So, ask yourself, why are you buying this game?

Do you want a good Dragon Ball Z action game? There's plenty of fighting games out there using this brand, many even on PC, including the still actively supported Xenoverse 2 and FighterZ, both of which are far better at being action games and offer far more for that type of player.

Do you want a game that retells the story of Dragon Ball Z in a compelling way? That doesn't happen. The game will offer about a minute total per arc to scenes that actually attempt to recreate the visuals and emotions behind similar scenes in the manga or anime. The vast majority of cutscenes in this game though are flat shots where you watch the characters backs because CC2 couldn't be bothered to show their lips even moving (let alone the rest of the model, which are typically stuck with either their hands at their sides or in a default looping animation). The pacing of neither the manga or the anime is recreated, the tone isn't, the visuals fail as mentioned before, there is nothing here for a fan of either version of this stretch of Dragon Ball.

What about if you're a general RPG fan? Well, I hope you enjoy hours of cutscenes that are just what I described followed by the game telling you what to do. You have almost zero control over your party until presumably the endgame, and you will find yourself wasting wishes to Shen Long on resurrecting dead warriors, only to find out most of them want to fight Gohan who you almost never have an opportunity to play as once this becomes relevant (and when you do, the game goes "Actually, you can't go to the world map now!").

The fact that so many people herald this game as something good, like it's some great retelling of Dragon Ball Z is baffling. It fails in every regard to do that, ultimately being a cliffnotes version made by people who I honestly think don't like or outright detest Dragon Ball. No moment is given its appreciation, background characters completely change for no real reason other than, presumably, it was easier to work with a stock model (likely taken from another Dragon Ball game), and the part that made me stop and write this review was when the game had Trunks fight Perfect Cell, and it doesn't let you fight. Despite inserting meaningless fights before, fights that don't exist in any version of Dragon Ball (Goku vs Semi Perfect Cell, really?), they cut that one. And it's probably because they couldn't be bothered to do a Super Saiyajin Grade 3 Trunks.

Do you want a Dragon Ball game that loving recreates moments from the anime? Budokai on the GCN and PS2. It even has the original American opening music for English dub fans. Less lovingly is Ultimate Tenkaichi for seventh gen consoles, which redraws various anime scenes, but the game sucks.
Do you want a Dragon Ball Z RPG? Aside from the countless card battlers exclusive to Japan (many of which now have translations), there is also the Legacy of Goku trilogy for the GameBoy Advance, or Attack of the Saiyans for the Nintendo DS.
Do you just want Dragon Ball fanservice? Super Dragon Ball Z, Super Butoden, Hyper DBZ, FighterZ, Xenoverse, Dragon Ball Online, Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and 3, the list goes on.

Kakarot ultimately offers nothing. It does nothing well. Its presentation is bare, it cares little for Dragon Ball, its legacy, or how it existed (both on the screen and on the page). There is a notable Japanese commercial, showing generations of Dragon Ball fans, and how this game is comparable to the days of watching Dragon Ball Z on your TV. Ignoring everything I have said, I do not know how this game can even be compared to that when they didn't even bother recreating the anime's second opening, one which was around for nearly 100 episodes of the show's run, "We Gotta Power".

Also, they chopped off the actual ending and sold it as DLC.
Buy Xenoverse 2 instead.

I wonder how the staff pitched the rewrites, must've been a pretty great meeting.
Why don't we take Leon from a genuinely nice guy that became a cop out of the mistaken belief that cops are, you know, nice guys, and just make him like an asshole beat cop. Points his gun at everyone, obediently wags his tail when someone just goes "yeah I'm FBI", sees a guy screaming and panicking in a jail cell and goes "I have to talk to the chief" despite, you know, not even knowing if there's even any other cops alive. He's such a massive asshole in this game, they just saw "cop" and made that his whole character, like he's too deep into a LARP.

Also, you can't have both "Leon knows Ada is a spy" and the Ada kiss scene in one scenario. Those were separated in the original for a reason. Ada manipulating Leon is also dumb, even ignoring that her FBI cover seemingly only exists to fool him, a guy who showed up a week after the outbreak started, but Ada is meant to be capable. Pretty sure this game just hates women generally, since Annette went from a caring albeit absent mother to a Rick and Morty type scientist caricature, and we get new scenes of Claire getting tied up by a rapist and needed to be saved by giant monsters, when in the original she was the more capable of the two protagonists. Leon's story is supposed to be coloured by failure and growth, while Claire's is supposed to be coloured by determination and familial love. It's shocking, honestly, how they managed to take a game entirely about love, belief in humanity, so embroiled in standard mecha and toku themes that the Chinese comic had Leon fight God (and that isn't even much of a stretch when you consider his actions in the abstract, just think about him throwing away the G-Virus for a minute), and then the remake has none of that. It's a complete and abject failure in recapturing those ideas.

Maybe it's good at some new ideas, but it doesn't really have any. Well, aside from the rapist I guess, you know Irons was just a regular psychopath before that proposed interesting ideas for the player to chew on. His death in the original contains a lengthy speech about entitlement and has themes relating to desires resulting in inevitable self-destruction, which the player is then allowed to chew on as the next brief section is a jaunt through a few linear, visually interesting areas. But nah, just have him explode in your face after man handling the child, force this weird antagonistic relationship between him and Claire that goes nowhere expressly because he just explodes, and then transform the sewers into RPD2: We Ran Out of Good Ideas So Here's Brown, Green, And Grey! Why does he even want Sherry's pendant?

No, seriously, why? Does he want the G-Virus vaccine? Is Irons, notoriously spiritually weak and selfish man, going to make the long jaunt through the sewers and literal ground zero for the outbreak just to get the G-Virus for uh... uhh.... reasons? What, to sell it? To who? His benefactor just destroyed his town, who is he gonna go to?

It's a long list of unanswered questions in the remake, not even really alluding to answers. Pretty much the ethos of the whole thing, don't question all this stuff, don't think about the characters and motivations, just look at uh... this hamburger! The big one is why is Mr. X even here, where did he come from? You'll never know! Don't even mention that throwaway file Ben has, it's literally nonsense, how the hell would he know? Who told him and why? All he knows is basic conspiracy shit, "You guys have an underground lab!", how'd he find out about the seven foot tall supermodel in a trench coat and its motivations?

If Mr. X's motivations are truly to kill all survivors, why? Why be in the RPD? The RPD isn't connected to the lab entrance anymore, and almost everyone is dead. Before Claire and Leon show up, there is a grand total of 5 people there, with 3 dying for reasons completely unrelated to Mr. X! Its even worse since RE:3, which was written at the same time as this game so there is no excuse, changes the UBCS to actually be there to help, in addition to Umbrella being one of the last votes to nuke Raccoon City. If they wanted all evidence destroyed, they could've done it. Mr. X originally wanted the G-Virus which actually makes sense. Umbrella wanting it is what changed the many micro outbreaks to one big macro outbreak in Raccoon City, so of course they'd send a bunch of shit at the city to get it, especially when there are several competing forces like the Rival Company and the USA government trying to get it as well. Fucking dumb.

I could go on forever- so I will. One day I will update this review to call the game shit again. Because it is. I hate it.

The worst mainline game.