"Has the potential for greatness, but falls a bit short"

Note: Dragonball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi was made by a different company than Dimps and is not even considered part of the same fighting series as the Dimps games in Japan. Atari only tagged on the Budokai title in the US for familiarity. As such, there is no reference to the Tenkaichi game.

For the past several years, Dimps has been releasing a series of Dragonball fighting games (under the tag "Dragonball Z: Budokai" in North America) on the Playstation 2. Each version tried to emulate the Dragonball Z anime as closely as possible. Parts One and Two received heavy criticism for various problems, including repeptive movesets, a basic, dial-a-combo battle system, and more. Budokai 3 on the other hand got a large amount of praise from both professional and gamer critics, getting even into the high 8s for its accomplishments. It drastically altered the battle system by changing the way ki (the energy used for special attacks and transformations) work, as well as allowing people to counter attack using teleportation and cancelling combos into one another to create new unique combinations. While there were still a few kinks existing (many people did not like the dragon rush attack, where you and your opponent played a guessing game with the ps2 buttons to see how much damage is dealt, and how ultimates were now activated), Budokai 3 was seen as the pinnacle of the Budokai series.

When news of the PSP Budokai game was announced, people were understandably worried. The PSP suffers from technology that is slightly weaker than the PSP, and the cinematics for the ultimate attacks in the PS2 version would need constant streaming to keep fluid, something that the PSP could not do without sacrificing battery life.

So how does Dragonball Z: Shin Budokai compare to the PS2 Budokai games? Does it keep the Budokai "feel," or does it fail to capture the atmosphere of the anime?

Graphics
Wow. That was the first word out of my mouth when I actually entered my first battle. I was expecting a sharp decrease in the quality of the fighters and the fighter animations, but I was completely wrong. Dimps managed to keep the high quality of the character models in this game. The cell-shaded style mirrors the Budokai 3 style remarkably, and even includes the battle auras that changed and increased as your fighter became stronger!

Dimps seems to have gone one step further though: the characters of Shin Budokai are faster and more fluid than those of Budokai 3! The combos come off far quicker, and the characters themselves move about at a quicker pace. The programmers even added several animations, including small backward hops when someone makes a recovery from being knocked down on the ground. While these extra animations are minor additions, they still add to the overall Dragoball Z "flavor," and helps the player immerse him- or herself in the game even more.

Unfortunately, because of the PSP's hardware limitations, some of the graphic quality was still sacrificed. The ultimate move cinematics are all but gone and - outside of the first 1 or 2 seconds of ultimate move activation - the ultimates are done realtime. Furthermore, the characters do not have any mouth movements, nor do they have any expression other than the one they begin the fight with (so Broly will still have his maniacal smile even when being pummelled with an ultimate move). These are rather minor things to me, but may irk a few fans who really enjoyed Budokai 3's graphics.

Sound/Music
The sound and music in Shin Budokai is a rather mixed bag. On one side, the voices for every character has been entirely re-recorded, so a player will not hear the same voice he or she heard in the PS2 Budokais. Furthermore, all of the anime sounds have made it into the game, so the special moves are bound to bring nostalgia to Dragonball Z fans. However, the number of voices per action has been cut down, so expect to hear the same exact voice clip if you do the same combo (in Budokai 3, the voice clips were slightly more randomized). This is a rather minor problem, but as this is a review, I thought I should bring it up.

The music on the other hand is COMPLETELY recycled from Budokai 3. This is not a "horrible" thing, as many of the Budokai 3 themes were catchy and fit the fighting mood. It is disappointing though to see that there was no effort in making new background music (aside from the opening) especially after seeing the amount of effort the programmers put into the graphics and the effort in re-recording the voices.

Gameplay
How does the gameplay of Shin Budokai compare to Budokai 3? Well... while the basic premise of the Budokai games still exist in the PSP game (the control scheme is almost the exact same scheme as that of the PS2 games), the entire battle system is significantly different.

Let me get the most significant change out of the way: Dimps removed the capsule system from Shin Budokai. Yes, the same capsule system that encouraged people to replay the game to buy better, stronger moves, transformations and skills for their characters. However, this removal isn't entirely a bad thing.

Instead of relying on capsules, the characters in Dragonball Z now have their own set of moves: two special moves, an ultimate move, and then about 30 or more dial-a-combo attacks. Dimps increased the fluidity of the fighters in SHin Budokai over the fighters in Budokai 3 by allowing almost anything to be cancellable. A player can even cancel out of regular attack into specials! I always get a feeling of satisfaction after doing an 8 hit combo and ending with a Finish Buster with Future Trunks! Furthermore, the special and ultimate moves may change depending on what form your character is in. A regular teen Gohan, for example, has a masenko attack that is replaced by Soaring Dragon Strike when he turns Super Saiyan One or Two. This allows for further strategy, as some of these changes also turn the move from long/medium range (masenko) to short range (S. Dragon Strike), forcing the player to fight at closer range if he or she wants to be effective with the character. Another significant alteration was to the blocking system. Instead of losing a tiny chunk of health when blocking, a character now loses the normal amount of health. However the health that is lost while blocking this way is indicated in red, and if the character can avoid damage for a few second, the damage dealt while blocking will heal itself back up. This is incredibly useful for the realtime ultimate attacks, as now you can actually survive such attacks when low on health by simply blocking (although one unblocked hit afterwards will knock you out).

A new addition to Shin Budokai is the "Aura Burst" system. When a player pushes the R button in default configuration, the character - as the name suggests - creates a burst of energy. During this burst, the character can do one of several things, including dashing around the arena at incredible speed, dash-punching the opponent, or hitting the opponent with an attack that leaves them stunned for several seconds. However, this is not a system that can be abused; not only is the character vulnerable to attack while in aura burst mode, but the burst decreases the ki gauge, and if the ki gauge hits zero, the character loses his transformation and is stunned for several seconds.

As said before, the ultimates are in mostly realtime now, with a few exceptions. While almost all of of them begin with a charge sequence that freezes time for a second, the actual attack occurs in realtime. In my personal opinion, this is a far better alternative to the cinematic ultimates. Now people who have enough skill and timing can actually AVOID ultimate attacks completely instead being forced to see their character get pummelled by a heavily damaging skill. It feels to me that they sacrificed the re-enacting portion of the Budokai games in order to get a better Dragonball "feel" in battle; by being able to actively block or avoid ultimates, as well as manipulate the other changes to the combat system in Shin Budokai, I feel like I can immerse myself in the Dragonball world far more than I could in Budokai 3.

Unfortunately, it is the game outside of battle that holds back Shin Budokai from being the truly great game it has the potential to be. First off, 14 of the 18 characters in the game are unlocked off-the-bat. This makes finishing the character roster a far faster process in Shin Budokai than it was in the other Budokais, which reduces replay value in that respect.

Another problem is the lack of special skills of any kind. The capsule system in the PS2 Budokais allowed for people to upgrade their characters without actually transforming (i.e. use a capsule that allowed the player to gain attack power at regular intervals, or use a senzu bean to recover lost health). As the capsule system is now gone, the entire skill selection is missing as well. This is very disappointing, as the skills allowed for people to create very tactical, unique fighters (such as a Goku who can't go Super Saiyan, but has high defense and recovering capabilities).

Furthermore, any character with multiple transformations can only select one to become while in a fight. While this may not be a bad idea by itself, the in-game transformations were badly implemented. ALL transformations, whether they are Super Saiyan or Super Saiyan 3, can be activated at 4 bars of ki, which is a mere one bar higher than the starting level. This allows fighters to reach their strongest transformations too easily, and gives the people with weaker transformations (such as Krillin) a slight disadvantage. Also, since the stronger transformations cost the same as the weaker ones, there is no incentive for player to ever choose weaker transformations ever again (why would a player want to play as a Super Saiyan 1 or 2 if they could go to Super Saiyan 3, outside of nostalgia/reenactment?). If Dimps had implemented the transformation system so that stronger transformations require more ki that weaker, I believe it would be more fun (you could choose a weak transformation that you could quickly go into, or choose a strong one that is harder to access in battle).

The most damaging things to Shin Budokai are the multiplayer and the profile options. Multiplayer is ad-hoc only; you would have to find someone else with a PSP AND another copy of the game in order to play versus, This is especially hard for players who are surrounded by people who either do not own a PSP at all or do not have the game. An addition of an internet multiplayer would go a long way in increasing Shin Budokai's replayability.

The profile option is even worse. It actually replaces the "shop" option in the other Budokai games; the ONLY things you can buy with your zenni now are items to use in profile mode. As for the mode itself: All you do is create your own electronic "trading card," with the front picture using people, items, and backgrounds that you purchase from the shop. While this option may sound interesting, it is utterly useless because the card does not affect anything in your actual game, and because the only use for it is for trading with other players (who, as I said in the previous paragraph, can be very difficult to find).

Conclusion
Dragonball Z: Shin Budokai is a game with amazing potential, but is held back by a few significant problems. The battle system, graphics, and voices are beautifully done, but the game lacks in replayability thanks to an ad-hoc-only multiplayer option and the nigh-useless, multiplayer-reliant profile option. The game also suffers from a few in-battle problems, such as an unbalanced transformation system. Shin Budokai is still a great game to play and, if Dimps works on ironing out the kinks if they do another PSP game, it's sequel could become a phenomenal fighting game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/10/06