the kind where he should feel proud of it...

@jagehtso: http://www.gamespot.com/profile/Ryan/blog/ !

@colourful_hippie: I definitely agree with you this game isn't Budokai. I remember this fighting game it was be great.

I finally understand the story of DB(Z). Thanks, Vinny!

Why do they keep making Dragonball Z games that aren't Budokai?

Who are these games for? Who is buying them all that they keep going, "LET'S MAKE ANOTHER ONE"?

Listening to Jeff's comments during this Quick Look makes for quite an experience now, in 2019.