All the way back in 2007 Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 was released for the Playstation 2 and Nintendo Wii. 17 years later the long awaited sequel is finally here but does it live up to the hype and legacy of the old games.
To start us off and most importantly, the game has a staggering 182 characters including transformations of course. This is the most of any game in the series and with such a large roster often being a massive selling point of these games its amazing. Spanning from Dragon Ball Z through to Super, including characters from GT and the Z Movies as well. The only real gripe in the roster is the lack of original Dragon Ball characters, only really costumes and Teen Goku.
But how’s it play, well the formula that people have wanted is back. A perfect easy to play but with a high skill ceiling game, you can still just get on and just hit some buttons with all the characters but there’s a lot of depth to the games defensive mechanics and combo systems for those wishing to truly master them.
The games Main Story mode, episode battle
The games story is split into character episodes this time, the 8 characters playable for it are Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, Future Trunks, Frieza, Goku Black and Jiren. Instead of just the typical affair of just playing through the know Dragon Ball story, it is also filled with What If paths that give us completely different and alternate versions of the story. Some of these can get really deep and take almost as long as some of the actual story paths. The only real gripe I have with this is some characters stories abruptly end early while others go through the whole series, I would have loved to have seen a more expanded story for some of the characters.
The games prebuilt custom battles, a showcase of what can be done
The games custom battles is a way for fans to make their own stories and battles, akin to the creating a story mode in old WWE games. But with this there is an infinite amount of options people can do and share online, these can range from just fun battle ideas to more boss raid battles that are much harder than anything the games real story could through at you. Well maybe not Great Ape Vegeta.
World tournament mode options
The games World Tournament modes are all the same as before, including the options to play the new tournament of power and create custom tournaments to play either online or just against the CPUs. Of course the fan favorite Yamcha games returns for those who love random select.
In terms of online modes, we are given the standard affair of tournaments. Player Battles, Ranked Singles and Ranked DP Battles. Ranked DP Battles are team battles where characters are assigned an amount of points so you can make your team out of 15 points, a good way to stop people just picking 5 incredibly strong characters it allows for some creativity and some characters to shine who typically wouldn’t. The netcode itself is fine, not perfect but with very little real issues so far.
Final Thoughts on the game are that this is most certainly going to be THE Dragon Ball game for years to come. If the devs can keep on top with giving us new characters and content and people keep making new fun custom battles, this is a perfect game to just play with your friends casually or actually give it a real go somewhat competitively the games characters aren’t balanced by design but that’s kinda what people want too. Its certainly worth the wait after all these years and we will definitely be playing this game for years to come.
Score:
10/10
An absolutely fantastic love letter to the Dragon Ball Franchise. From its massive roster of characters, to its interesting take on the story and What If scenarios. To expanding on loved modes like World Tournaments and Custom Battles. This will be a game to play for years to come.
