Review #157: Dragon Ball 2 - Raging Blast 2

 Dragon dragon, rock the dragon, dragon ball z!

 When it came to Dragon Ball games, there were two sides you could fall upon, you either liked Budokai 3 or you liked Budokai Tenkaichi 3. Or maybe you were like me and liked both, but that's besides the point. Raging Blast 2 is the second game in the series that succeeded Budokai Tenkaichi, a game I had played the demo a couple of times before, but I hated it... yet for some reason I decided to give it a whirl, as in a honest-to-goodness try, and here we are. Also, I might compare it to Budokai Tenkaichi 3 every now and then, comparisons are inevitable since they follow the same principles and have the same foundation.

 Back when the Budokai Tenkaichi first debuted, these fighters were something very different, as the camera was positioned behind your character at all times. Now a days it's a bit more common(Naruto Ultimate Ninja, Castlevania Judgement), but I digress. The game plays very similarly to Budokai Tenkaichi, but the controls have been overhauled in an effort to streamline it, and the end results are a bit mixed. You do basic attacks by mashing on the square button, and the triangle button, which acts as a weak ki blast from affar, allows you to finish you square strings in different ways according to when you press it. Movement has been simplified a lot, now you constantly dash while pushing the stick on any direction, while holding the X button consumes ki in order to grant you a faster boost. The L1 and L2 buttons now control your height, but as long as you are on the air, you character will automatically home in on the enemy. A change I didn't like, is that when you enter "close range" you lose your dash, and instead are reduced to "hopping" and sidestepping, which doesn't feel very good. Sure, you can use X to dash in, but it's not a good alternative.

 The biggest change has been to the Supers and how they work. The good is that characters now have customizable "Super" move loadouts, in which you place up to four different supers, which is really good and adds variety. The subjective is that blast stocks are now gone and the "Passive" abilities that consumed stocks are now categorized as "supers" and consume Ki, while Ultimate Attacks are now done simply by charging Ki and entering "High Tension", this is a change I'm OK with. The bad is that you do special moves by pushing the right stick Up, Down, Left or Right, problem being that it's not very accurate, many times I saw myself doing the wrong Super since I might've pushed a bit more to the right than up, or stuff like that, something that didn't happen with the previous control scheme. There's also a new mode, when you charge Ki and enter High Tension, you can now press R1 to enter "Raging", which disables your Special attacks but grants you access to longer melee attack strings and better mobility options.

 Other slight tweaks come in the form of the customization items, just as in Tenkaichi, characters have a numerical limit, and the different items that enhance your stats have a number associated with them, as long as you don't go over the limit, you can put almost as many items as you want. Almost, because you are also limited by a 10 item slot. I didn't really mind the limits, but I know some people have found them a bit restricting, still, there are a ton of aesthetic items that I really liked and cosume 0 points, these allow you to remove headwear or scouters from the character, prevent their clothes to break from damage or allow you to change the aura of the character. Speaking of Auras, there are a ton of different and they look amazing. Props for the uncloning characters received, you'll find a ton of exclusive moves for each character(both normals and supers), which makes all the characters feel much, much different from each other than in Tenkaichi 3. A change I didn't like is that characters that are related to each other(Say... Frieza and Son Goku, Gohan and Cell, etc) will talk during battles, even normal battles. It's not too annoying, but I wish it could be turned it off.

 The game has a fair amount of modes: Galaxy Mode, Battle Zone, Single, Team and Power Battles, Tournament and tutorial and training modes. Tutorial, Training, Single Battle and Team Battle are self explanatory, Power Battles have you making a team where characters have different values, and Tournament allows you to play "Normal Tournament" or "Cell Tournament", and each allows you to tweak the ruleset(You unlock different rules by playing through them). Battle Zone allows you to pick a character and go through different enemies, while getting handicapped in various ways, you can also earn Stamps by further handicapping yourself, but... the Stamps unlock nothing, they are not worth it, still, finishing a route unlocks "Enhanced Characters", if available, which is an overpowered version of an existing character that can't be customized. Battle Zone is fairly fun, and it's where you unlock the really cool customizables, like the auras.

 Then there's Galaxy Mode, which is a mixed bag. Y'see, there's no story mode. There's not story mode on a modern DBZ game. I understand some people might be tired of going through the same storyline over and over and over and over again, but the replacement isn't very exciting. The good thing is that it makes you play as every single character in the roster, as each of the 60+ characters has his own Galaxy Mode. The bad is that this mode can get pretty repetitive, as early as after finishing with one third of the cast you'll have seen every different "mission". While the missions are fairly easy, there are a couple of blunders, the "Get hit, get killed" missions. These are disgustingly unfair, having you fight two or more fighters than can kill you in one hit. They feel more like luck based affairs than skill. You can earn "Seal Near Death" items through the mode, but... the translation is terrible. There's "Seal Near Death 1", "Seal Near Death 2" and "Seal Near Death 3"... but there's no way of knowing which one you need to equip, so if it's not the right one, it's back to the customizing menu for you. This problem extends to the super move descriptions, there's a ton of "This moves evades the enemy attack"... on rush super moves. "Shoots a short-range beam attack" when it's a long range beam attack, bottom line is: Do not trust the descriptions.

 Graphics are colorful and vibrant, character models look amazing and the stages have a satisfying amount of detail, considering how large they are and how often they get destroyed. And it runs at 60 FPS which is always a treat. Beams and Auras are on a level of their own, they look downright amazing and there are ton of different types of beams, very nice. I can't speak for the English dub(I'm weird like that), but the Japanese voice overs are really good, as always, sound effects are great, but the music... The opening would led you to believe that it would feature a techno-rock soundtrack, not unlike Dynasty Warriors, but most of the tunes in the game are fairly... bland, they fail to pump you up for battle. Luckily you can play your own songs if you don't like them.

 Budokai Tenkaichi 3 set the bar pretty high, both in gameplay, feel and character roster. As far as "feel" is concerned, Raging Blast 2 easily surpasses Tenkaichi 3, moves look the part and look much more painful. As for gameplay, I'm still not completely sold on it, and I think the controls were better before(And it took a while to get used to them, my muscle memory kept failing me). Roster... well, Tenkaichi 3 was on its third iteration, so logically Raging Blast 2 is still playing catch up. To be fair, they have all the required characters and then some, and they added some characters that, at the time, had never before gotten a playable appearance(Tarble, Hatchiyak).

 Is Raging Blast 2 a worthy successor to the Tenkaichi series? It is. Is it better than Tenkaichi 3? Yes and no, both games have their strengths. But if you liked the Tenkaichi Series, it's very much worth it, the controls will take a while to get used to, particularly if you played a lot of Tenkaichi 3, but once you get the hang of it it's smooth sailing from there.
 8.0 out of 10