Reviews from

in the past


Pretty much the ultimate love letter to any Dragon Ball fan. Featuring a massive cast of characters - even more than any game in the franchise up to this day (except maybe Xenoverse 2 with all its DLC), equally impressive amount of stages and more fanservice than you can shake a stick at.

Unlike a lot of Dragon Ball games this one doesn't just focus on Z and some movies. EVERYTHING from the series at the time is here. Even the original Dragon Ball gets a hefty amount of characters and stages. Even Arale is in this game.

It's not all balanced equally. If you wanted a competitive fighting game, this isn't that. This is a game where characters on the weaker end in the series are equally as weak here. Of course it's set up so you can technically win with anyone (except maybe Mr Satan...) but you'll be doing less damage and taking more playing as Chaozu, or making much slower and easier to counter moves as a giant character.

The lack of focus on any one series does show up in the story mode. In order to fit DB, Z, GT, Movies and even what if battles, stories jump around rapidly. For example we go from Majin Vegeta vs Fat Boo straight to Vegetto vs Boohan. It's a bit weird, and doesn't always make sense with the fights they chose, but the game seemed focused on showing off the sheer amount of scope it has, rather than trying to put the player through the same Raditz-Boo story as most DB games do.

The battles in story mode set themselves apart from regular battles greatly. The team system allows fights like everyone vs Nappa to happen in a single unbroken fight, with characters switching in and out on a button prompt after a certain time has passed, or you've dealt enough damage. Scripted events like beam struggles happen automatically. It's all just great.

Mission 100 provides, as you might expect, 100 event battles, with each enemy team focusing on a theme, like female fighters, Super Saiyans, sword users etc. The last few pages of these are basically boss fights with a single character with buffed up stats. The last of these, SSj4 Gogeta, is the hardest battle in the game and provides a fitting final boss.

Another great example of how much content this game has is the tournaments. The game has 5 different tournament modes, each with its own gimmick based off the series (the regular WT has ring outs, the Cell Games uses a stamina based system, like how Cell intended it to be, and the Yamcha tournament, fitting as it is the most random inclusion due to not being based on a real tournament, makes you use a random character).

My main complaint with the game would probably be the DB collecting. There's only two ways to get dragon balls - either luck out and get one as a prize for winning the tournament via RNG, or play a story mission and break buildings and hope to get one through RNG. So you won't be able to find them during the huge grind through mission 100, and considering you need to summon the dragon many times to get everything in the game, having to grind out getting them through the same story mission over and over is a chore.

Mostly though this game is just an amazing toy for DB fans. It's not balanced, but it has so much content and so many details for DB fans (Saiyan characters that can turn great ape cannot do so unless they are on a night stage, except those that can create an artificial moon like Vegeta), that it remains one of, if not my favourite DB game.

Broken mechanics but a great story mode.

same as budokai 3, but i prefer how budokai 3 plays to this despite the higher (albeit with arguably less substance to it) fanservice


Goku does the punch and it makes me go :)

This game is loaded with DragonBall fan service. If you're not a DBZ fan, I wouldn't recommend it, but if you are and you have a buddy whose butt you want to kick as Guldo, look no further.

Best fighting game ever, best DBZ game ever.

Dragon Ball games are usually comfort food for me. They’re not always the most well put together or polished experiences, they’re not very deep in terms of gameplay, and playing through the exact same storyline we all know can get very repetitive.

All of those issues are present in this game and yet I couldn’t care less. Over 49 billion different characters (who all play... marginally differently from each other) from one of the most important series ever to me? It was practically guaranteed to be my shit in middle school.

Here’s to kicking my cousin’s ass as Chaotzu.

My arms hurt after i played this for the first time. Gamecube controllers make this game playable lol

The grain and rough edges of the graphics fit Toriyama's style better than anything else produced since, and so does the exhaustive roster - a childhood joy.

In terms of sheer fanservice, this game is unmatched. It's pretty much just a sandbox/toybox to fuck around with your friends in multiplayer, and it's damn good for that. The skill ceiling is really low for the most part, meaning any casual DB-fan friends of yours can fight with you pretty well even if you're experienced. It's a great casual experience but generally lacks depth as a result of leaning too far into that. Easily the best BT game, of course, because of its content being pretty damn refined (not to mention its modding community still existing to this day!).

Nobody is seeing me with teen gohan SS2

Many a childhood hour whiled away on this one

me habian pasado una memory card con el save de 100%

blew my mind when i played it but given i was about 12 at the time you might think differently

Awful. Every arena fighter is but this one is just 160ish characters that share the same pool of about 30 movesets.

Good memories playing this with friends!

literalmente o primeiro jogo de luta que eu joguei e bixo eu tenho umas memorias muito boas de quando eu jogava esse jogo

I give it a ten out of ten because it has made a lot of great experiences with my friends!

Aunque tenga muchos personajes y su mod latino, dejo mucho que desear por lo repetitivo que es como siempre presionar cuadrado

this game is an achievement for anime fanservice games

Its cool, I can go Super Saiyan.


Tão bom quanto o Budokai Tenkaichi 2, este trouxe mais personagens e transformações. Porradaria comia solta com os brothers kkkkkk

This game is the most fan servicey game I've played. By that, I mean you can tell this game was made with Dragon Ball fans in mind. The roster is one of the biggest in any fighting game I've seen (aside from games like MUGEN that have potentially infinite characters since people make the characters) and that's really impressive. It includes characters from every facet of Dragon Ball: Dragon Ball GT, the original Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and even the non-canon movies all get a good amount of characters in this game and its glorious. If you've ever wanted to beat Broly with a Frieza Soldier, well you can do that in this game. Puts a smile on my face.

God, I want this game again so bad. I rented it a bunch as a kid, but then my PS2 died. I miss this game, it's like the parental figure I wish I had. It taught me many things, but mostly that I really love Dragon Ball.

Fiz questão de pular os 2 primeiros jogos pois estava na época saturadíssimo de jogos de DBZ no meu PS2.

DBZ e Naruto. Mas Tenkaichi, diferente da série Budokai, já se aproxima bastante de uma experiência mais próxima do anime, com lutas que simulam a experiência em 3ª pessoa de um combate da série.

Ele oferece mobilidade em ambiente 3D que agrada quem consegue se acostumar com ele. Eu pessoalmente detestei a movimentação e não consegui curtir nenhuma das vezes que tentei jogar.

Mas sem dúvida é um jogo caprichado fruto de tantas tentativas em fazer um bom jogo licenciado da franquia.