After nearly two decades, I picked this one up again. Surprisingly, I was impressed by how competent the story mode is as a recap of the Saiyan-Cell Sagas, with a lot more cutscenes than I remembered. The combat is good but not great, and there's a decent amount to get out of the game through the World Tournament mode and unlocking everything, but I didn't have to motivation to do it all 20 years ago, and I sure don't now!

Either way, it's a completely fine DBZ game, and it's a lot better than most of its predecessors from the previous console generation. It's very simple, but I was having enough fun that I finished the story mode and did a handful of World Tournaments. The weird inconsistencies that really irritated me as a 13-year-old (yellow Spirit Bomb and Kamehameha, Cell's voice doesn't change mid-fight when he changes forms, etc.) felt more charming than annoying now, but that's probably because I've played better DBZ games since, and at the time this was the best we had. I wouldn't recommend anyone go out of their way to play this unless they're trying to go through every Dragonball game. It's fine!

Reviewed on Sep 12, 2023


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