Review #452: Dragon Ball GT - Final Bout

 What is a videogame?

 Dragon Ball GT Final Bout sucks. It's as bad as the show that spawned it, and it just might be the worst game I've ever played since I started the blog. And it has no excuse, Final Bout was the latest in a long string of fighting games based on Dragon Ball, but it's terrible, worse than anything that had come before or after it. And its sole saving grace, the gorgeous, epic intro? The animation's the same, but  the badass Japanese song from the original release was lost in translation, the American localization substituting it with a lame, boring tune.

 Booting up the game presents you with the barest of modes: Battle(CPU or Player), Tournament, Build up and a Training mode hidden inside the options menu. The only mode that beats an explanation is build up, in which you can take a character and fight various fights to level him or her up. If, and only IF this was a good game, this addition would've been brilliant, but this game is as far from being good as it can. The roster selection is pretty bad too, for a game bearing the GT brand it sure loves Z, featuring the likes of Cell, Kid Buu, Frieza, Piccolo, Vegeto, Z Gohan and Z Vegeta, with only Pan, Trunks and Kid Goku representing GT. It went a bit overboard with Gokus too, there're two Kid Gokus(Normal and Super Saiyan), 3 Gokus(Normal(GT), Super Saiyan(GT) and Super Saiyan(Z)) as well as Super Saiyan 4 Goku, and all 4 adult Gokus play the same. There're also three seemingly identical Trunks: Trunks(GT), Super Saiyan Trunks(GT) and Future Trunks. Oh, about half of the cast is hidden behind a code that must be re-entered every single time you boot up the game. Brilliant.

 But a poor roster selection would be salvageable with top-notch gameplay, something this game lacks. Let's start with the simplest of things: Movement, which they managed to ruin. Moving around feels very stiff and slow. You can hold R1 to dash, but characters take about half a second before they start dashing, and if both fighters end up back-to-back, it takes about a second for them to turn around. You know you messed up when moving around, on a flippin' 2-D fighting game feels wrong in every single way. And as far as I could tell, there's absolutely no way to block attacks, because why the hell follow tried and true conventions? I tried to do some research, and X is supposed to be the guard button, but I'll be damned if it worked for me.

 Alright, so the movement is crap, what about the fisticuffs? Square punches, Triangle kicks and circle shoots ki blasts. And combos don't exist. Seriously, landing any sort of attack feels awkward as hell, since any kind of attack makes enemies stagger backwards, with no window of opportunity to link another attack. What's their excuse? it's not like there had been hundreds upon hundreds of fighting games released before it, so what's their goddamned excuse? There're special moves, performed by tapping certain directions and attack buttons, as well as ki-consuming super moves. Super moves can be defended on countered depending on what combination of buttons you press when the opponent performs theirs. Good luck remembering every button combination, because Meteor Combos have their own set.

 Meteor Combos are initiated by pressing R2 towards an opponent, successfully landing the blow will let you follow up with different button combinations. The enemy must guess what attack is coming next and press the appropriate button combination. Either way, Meteor combos don't feel very responsive to button inputs, so get ready to drop them a plenty! Assuming you remember what button combination does what, assuming that, for whatever reason, you care about learning how to play this poor excuse of a 'game'.

 Dragon Ball GT - Final Bout is the worst kind of garbage. Not only is it absolute garbage as a game, not only is it irredeemable with nary a positive quality about it.... It's also rather rare, which makes it rather expensive. It's an expensive piece of garbage, not even worth the price of admission as a curiosity. This is the worst game I've ever played since I started the blog, and it's so bad I hesitate calling it a 'game'.
 0.5 out of 10