Dragon Bug Z
Dragon Ball Z is back, in form of an
RPG! CyberConnect2, better known for their Naruto games as well as their epic Asura's Wrath aimed to bring their love for the ridiculous with
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, a
complete retelling of the Z series. It hits most of the right notes, even if it falls short in more than a few ways.
Believe it or not, Kakarot covers the
entire Dragon Ball Z storyline, a bit of a rarity among Dragon Ball Z games, since first iterations tend to only cover up to Namek or Cell. A few things were cut, a ton of things were
added, in the form of sidequests, and a few things were
tweaked to flow a bit better for the game, for example, now all Z warriors face the Saibamen at once, instead of going one by one. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed, since I expected Naruto Ninja Storm levels of epic cutscenes, but it seems like
most of the time they went for a more faithful approach. Mind you, when it's good, it's
GOOD, Vegeto VS Buu is
gorgeous, and Vegeta's last ditch effort against Cell is amazing, but most of the time they weren't flexing their creative muscle. A few other scenes went for a mixture of faithfulness and CC2's originality, such as Vegeta's last resort against Fat Buu, leaving in some key frames from the manga, but also using the power of the PS4 to add a lot of visual eyecandy for players to drool at. That said, a few other scenes left me a bit disappointed, Gohan is my favorite character in the series, and I was disappointed at how
little flair they added to his face-off against Buu, leaving out the amazing pummeling Gohan laid on Buu. Most of the game follows a very simple structure, with marks guiding you from objective to objective, but you can take your time to get anywhere, either to take in some sidequests or just to explore for collectibles.
While the game is named Kakarot, it seems CC2 didn't realize that Gohan is the
actual protagonist of the Z series, so most of the time is spent playing as Gohan. Heck,
intermissions between sagas are all about Gohan, as a result, Goku was
way behind Vegeta and Gohan in levels. That said, you'll get to play as Goku, Gohan, Piccolo, Vegeta, Trunks, Vegeto and Gotenks.
Disappointingly, Vegeto and Gotenks only get one fight each, which sucks since Vegeto is my
other favorite character. Characters go through a ton of wardrobe changes throughout the game, and it kinda sucks that you can't change their clothes. After finishing the game you can
unlock Trunks to use in the present, but you can't change any of the characters' clothes, so Vegeta is stuck with his Cell attire
even though you just defeated Buu.
Each character can be leveled up, and you can invest various kinds of currency and points to unlock new super moves or
passive abilities. You can use a party of up to three different characters, and while only five characters can be played with, you can use the entire cast of Z warriors as party members, and they get their own skill trees, that said, most of the time it's better to just have your party made up of playable characters, since they earn more XP than benched characters, and those are the ones you can
actually play with. Speaking of party members, your AI allies are completely
braindead, but having party members is better than not, since they may occasionally help you get out of a tough spot, as well as letting you use a couple of their super moves at will, after they recharge anyways.
The game is an RPG through-and-through, its world being divided into various different medium-sized zones,
filled with
references and
landmarks from the world of Dragon Ball Z. You can freely fly around, searching for battle encounters, which you can touch in order to trigger a battle, burst through them,
if your level is high enough,
earning the experience points and
skipping the battle or just avoid them, collect materials, food(Collecting fruit, hunting wildlife or fishing for fish) and Z Orbs... because this is an open-worldish modern game, so of course it's got to have
mandatory item gathering. Food can be used to cook meals and earn small,
permanent stat upgrades, material can be used to develop a training machine, build vehicles(
Goku and Picollo learn to drive after all!) as well as used to complete some quests. Z Orbs are used to upgrade your characters and
learn new skills, collecting them might seem a necessity at first, but after a while battles become very
generous with them, so as not have you wasting time flying around for them. As with most Dragon Ball games, collecting the Dragon Balls is a thing, and as per usual, it's very annoying. You have to go from area to area, going through lengthy loading times, get all seven, make a wish, and then wait 20 minutes for them to reappear. Thankfully, quests exclusive to the Dragon Balls are
few.
Fighting is fairly
simple, as per usual with CC2's games. You have an attack button, a ki proyectile attack button, a dodge and a block.
Holding L1 turns all four face buttons into your four equipped super moves, the directional pad turns them into your four equipped items, R1 turns them into your allies' super moves, while L1+R1 is turns them into your equipped transformations. Tapping L3 lets you burst towards your opponent, tapping block(L2) at the
right time before getting hit lets you teleport
behind your opponent. Controls are
deceptively complex for such a simple game, and getting used to how everything works can get a while, but once your brain adapts you'll end up with a very smooth and fun combat system, even if it's not very deep. There are no fancy juggles, no cancelling normal attacks into supers, just mashing and mashing... but it sure is pretty, and for this game, it works well.
The combat itself is alright, but nothing worth writing home about. While it gets the job and, and it's quite flashy and colorful thanks to its
gorgeous graphics and
relatively smooth framerate, there are a few chinks here and there that can make it a bit dull at time. For instance, enemies love entering their red auras, which grants them super armor as they
charge a homing attack. Eventually you'll learn how to avoid them, but they are still pretty annoying. A few bosses can be quite annoying since they love to spam their super armor modes, Nappa and Recoome are particularly bad with this, constantly entering their super armored mode, going
through your attacks while pummeling you down for size.
It doesn't feel fair or fun. Thankfully, other bosses don't spam their super armor so much.
Throughout each Saga(Saiyans, Namek, Cell and Buu) as well as between them you can undertake sidequests from other NPCs, most of them being popular and forgotten characters from the world of Dragon Ball, and a few of these sidequests are meant to explain the whys and hows of other events, for example, you can revive the Ginyu Force and turn them into good guys... and they'll take Gohan under their wing, having him learn poses... which he'll
later use as Saiyaman! There's a nice amount of sidequests to do, you can also build a couple of cars and race, and then there are Villainous Enemies and Super Villainous Enemies, special
high-
level encounters that will appear on certain zones. As a whole, it took me about 30 hours to finish the game, although I couldn't really complete it
because....
....the game is
riddled with bugs. There was a whole slew of sidequests I just wasn't able to finish because either the items I had to collect wouldn't spawn or I couldn't interact with the NPC. I couldn't finish Yamucha's quest as kid Gohan, I couldn't collect the bananas for Kaio-sama's monkey, the enemies I needed to defeat to collect parts for Dr. Briefs wouldn't spawn, the items Eighter asked me to collect just weren't there and... and I couldn't interact with Bulma during the epilogue,
which means I couldn't unlock the Time Machine or Trunks. There's a fairly
common bug that will make the Super Villainous Radditz/Nappa battle impossible to do, oh, and one of Gohan's Supers, Super Rapid Ki Attack Wave just wouldn't work until I got to the timeskip and he grew up. If you revive an enemy with the Dragon Balls but he's also a part of a Villanous Battle you haven't finished yet, well, you won't be able to
interact with him until you beat the encounter, or run away from it. And, by the by, your joystick isn't broken, vibration can be turned on or off, but it won't work
either way. I loved the game, but dammit, I wasn't able to finish a ton of sidequests even though I really wanted to. And Trunks is my third favorite character and I couldn't unlock him because of a bug. I couldn't even get the Time Machine in order to attempt to trigger broken sidequests again for a second try at them.
The other
big problem with the game are the loading times. They are frequent and they are
lengthy. How frequent? Well, some parts of the story mode might have a loading screen for just two lines of dialogue since the scene took place in another area. That means: The initial loading screen when entering an area to talk with the NPC that moves the story along, another loading screen to load the next lines of dialogue(which took part in another zone) and then
ANOTHER loading screen to return to where you were.
And they are quite long!
I'll admit that the game's problems are fairly
glaring and it could've ruined this game.... but this is a Dragon Ball Z game that covers the
entire storyline from the manga, is fun in its simplicity and kept a lot of attention to detail. And, truth be told, I can deal with the sidequests being impossible to complete since,
at least, the main story works just fine, and that's the part of
this game that matters the most. People not interested in the license
might not want to deal with the hassle, but fans of the series such as myself
should be able to put up with its shortcomings and experience a
complete, playable Dragon Ball Z in beautiful 3-D.
8.0 out of 10
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