It's basically THE Dragon Ball Z game on the SNES
This game did everything that was needed to improve on the first Super Butoden game. The fighting is mostly similar - you have a punch, a kick, a button to fly or land, and the shoulder buttons make you slide forward or back quickly. If you get far enough from your opponent, the screen will split, and you can unleash your ultimate moves - like the Kamehameha, Big Bang Attack, Special Beam Cannon, etc.
Now, in the first game, it was also like this, but when your opponent did an ultimate move, you had a very, very slim chance to defend yourself. At least from my experience, that is. When the screen switched from focusing on your opponent to focusing on you, you had to enter a button combination very quickly, or else, you were going to take a hit. I don't even know all the ways you could defend yourself in that game. Super Butoden 2 made it easier to defend yourself. You still have to be somewhat quick, but you have a hint more time to enter the combo you wanted.
In this game, you have 4 options to defend yourself from an ultimate attack: blocking (you take 50% damage), repelling (25%), psychic block (0%), and the most important brand new way to defend yourself, the energy block. This last one is the one where you can fight back with your own ultimate move, and have an epic struggle with your opponent.
To put it in simple terms, let's say AI Vegeta throws a Final Flash - I can throw a Kamehameha with Gohan in response, and after winning the struggle between the energy beams by mashing the A button like no tomorrow, I can send a blast right back at Vegeta. That's pure DBZ action right there.
On top of that, the game has a pretty nice story mode, with different possibilities depending on how certain battles go. There are also hidden characters in the game. Due to Goku's death in the Cell saga, Goku is a hidden character. Broly is also a hidden character, but like Goku, he can be unlocked with a cheat code, and they can both be battled in the story mode.
The soundtrack's okay, but there's honestly not much to write home about there except for a few tracks.
Overall, though, this game pretty much had everything a DBZ fan could ask for. The fighting isn't deep, but it didn't have to be. The game had to capture enough of the essence of DBZ, and to me, it did more than enough in that department.
