Game #1162: Green Lantern - Rise of the Manhunters(3DS)

  This is the blackest night.

 Well, Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters was a passable beat'em up... on the Playstation 3, but this is the 3DS we are talking about, so what did they do? They massacred my boy, that's what they did. This is a weird Action/Metroidvania hybrid that has some decent ideas but executes them oh so poorly.

 First impressions are sometimes accurate, and let me tell you, when I first booted up the game and had to sit through mini-loading screens every time I went into a sub menu on the options menu I was far from impressed. They are just option menus, they shouldn't need a goddamn loading screen. And yet, they do. But whatever, I pressed onward, picked NEW GAME and... one of the worst framerates I have ever seen on the console waiting to surprise me. Figuring out that the game would just send endless enemies after me was the next surprise, meaning that the game pretty much just expects you to fly around and avoid enemies unless the scrolling locks up and you need to defeat a few of them in order to progress.

 After the tutorial stage, you can pick from four different worlds. Every world rewards you with a new skill that you can use both in combat as well as to destroy certain barriers. The kicker is that you can't travel to cleared worlds... until you beat all four of them. Afterwards you can revisit any of them.... and you need to, because in order to beat the game you need to visit every world two times. Lazy. The stage layouts remain the same, its just that you get a new objective on each world. It's like some sort of misguided, streamlined metroidvania. Oh, and traveling to any world forces you to play a very boring flying minigame, which is exactly the same all eight times you have to sit through them.

 Combat is simple. You can jump, and pressing jump again lets you fly around freely. You can also punch and shoot energy with your ring, and, at first, this is all you get. As you clear stages you'll gain a grab construct, a charged punch(Useless in combat due to the charge time) and a charged projectile(Not AS useless, but mashing shoot works just as well) as well as four touch-screen abilities: Blades, Miniguns, a shield and a repulsion push. All four touchscreen abilities share the same cooldown. You also get the ability to call upon other lanterns, and as far as I could tell, all four of them do the same: Recharge your life bar. Defeating enemies and finding collectibles rewards you with XP that you can spend on upgrades, such as more life or more damage.

 I know that this is a port of a Wii Game, but as a 3DS game with a dash of Metroidvania.... why the hell is the map on top of the action, making it very annoying, instead of appearing on the lower screen? No, really, why? This is one of, if not THE,  dumbest design choices I have ever seen on this system.

 Green Lantern on the 3DS is not very good at all. The best part about it is the hand-drawn art that's used in lieu of cutscenes. That aside, it's pretty much a waste of time.

 2.5

Game #1161: Balan Wonderworld

 Welcome to a land full of wonder and disappointment.

 As per usual with these cases, I knew Balan Wonderworld was bad and I knew the Switch version was the worst, however, I love the Switch and the game seemed as if it could appeal to me. I mean, I know I can enjoy bad games, and this one looked so charming, so Dreamcast-y and so 90s.... But nope, Balan's Wornderworld is as bad as they say.

 This is a 3-D platformer built around using costumes. There are only two actions in the game: Movement and Action. The Action depends on what costume you are wearing. Yes, this means that you could potentially get stuck with no ways to jump. In a platforming game. You can carry up to three costumes with you at any time, if you get hit you lose the costume, and if you grab a fourth costume the one on the third slot at the moment you pick up the fourth will go into your stocks. Yes, stocking costumes is a thing. And of course it's needlessly complicated. You need to find a costume crystal which you can only open with a key, keys that are lying next to the crystal itself most of the time, making you wonder why even add the extra step of requiring a key. And you'll probably want to stock up on spare costumes, as you might need them in another world. So starts the bore of having to wait for both key and crystals to respawn so that you can stock up on a few of them. And be careful! If by mistake you end up with two of the same costume in your three-slot inventory the costume crystal for that costume won't respawn again. Wonderful.

 And it is an interesting idea, having different costumes with different abilities, the game having a grand total of 80... except that there are very few functions all in all. There's this guy that after a jump can create a bubble you can float for a short while on... but then you get the kitty costume that is basically the same, allowing you to step a few times on the air. But then you get the frost fairy that lets you step on the air WHILE gaining air. This is also the best non-secret costume in the game. There are a few  "stop moving to shoot" costumes, others that you can just shoot by pressing a button. There's the Medusa costume that lets you swim on water currents... but then the eel one lets you swim on them BUT also jump from them. So plenty of costumes make other costumes obsolete, which is just ridiculous. Don't even let me get started on the idiotic costumes that trigger their abilities 'when they feel like it'. Yes, that is a thing.

 Fixing this entire thing would've been really easy. First of all, every costume would be able to jump at the bare minimum, and then, maybe, unlock new abilities for these smaller set of costumes. Also, you get a proper health bar, you don't lose costumes so you don't have to grind for spares. Voila! The game is now much more enjoyable. 

 The game is made up of 12 worlds with 2 stages and a boss each. Each stage has a certain number of Golden Balan Statues that you need to collect, and you unlock more worlds as you get more statues, but you only need about 100 of them to unlock the final boss. I do appreciate that there's a certain freedom in getting these statues, as sometimes you can use other costumes than the ones the game expects you to use in order to collect them. On the other hand, the game goes overboard with 'Balan Encounter' statues that are sets of up to SEVEN QTES, and you need to get the BEST timing on every QTE in order to get the statue. Miss one and not only do you have to sit through the entire needlessly lengthy sequence, but you can't retry it unless you exit the stage. And the latter worlds are downright mean, as stages can have up to three of these. If you get the timing wrong early on? Now you have to sit through the boring sequence. get it wrong on the final input? Now you wasted you time. These are so, sooooo bad.

 Unlike most people... I actually appreciated the voiceless, textless story and cutscenes. While there's this Novel that explains everything, I enjoy having a certain leeway in how the player can interpret these scenes. And having some mystery to what it is happening certainly helps. Every boss fight is super creative, and if you fight them using costumes you found in their world you can get a few bonus golden statues. But the best part about them is that every fight ends with a dance number between your character and the NPC's world you just visited. It comes out of nowhere, it's super cheesy and I LOVED IT.

 That said, the final boss is quite lengthy and annoying, and for whatever reason it killed me even though I had costumes to spare on my last attempt so I just gave up. Nah, the game isn't much fun, I wasn't gonna waste any more time on it.

 Lastly, let's go over the Switch-exclusive features. Horrible graphics, terrible performance and quite a few graphical bugs that overlay weird red/blue colors over the screen. The latter usually went away after moving the camera a bit, but still..

 I won't say that I hated it, because I didn't. I'll admit, I had some semblance of fun when it came to finding and collecting Balam Statues... But, man, the frankly idiotic design choices far outweigh every positive the game has. This game is a disaster, and it's so disappointing because I can feel the same charm in it as I found in the much superior Billy Hatcher. I don't know what happened or how Yuji Naka could err this badly. That said, I'm sure it would've been more fun on the other consoles.

 3.0

Game #1160: Thor - God of Thunder(3DS)

  Thor time's the charm?

 And thus, here it is, the only Thor game I was missing, Thor: God of Thunder on the 3DS. I might convince myself to replay the better, but vastly overrated, DS, later this year, but that remains to be seen. 

 Well, I don't really have a lot to say about this game. It's the Wii version of Thor, but on the 3DS. The control are better. No motion control whatsoever, everything can be done with buttons or the Touchscreen. Aiming the thunderbolt is a bit harder, but it's not too bad. You can now aim the hammer-dash and execute it pressing the A button, much better than on the Wii.  

 The graphics have better textures, but lower poly count, so in the end it looks worse. It has a few visual bugs, like sometimes enemies will die while standing on their feet, so they disappear after a while.

 In the end, it's a slightly better version of the same game that was on the Wii, but it's still a subpar beat'em up. 

 4.5

Game #1159: Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy

  As such concludes... the Layton legacy.

 I'll keep this short, as there's not much I can say about Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy that I haven't said in previous Layton entries. This game concludes the prequel sequel as well as Layton's story, at least as of now, as the latest Layton game at the moment focuses on his daughter. Regardless, as such, I think this game had kind of a heavy burden. Unwound Future was a phenomenal way to end the original series, so one would've hope Azran Legacy would live up to it. I don't think it.

 Well, this comes from the point of view of someone who, funnily enough, played the Layton series for their story as opposed to their gameplay. I'm not into riddles or mindbenders, so I couldn't care less about the gameplay proper. But I do enjoy exploring the world of the Layton games, as well as its mysteries. On that note, the game is what you'd expect: 150 riddles as well as a few bonus ones, lie in wait for the player. Some are mandatory, some must be found either by talking with NPCs or by poking around the beautiful backdrops with the stylus. The presentation is as amazing as it has been since they did the jump to the 3DS, as the character models are crisp and very clean, while the hand-drawn art displays gorgeous locales. There are also the mandatory side games, one about picking outfits for characters, one about bowling with acorns as a squirrel and, lastly, one about explosive flowers. Pretty much like any other Layton game.

 That said, at around the game's midpoint it throws a curveball to the player, letting you tackle six different areas in any order that you wish. It's something they haven't done before, and an interesting idea... and one that I think made the game boring. Probably as a consequence to this new layer of freedom, the pacing slows down to an absolute slog. Now you must collect the 6 Azran objects, getting minimal plot progression in the meantime. The last two chapters do pick up, and I did get invested into Layton and somebody else's temporary truce, but it was a bit short-lived. The fact that now Layton's group is made up of about five characters at the same time, instead of just Luke, Emmy and Layton, means that not everyone gets as much screentime as you'd like. Speaking of the plot, at the tail end the game just throws plot twists that feel completely out of the blue, one of them which makes you put everything that happened in the previous game under a different frame... and considering this wasn't foreshadowed in the least, it's not a good thing. Oh, and the way a certain 'deathly' issue resolves itself at the end was bollocks.

  Well, despite trying something a bit different, Azran Legacy is still pretty much like every other game in the series, so it IS a decent game. It's just that there better entries, and that as a finale to the prequel trilogy it falls short of its mark. It doesn't help that for such a disappointing entry it's also the most expensive one!

 6.0

Game #1158: Metroid Dread

 I dread just to think about it. 

 As much as I love Metroidvanias, I'm not the biggest Metroid fan, which is something I said before when I wrote about Metroid on the 3DS. Regardless, I can count on one hand the amount of Metroid games I ever finished. Needless fluff aside, I finally got around to playing Metroid Dread, and it's a good one.

 For the first time in what seems like forever, the story is moving forward, so this game takes place AFTER Fusion, so Samus is sporting a shiny new post-fusion Power Suit. But, sadly for Samus, she meets an evil Chozo, Razor Beak, who slaps her so bad the trauma makes her lose all of her abilities, like usual, so now's she gotta defeat this dude and restore her abilities. And thus begins another traditional, 2.5D Metroidvania adventure in which Samus gets to earn her classic abilities, like the Screwattack, the Wave Beam, the Power Bomb.... as well as a few new abilities, like turning invisible.

 I'd actually like to praise the level design. The game never sets any markers on your map, and yet, it always feels very easy to figure out where to go next. I don't know just how many objectives can be completed in different order, but I can tell you that the game feels fairly open, there's always somewhere you can go. The game's world is divided into about 7 areas, which are fairly large, but they are fairly dense with pick ups. Whenever you are not backtracking you won't go too long without a new power up. I was a bit worried at first when I saw how much God of War 1's director was whining about the bad level design, but he was either very unlucky and didn't realize something could be broken or isn't good at exploring a Metroid game, as you'll intuitively gain an instinct to realize where destructible blocks lie.

 The new invisibility ability gains its meaning, besides going through a few doors, due to the new EMMI stalked zones. Every area in the game has a few zones in which an indestructible robot, the EMMI, lurks. You'll have to traverse these zones avoiding them.... at least until you find the OMEGA CANNON of the are and are finally able to face it and rendering out of service for good. I wasn't a big fan of these segments, as the EMMI can kill you in one hit, unless you time the counter, but bosses and EMMIs come with a compromise: These are the only checkpoints in the game. If you die to a boss or an EMMI, you'll restart close by so you can quickly try again. Dying to a normal enemy or to the environment, however, will send you back to your last save. On that note, the game offers a TON of savespots, unlike Samus Returns, so dying doesn't feel too unmoralizing. 

 Samus plays like she always had. She can shoot beams or missiles, turn into a morph ball, perform the screwattack, etc. The counter from Samus Returns, well, returns as well. Using the counter is specially encouraged as enemies will drop overly generous amounts of health and ammo pick ups when defeated with a counter. There's a golden glint whenever a counterable melee attack is incoming, so it's easy to perform too. Performing a counter on a boss will reward you with a badass cinematic scene in which you can mash the shoot button to deal a ton of damage.

 The map.. I didn't like it too much. Something about it is a bit hard to read, maybe the colors? It has some neat advantages, like being able to place a marker, and the game remembers what type of barrier you found, so you easily can tell what ability you were missing. That said, placing a marker won't show it on the mini map, so you must still pause to remember where you were going. I would have liked the ability to hide icons on the map too, as discerning which pick ups I got and which ones I didn't isn't easy at a first glance. Sure, you can press Y over one and the game will highlight every icon of the same type, greyed out if you picked it up or gold if you didn't. But I'd like to be able to skip that step. Just toggle whichever icons I want ON or OFF so that I can more easily tell what I want. So yeah, the map has its neat things, but I think it could've been easier to read.

 At first I was gonna complain about how the game is rather large, and I would've liked some sort of HUB, as it was a pain in the butt to have to go through multiple zones if I wanted to backtrack to a certain area. Well... as I scourged the 'net for the game's cover I discovered... that after you find the final area in the game, if you decided to go back... you'd have discovered that every teleporter is now linked together. An in-game pop-up or alert would've been nice, as I definitely would've backtracked to complete the 20% I was missing in pick ups. Still, backtracking before finishing the game could've been made more convenient. By the time I got the power bomb I had already backtracked a few times before through every area, but I didn't feel like going through the entire map again, but since I had pretty much maxed health tanks and about 200 missiles I didn't feel like I need to.

 The difficulty curve has many ups and downs, but I feel like it works well. For starters, I had to fight every boss pretty much twice. On my first attempt I'd get murdered while I learned the pattern, and then my second attempt would be successful as I'd know what to do. The only exception to the rule was the three-phase final boss, that one required about six attempts. As for the game itself, at first the game gets easier as you start getting more health and upgrades.... and then the X Parasite makes its grand return, and so the game gets harder, enemies are much tougher and if you don't absorb the parasite they'll regenerate. So then starts another rise to power, and by the time you get the Screw attack the game gets super easy as you can pretty much cream anything by screwattacking them. It also makes exploration faster.

 Metroid Samus Return wasn't just a great Metroid game, I also felt like it was one of the best I played. Well, Metroid Dread is just as good. It plays just as well, taking the elements that worked well there, but with a few tweaks here and there that makes it slightly better. The fantastic map design makes it easy to explore without markers, and I really liked having the midpoint of the game making me feel weak again, as it made getting stronger to face the new threat much more satisfying. 

 9.0

Game #1157: Samurai Jack - Battle through Time

 Back to the past, Samurai Jack....

 When I was younger, I hated Samurai Jack, however, somehow I got hyped about the final season. So I decided to give it another whirl, I'm older, the series received a lot of praise, and I loved Genndy Tartakovsky's work back in the day, so surely I'd enjoy it. I didn't. I still hated the series, even though, for all intents and purposes, it was something I should've liked since it used a ton of different ideas. Eventually I made my way to the final season and... it was beautiful, to the point that enduring the original series was almost worth it. Now then, as divisive as the series ending was, I felt it was appropriate. It wasn't what Jack deserved, but it was an ending that fit the overall themes of the series.... and then I heard that this game, Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time contains a hidden alternate ending, the ending Jack actually deserved. Thus, I set out to go back to the past and destroy the Evil that is Aku.

 Battle Through Time takes the form of an action adventure game, taking place in the last third of the final episode of the new season. You even get to see some footage from the show, right up to the moment where Aku sends Jack and Ashi into a portal. Instead of arriving back to the past, Jack will have to go through 9 levels that are a sort of popurri/greatest hits of some of Jack's adventures. You'll recognize classic enemies and areas throughout the first 6 levels, then the next two borrow elements from the new season and the final stage is the showdown against Aku. The game is fairly linear, although you can replay any stage by returning to the main menu. Beating the game also unlocks some challenge arenas. Regardless, I advice you to get a Medallion guide, as the only way to get the new ending is by finding all 50 medallions, and they are incredibly hard to find. Regardless, the game as a whole feels like a love letter to the series, the more you know or remember about Samurai Jack, the more value you'll get out of this game.

 Combat is simple but quite serviceable. You have a weak and strong attack that can be comboed together, a dodge, a block, a jump and a super attack that consumes Kiai stocks, which refill as you pick up Kiai energy. Combat can be quite satisfying, as the metallic shwing sound and the fact that you can cut enemies apart feels really nice. On the other hand, there's a certain floatiness and overall feeling of cheapness to it that detracts a bit from it. By cheapness I mean that sometimes it feels as if enemies don't take damage from your attacks, even though they glow red, or go through your attacks just because. It's not half bad, but it could've been better. Oh, and your Kimono gets torn as you take damage, just like in the show... although health pick ups will magically restore it!

 Your Katana and your fists are the only weapons you can trust, as every other weapon type: Hammers, Spears, Guns and Bows will eventually break. I'm not a fan of weapon durability, but they will start glowing red when they are about to break, so you can just equip something else and repair them at the shop. You can carry many different weapons, but you can have only up to four on the quick select panel. Every weapon type has different combos, which was pretty neat, although I did just fine just using my Katana, occasionally switching for a hammer, throughout the entire game.

 The game has a pretty comprehensive upgrade system, as you get three different trees and various currencies. Sadly, I felt like the game was a bit too stingy with the Bushido energy, which made getting upgrades slower than it could've been. Still, upgrades are important since you can increase your health, your strength and your combos like this, as well as get some useful abilities like a dashing block.

 There are a ton of challenges that will reward you with the basic upgrade points, such as using X attack a Y number of times, defeating X amount of a certain enemy, opening X amount of chests, etc. It was a smart way to keep the player invested in some menial tasks, as well as getting you to try different techniques.

 Considering it's a licensed game, Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time turned out really well. Everything works well enough as to be a decent time for somebody that knows nothing about the show, but if you happen to know about the series you also get this added layer of attention to detail and faithfulness to the source material that makes it stand out from other licensed games. The fact that it has a new, happier ending also helps a lot. 

7.5

Game #1156: The King of Fighters XV

  Now with even MORE floating hands.

 It's been a while, but The King of Fighters XV is finally out there and... well, I guess it's pretty good all things considered. A remixed character roster, a new graphics engine, a new rival with floating arms to battle our Jojo-esque new hero and nasty DLC practices all-in-one.

 Well, as far as modes go, it's about what you'd expect: Story Mode, Team and Single VS, both CPU and Player, Mission Mode(combo trials), an admittedly decent tutorial and a training mode. The 'story' mode is as lackluster as it was in the previous game, every Team gets the same mid-tournament cutscene, and every team sans the Hero team and the Rival team get the exact same ending cutscenes. At least every team gets their own boring endings made up of voiceless dialogue and some artwork. Honestly, if they didn't play so slowly I might've been interested in them, but they are boring and, honestly, lazy.

 The character roster is where things get interesting. Y'see... the previous game had over 50 characters, even at launch. This one has a paltry, in comparison, 39. Y'know, I could've been fine with that... but two full teams were announced before the game even released, including my favorite fighting game character of all time, Rock Howard, who WAS DLC in the previous game too, and another team made up of Geese, Billy Cane and Yamazaki.... y'know, characters that were in the previous game too. This is beyond egregious. These characters were in the previous game, they look pretty much identical and they were shown in full before the game released. No, I'm sorry, but I'll never be OK with these crappy DLC practices. On the other hand, since at the end of XIV a lot of dead people came back to life... some characters are back into the game, like the Orochi Trio, and one of my favorites: Ash Crimson.

 That said, while I'm pretty sure the character models weren't made from scratch, which is why the DLC is so ridiculous, they took the graphics criticisms to heart, and this game is quite a looker. Character models are still rather simple, but some character models have been changed more than others. Terry looks almost completely different since they beefed up his arms to a hilarious degree, Ryo has lost his neck amidst all his new muscles. Yeah, some character models look.... weird. Most characters look as if their arms are a bit too long. That said, on the flipside, the game uses a new shading that makes every character look as if it was painted with water colors, it's quite colorful, and it has some of the best special effects I've yet seen on a fighter. The game is a spectacle of vibrant colors and shiny explosions.

 On the technical side of things, hops and evasive rolls are back. There's a new ShatterStrike, which behaves similarly to SF IV's focus attack, albeit it costs meter. You get the MAX mode that gives you free reign on super, MAX supers are back as well as CLIMAX supers. It's fun. All the new added special effects ads extra crunch to 2-bar specials, ending a round with one of them feels SO GOOD. On the other hand, the camera work during CLIMAX supers makes them extra exciting. Basically, the game is as fun to play as it looks. Oh, I don't quite remember if they were in XIV, but EX versions of special moves are in! There are a lot of tools to get creative with. CLIMAX moves are universal between the entire cast, and you can tell that some of the tougher motions were simplified, making it more approachable.

 Speaking of approachable... I've been a staunch detractor of this new obsession with Autocombos. I hate them as I can't play fighting games the way that I used to, and want to, since I can't mash weak standing punches without starting a combo String I don't want to use. That said... I think they did it rather well in this game. Basically, mashing weak punch will net you a 4 hit combo. Depending on your amount of stocked energy bars you'll get increasingly stronger enders: 1-bar means a super, 2 bars means a MAX super and 3 bars translates into a Climax super. But what makes this interesting, is that you can end the fourth hit with a different button to produce different results. Weak punch will always perform the strongest attack you can, Weak Kick will do a simple special move, Strong Kick will be a one-stock super and Strong Punch will be a two-stock super. I felt this was a fairly interesting take on the autocombo, as it adds a dash of strategy into the mindless mashing. I still wish it could be turned off, like you could in classic fighters that offered an easy mode, but this is something more tolerable since it gives you options.

 The last thing worth mentioning is the soundtrack... You can unlock a TON of classic tunes, and you can customize which songs play on every stage.

 I really enjoyed this new iteration of the King of Fighters. The new characters are pretty decent, while Isla is insufferable she looks kinda neat and plays decently, and while I don't like Dolores' fanservicey design she is fun to play, and I loved the returning characters, particularly, having Ash back into the mix. Even though it kinda cheapens his sacrifice. It's probably one of the easiest KoF entries to pick up, and it's quite pretty to boot. If anything, as great as the game is, the game still needs to do better with the character models, since some of them aren't quite there yet, and the slimey DLC practices is something I just can't condone.

 8.0

Game #1155: Dragon Ball Z - Kakarot(Switch)

 The definitive unpatched version of the game.

 Well, another year, another Namco Anime Game Switch Port(TM), in this case, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. And I'll have you know, as far the unpatched, based game... this is probably the best version of the game.

 So, first things first... most of the cutscenes have been turned into pre-rendered videos, so you'll see some pixelation here and there during the really cool moments. It's not too bad, and it's something I can live with. The graphics themselves aren't half as sharp as they are on the PS4 version, but sharpness aside, it looks pretty much like the big boys' version. The framerate is quite acceptable all things considered, for the most part it runs really well, although flying through some areas can tank the framerate a bit. What's most surprising is that I felt the loading times weren't as bad as they were in the original. The frequency was just as high, but the loading felt faster. 

 So far so good, but the best part about it? THE QUESTS AREN'T BUGGED ANY MORE!!! This made the game infinitely more enjoyable for me. What's more, maybe I was doing quests wrong the other time around, because it turns out some quests can only be finished with some characters, which this version of the game points out very clearly.

 As another plus, this game also includes the first two DLCs for free. They are nothing to write home about, featuring very truncated and somewhat lame takes on how Goku and Vegeta got their dull God forms. The first DLC, featuring the cringey 'Super Saiyan Form' god form is a glorified experience farm map with Whis training both Goku and Vegeta. As a consequence, only Vegeta and Goku get more skills, the other characters get benched. Lame. Even worse, both Goku and Vegeta's challenges are separate, so you must repeat every mission with BOTH characters to unlock all the new forms and abilities. Regardless, all you get is to repeat fights against Whis to farm 'Training Water' to then use on Goku and Vegeta until they reach the level cap. That's it.

 DLC 2 has a proper story and a few cutscenes. Gohan and Piccolo get a few playable scenes too, BUT, no new skills for them. There are new Horde battles, which is basically you VS 100 or so weak enemies. These are awful 'cause you don't get Z orbs and they take a while, and by now Goku and Vegeta's new skills are quite expensive.

 Oh! And now you can play as Gotenks and Vegeto... kinda. They work as skills. Either have Goku and Vegeta, with the Vegeto skill on your team, or Goten and Trunks with the Gotenks skill. Kinda... lame.

 Some things I noticed on this second time around... sometimes the game can be downright boring. For example, when Goku decides to train before facing the androids. First you have to go to Kami's so that he warns you about Shenron. Then you gotta move towards Goku's House, so that you are forced to take the driving mini-game. Then you have to move to Bulma's, so that they explain how to develop cars. THEN you have to visit Roshi's who tells you to find Launch, you find her and she directs you towards Tien, whom you have to fight, then, and only then, you get to return to Roshi and continue with the story. So many parts of the game feels like pointless filler. I just want the story to move forwards sometimes. Oh, and despite wasting so much of your time on this inane world tour, they skip Trunks' ascended Super Saiyan form VS Cell. It happens off-screen. Why? The game is beefy enough, it didn't need so much useless filler. I also noticed just how much needless collecting there is in the game, tracking the Dragon Balls shouldn't be this boring, but with Dragon Balls hiding one per zone you have to sit through about 7 loading screens before you get them all, and sometimes the plot forces you to collect them.

 It's also a bit disappointing how the story-telling gets worse as the game pushes forward. It starts during the Cell-saga that some bits get glossed over through a narration instead of getting properly told. Then the Buu Saga feels as if it could've used more story bits, relying on narrations once again for some scenes. Don't get me wrong, I love having the entirety of Z retold through the game, but it feels a bit uneven when the Saiyan Saga and the Namekian saga, AKA, the first two sagas, get a better treatment than the ones that come afterwards.

 There were a few boring collecting quests and sidequests. The whole hunting giant dragons, while shooting ki in first person felt so out of place. Collecting minerals too, just... why? Because modern open world games need those mechanics? They really don't fit Dragon Ball.

 At the end of the day... I'm quite happy with this Switch port, as it irons out many of the problems the first PS4/XOne releases had. That said, this second run through the game made me realize that the game simply isn't all that special. I appreciate it for covering the entirety of the Z storyline, but sometimes the game feels bloated with unnecessary mechanics, such as driving, hunting and gathering materials instead of making the combat system a bit deeper. What they added in filler they could've spent making more epic cutscenes, the ones we expect out of CC2. For fans of Dragon Ball, it's a really good game, it is, but I feel like it could've been something REALLY special if they had focused on the right things.

 8.0