Completion Time: 21h:16m:00s
Rating: 8/10

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Battle Time!

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Oof, it's been a while yet again. Though on a positive note, I did finally complete Super Monkey Ball and will probably be writing about it soon! At any rate, it's time to take on a genre that may be one of my weaknesses: fighting games. At least this has the benefit of being based on something I have some familiarity with, that being Dragon Ball. I'm not an uber fan by any means, but I've watched my fair share of episodes and did read all of the manga, so at least I'm not in the dark as to these characters and their various plights. But how does the game hold up in that respect? I mean, it's a fighting game, and that's kinda what the entire franchise is all about, so it can't be that far off base. But is it fun? Well sure, I think so... maybe I should've revealed that later. Oh well.

"A Dragon Ball fighting game? How is this possible?" - Nobody

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Going Super Saiyan

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The main section of this game is playing through a retelling of the majority of the Dragon Ball Z arcs that fans are so familiar with at this point. The Saiyan arc, Namekian arc, Android arc, and up to the Cell arc are represented in the game with some pretty entertaining cutscenes representative of the anime itself. The models aren't the greatest, but they're at least stylized in such a way that makes it enjoyable and not an eyesore. To that end, the game has a lot of charm in it's menu design and the way the transitions between scenes are different Dragon Balls too. It's like the rose colored glasses that I had for this generation of games are being lowered down back over my eyes, covering up the other nonsense that I've been completing on the GameCube recently.

The gang's all here!

The character selection is pretty diverse, with unlockables for accomplishing different portions of the story and difficulties of the various modes. The best part being that you get characters grouped together based on time skips, like Kid Gohan/Teen Gohan/Great Saiyaman. I mean, they're all the same person, so why shouldn't they be in the same spot of the roster? It's a nice, clean look they've got going on there. Perhaps the funniest bit of all of this is that they're all from across the first 3-ish/4-ish arcs of the Dragon Ball Z story, sure, but they also alternate between character names being trademarked and restricted? I'm no lawyer, so I don't really know the difference between the two, but it is pretty funny nevertheless. Should also be noted that the likes of the androids are NOT copyrighted in anyway, because how are you gonna trademark a number?

Hercule is trademarked, but is Mr. Satan? The mind boggles

The combat can be grueling at times in the way a lot of these types of games are. The most of it being related to the various movesets that you need to memorize for the different characters. And even after you know how to execute it, pulling them off is a task in and of itself. I'm sure your familiar with the fatalities in Mortal Kombat and how hard they can be to pull off, and that's the same thing going on here. To give you a fighting chance, there are capsules that you can unlock and purchase in the Capsule Shop. These range from moves to outfits to deadly poisons. And I mean that literally, if you want a fighting chance at higher difficulties (and you're bad at fighting games), give the Viral Heart Disease and Vaccine capsules a whirl to give you that fighting edge. Maybe that's cheese, but I don't care! I ain't playing in tournaments, I'm gonna cheese. >:)

Pills, pills, and more pills

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Completing the Game

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So I mentioned beforehand that there are characters to unlock in the game, most of which can be obtained by making your way through the story, completing the Tournament Mode, and playing through missions as specific characters like Frieza and Vegeta. Not to mention the alternate story-mode chapters that unlock as you progress as well. There's a ton to go through in the story, and enjoy it while you can because there will probably be a fair amount of grinding in Tournament Mode and VS Mode later.

Me preparing for my 50th Tournament Mode match

Of course, a lot of this goes hand in hand with grinding for zenie in order to purchase capsules. When you buy from a category, you'll get a random available capsule from that pool, which you can later use in battle to help you in a variety of ways. Another random advantage of the capsule system is sometimes, on rare occasions, you'll get one of the titular Dragon Balls. Just... in a capsule, apropos of nothing. Once you obtain all the Dragon Balls, you'll get a choice between three Breakthrough capsules, which will allow a character to use everything at their disposal in a battle. Once all these capsules are obtained, you can get the Dragon Balls to just sit around and look pretty. But again, all of this through randomization takes quite a long time to obtain due to the aforementioned grinding.

My worst nightmare: being in a store with no zenie to my name

Finally, there's a specialty mode to be unlocked. After unlocking all the characters (including Hercule) and beating the Word Tournament for what is undoubtedly your 1 millionth time, you'll unlock the "Legend of Hercule" mode. This can be pretty tough to beat for a number of reasons. It's a gauntlet representing the story of how Hercule won at the Cell Games, so you must play as Hercule and can use NO specialty capsules, only using the moveset that the game permits. Each match in the gauntlet carries its own special condition. Sometimes your health drains at a spectacular rate, sometimes your opponent has "armor", sometimes you go a couple rounds without healing. And you must make it through all matches without dying. For winning, you get... nothing. Hmm, glad I spent so much time doing THIS then!

Fighting 5 of these creatures and then going straight into Kid Gohan without healing is beyond evil

As with most fighting games, I'm no good at this and I feel like I lucked into many of my victories. It's still a fun time, but completing fighting games is also deliberately made a chore by every developer in existence. That may be why I tend to stay away from them as often as I do. But as it stands, I don't see anything inherently wrong with this one, and could see myself enjoying a night just beating up friends and family alike.

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 23/652