12
Much worse than its predecessor. I don’t understand why the story mode is structured as a board game… I can see a possible version of it that is executed better, but the mechanics and features—as they are here, feel underbaked. You’ll have to fight enemies countless times as they needlessly gain back health through abusing the healing pad mechanic, all while the difficulty—of said fights, are inconsistent. Sometimes they’ll have four-five health bars, other times they’ll only have one or two. Sometimes they’ll be passive, and other times they won’t stop spamming attacks. It’s just weird. I don’t get how this dumb fucking system works. Not to mention how much of a joke the difficulty scaling is. Easy and Very Easy feel the same. Easy is too easy, and normal is too hard. I can’t even imagine how frustrating the fights must feel on Very Hard; The CPU probably predicts every attack that you haven’t even thought of yet.
The story mode is of the same vein as the difficulty: frustrating and inconsistent. It’s barely even a story mode, so I’ll stop calling it that. Dragon World is pure gimmick. No cutscenes. Lots of dialogue boxes, I feel like I’m playing a shitty JRPG side quest disguised as a whole game. If it had a few fights each stage I’d be more on board with it, but you have to battle several opponents multiple times. I thought the first game was repetitive… but this one? Oh man, it’s on a whole different level. Dragon World is made even worse when you consider the fact that it discourages you from playing as anyone other than Goku. You have the option of choosing from several different fighters each stage—Goku being the main, and then one or two allies. So if you decide to battle as anyone other than Goku, you’ll miss out on all the voice lines and story beats. You’ll just be going from fight to fight with nothing in between. But this isn’t even its worst feature, oh no… there’s something much worse. I used Gohan for the majority of the game, including stage three, where Goku is supposed to fight Frieza and become a Super Saiyan; and each time you defeat an opponent, you get skills for the specific character that you used. So when I beat Frieza as Gohan, I didn’t get Goku’s Super Saiyan transformation, only Gohan’s. You see, this is bad because “ally” characters have less health on the board, meaning you can only die twice before the stage resets. Point is, for the entire game… I was maining Gohan, missing out on dialogue, being at a constant disadvantage—both because of Gohan having less health, and because my Goku was severely underpowered; and you need that base transformation! If you didn’t get Super Saiyan 1, then you’re not going to be able to use Super Saiyan 2 or 3! So you see, this is why this fucking game sucks balls. It made every little thing so repetitive, and frustrating, and annoying. No wonder they never remastered it, I’m happy this got left behind because it’s such a fucking travesty in game design and everything else.
So, positives! The art style is much better, sporting that classic cel-shaded look that these games are famous for. The visuals across the board are much better in every single way. There’s more color, more particle effects, more accurate special attacks! Yes, the kamehameha is now blue! That’s right! (No idea why it was yellow to begin with). The combat feels better, although I’m not sure why. And the UI is cleaner with a much nicer visual aesthetic. But that’s about it! Oh, and the opening cinematic is a banger. This isn’t instilling hope in me for the third game though…
Playtime: 4.4 hours
Every Game I've Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
Dragon Ball Z - Ranked
2003 - Ranked
Much worse than its predecessor. I don’t understand why the story mode is structured as a board game… I can see a possible version of it that is executed better, but the mechanics and features—as they are here, feel underbaked. You’ll have to fight enemies countless times as they needlessly gain back health through abusing the healing pad mechanic, all while the difficulty—of said fights, are inconsistent. Sometimes they’ll have four-five health bars, other times they’ll only have one or two. Sometimes they’ll be passive, and other times they won’t stop spamming attacks. It’s just weird. I don’t get how this dumb fucking system works. Not to mention how much of a joke the difficulty scaling is. Easy and Very Easy feel the same. Easy is too easy, and normal is too hard. I can’t even imagine how frustrating the fights must feel on Very Hard; The CPU probably predicts every attack that you haven’t even thought of yet.
The story mode is of the same vein as the difficulty: frustrating and inconsistent. It’s barely even a story mode, so I’ll stop calling it that. Dragon World is pure gimmick. No cutscenes. Lots of dialogue boxes, I feel like I’m playing a shitty JRPG side quest disguised as a whole game. If it had a few fights each stage I’d be more on board with it, but you have to battle several opponents multiple times. I thought the first game was repetitive… but this one? Oh man, it’s on a whole different level. Dragon World is made even worse when you consider the fact that it discourages you from playing as anyone other than Goku. You have the option of choosing from several different fighters each stage—Goku being the main, and then one or two allies. So if you decide to battle as anyone other than Goku, you’ll miss out on all the voice lines and story beats. You’ll just be going from fight to fight with nothing in between. But this isn’t even its worst feature, oh no… there’s something much worse. I used Gohan for the majority of the game, including stage three, where Goku is supposed to fight Frieza and become a Super Saiyan; and each time you defeat an opponent, you get skills for the specific character that you used. So when I beat Frieza as Gohan, I didn’t get Goku’s Super Saiyan transformation, only Gohan’s. You see, this is bad because “ally” characters have less health on the board, meaning you can only die twice before the stage resets. Point is, for the entire game… I was maining Gohan, missing out on dialogue, being at a constant disadvantage—both because of Gohan having less health, and because my Goku was severely underpowered; and you need that base transformation! If you didn’t get Super Saiyan 1, then you’re not going to be able to use Super Saiyan 2 or 3! So you see, this is why this fucking game sucks balls. It made every little thing so repetitive, and frustrating, and annoying. No wonder they never remastered it, I’m happy this got left behind because it’s such a fucking travesty in game design and everything else.
So, positives! The art style is much better, sporting that classic cel-shaded look that these games are famous for. The visuals across the board are much better in every single way. There’s more color, more particle effects, more accurate special attacks! Yes, the kamehameha is now blue! That’s right! (No idea why it was yellow to begin with). The combat feels better, although I’m not sure why. And the UI is cleaner with a much nicer visual aesthetic. But that’s about it! Oh, and the opening cinematic is a banger. This isn’t instilling hope in me for the third game though…
Playtime: 4.4 hours
Every Game I've Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
Dragon Ball Z - Ranked
2003 - Ranked