Dragon Ball Z: Battle Of Z is another game in the long franchise by Namco Bandai and one of the first to be developed by Artdink. Moving away from the simple boxed in environment, BOZ brings in a bigger sandbox battlefield for the players to roam around in and expanding on the battle systems found within the newer releases. Let see if this games rating is over 9000!
Story
The story, like almost all the other games in the franchise, follows the anime and manga very closely, with direct lines from the anime and scenes that look almost identical. The voice cast seems unchanged, and if it has been it isn’t too noticeable, besides those who have more alien sounding voices like Frieza.
You follow the adventures of Son Goku, sometimes Gohan, as he defeats the evil in the universe and to save his friends, or failing that find the Dragon Balls and revive them. Instead of the beautiful cut scenes found within some of the earlier releases this game follows a more in-game cut scene and dialogue to tell the story, making the game more action orientated and fast paced.
Changing the story slightly, to encompass the team battle system, the game allows for a team of up to 4 characters, which means characters like Krillin and Piccolo will help you in the last fight with Frieza, which is not Canon. This feature does add something new to the series of games that is welcome in my opinion. You can also have 4 Krillins, so for the fans it is a spectacle to behold.
There isn’t much to say about the story if you’ve seen the anime or played the previous games as it doesn’t change too much between releases. However what this game does do is add missions from another point of view, either playing as the evil Saiyan’s to defeat the Z fighters or adding in survival like side missions to fight wave after wave of foes.
On top of the original story, there is also a new saga added to the game where it follows the new movie where Goku gain his God Form, the first in the series to do so. Along with the original story, Another Age, Extra Age, and Special Age this game really has a lot of to offer in the terms of gameplay and story.
Gameplay
In terms of improvement in the battle system, there isn’t much, rather changes and new battle system. To do mêlée attacks you rapidly press the Triangle button and for Ki attacks it is the Circle button, these attacks are extending whilst holding the first left trigger, with the triangle button it does a rush attack that pushes back your foe to allow for chain attacks from your teammates, with the circle it changes the Ki attack to a barrage, a single beam or a blast. Depending on your character your attacks will be different, this is shown even more with the second left and right triggers, which allow you to chase your enemy down with a Kaioken or charged up from with the left trigger, or do a separate attack like a barrier or chained mêlée attack. This is also one of the few games that don’t allow blocking or dodging during a combo, so if you get hit, god (Goku) help you.
Battle Of Z is more team orientated, and so it brings new mechanics into the formula of punch and kick gameplay. You can now share you Ki with allies and revive them with a good kick to the face by pressing the circle and triangle buttons respectively, adding a feeling of fellowship both in offline and online play. You can also chain attacks and synchronise to beat up foes together for increased damage and to increase your Ki meter.
The game hasn’t changed much in its story mode, as you can select any mission from the match screen as well as select what character you wish to play as from the roster, this is also where you choose what saga and age you wish to play in. The roster itself is clearly set out, with characters in chronological order or an order of your choice. Whilst the game is advertised with an increased size in roster with more than 70 playable characters it actually only has 3 additional characters to my eye, whilst splitting up the different forms of characters into slots instead of in-game transformations.
Battle Of Z brings levelling back into the series, only seen in 2 of the previous games to my knowledge, and adds in a slight RPG aspect to this Versus genre of game. Every time you complete a mission you gain experiance toward your player rank and co-op rank with the AI characters you have playing by your side. On top of the experiance you also gain points to spend on items which can be equipped or used in later mission, though some need a higher player rank to use.
Besides the fighting and missions there is also a bit of customisation to be found with Battle Of Z, where you can equip cards to increase your stats like Melee or Ki damage or even increase the amount of XP you gain per mission. On top of the customisation of skills you can also change the colour coding of your character, changing the iconic orange martial arts uniform worn by Goku to a black and white garb.
Co-Op
One of the new features in Battle Of Z is the 2-4 Co-op mode, which allows players to team up online to take on the story missions together. Bringing in the characters they have unlocked and customised you can select any mission you have unlocked or join your friends in their own stories. Currently, the connections are pretty unstable, with half of my lobby’s not surviving more than 4 missions before disconnecting or disbanding.
Co-op, which would seem to be easier due to the players having their own levels and stat cards, feels harder than single player. Though the difficulty could be artificial, as many of the players don’t work together and rather go all out on the enemies, this isn’t as much a problem of the game and rather more on the community.
Battle
There are 4 modes within battle, the straight up normal match where you fight until the opposite team runs out of retires, Score mode where you must get as many kills to increase your score by the timer, Dragon ball where you must hunt the map for the Dragon Balls or hit them off opponents or battle royal where 8 players duke it out to be number 1. There is also a tournament mode where you go toe to toe with players until someone comes out on top.
Within these modes you don’t get much of a sense of achievement as you don’t win anything. The modes themselves are pretty regular to find within games, the Dragon Ball mode being similar to package retrieval and the others being more like death matches. They add to the game but could benefit from some tweaking as most characters are allowed in these modes and people early in the story are at a disadvantage.
Overall Thoughts and Feelings
The music seems very similar to the old soundtracks and feels more like an updated version rather than an entirely new OST. The main song, the remade version of Head Cha-La is a lot better than the last one and brings about a lot of nostalgia for fans of the series. Whilst the songs do feel as if they are of better quality and match the game very well, they seem underpowered at times and too samey against the other games in the franchise.
In my opinion, the battle system has taken a few steps back and detaches from the genre by taking out the combo systems and replacing them with single buttons, making this game more of a button masher than strategy when it comes to battle. The movement also seems a lot more clunky then previous installments as I found myself dodging to the wrong direction or moving away when I tried to attack my foe.
At this time there are a lot of problems to be had within the multiplayer aspects, as disconnecting, lag and an overall long time to set up a game and start detach you from the experience. I found myself stopping and starting within several different lobbies which stopped the fast paced battles I was in.
All in all, in the series I feel this game has taken a lot out of the franchise which I loved about it, the battle system, although new, feels and plays much worse than the previous instalments. The nostalgia and feelings you get are the same as with the other games in the series, but the poor lip syncing and some of the new redone voices pull away from the better games.
I would give Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z a 3/5, whilst still fun and innovative in the franchise it just tries too hard to be different and new it fails at bringing enhancements to the genre. The additional content is welcome and helps to set this game apart from his brothers and sisters, but the lack of storytelling and quality of the voice sync really put this down. In my opinion, there are much better Dragon Ball Z games out there.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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