I'm sure there are at least a few of you out there who know this about me: I am difficult to disappoint with a video game. Up until now, such a thing has never really happened. Lots of hate and criticism were thrown at games like Pokemon (fourth and fifth gens), Fable 2 and 3, and the Dragon Ball: Raging Blast series, but I love all of those games. They are some of my favorites, in fact. But now, finally, there is one game that I found to be a disappointment, and it is one that I always expected to love: Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi.
I guess we could start off with the one thing that I did like about this game though: the character creator. It was a little bit limited, but I never even expected them to put a character creator into a DBZ game, so it's alright. This character creator can be pretty fun to mess around with, especially for someone like me who likes to come up with new super saiyan forms. The character that I ended up with at the end was this super saiyan 4 looking guy with red hair (like Gogeta) and saiyan armor. I didn't actually get to put any fur on him to really make him into a super saiyan 4, but I colored parts of the arms and legs of the saiyan armor dark red to make it look like he had some fur.
Now, onto the two main disappointments of this game. The combat is completely dumbed down, and it has the stupidest character roster I have ever seen. Let's start with the combat.
When pulling off a combo, there are really only six different things you can do. One of them is to simply mash the X button. That's it. The others are simply mashing the Y button, but you can point the left analog stick in a certain direction at the end of your Y mashing to get a different finish to the combo. Besides these combos, the only things that you can use to cause damage are punches and blasts that precede these combos, a move that lets you switch between melee range and blast range, and supers/ultimates. The move that lets you switch between the different ranges is actually pretty useless. Both ranges allow you to pull off the exact same combos, and this move causes very little damage. Now, when it comes to supers and ultimates, they are all exactly the same with the exception of ultimates causing more damage. They took out all the different kinds of supers from the Raging Blast series and just left blast supers and rush supers, which they tweaked to be practically identical to each other. You'll also notice that in my list of attacks that cause damage, I did not include signature skills. Yes, you guessed it. They removed signature skills! These skills were unique to each and every character, and they were what made it possible to string together combos in ways that no other character could, and now they're gone. Not only do all these points about the game's combat suck, but they also ensure that each and every character is exactly the same. It used to be that players had certain characters they were best with, and everybody had their own fighting styles. Well, that is now completely gone.
Now, onto the character roster. Man, they really f*cked this up. First of all, they announced that GT characters would be included in this game. Nobody's expectations could have been low enough to be satisfied with the amount of GT characters that actually made it into the game though. They have a boss fight with the giant golden great ape Baby, and you can play as Omega Shenron and SS4 Gogeta. That's it! They don't even have SS4 Goku or SS4 Vegeta. They also took out a considerable amount of characters, mainly movie characters. There is no Goten, Kid Trunks (these two are especially ridiculous since Gotenks is in the game), Nail, Mecha Frieza, Future Gohan, Pikkon, Dabura, Cooler, Meta Cooler, Salza, Neizu, Doore, Android 13, Android 14, Android 15, Bojack, Zangya, Hatchiyack, Turles, or Tarble. Also, the form of Future Trunks where he has longer hair and can transform into an ultra super saiyan is gone. You can only play as him with his shorter hair and his sword. And finally, certain characters are missing different forms. Broly only has his legendary super saiyan form. There is no base or regular super saiyan form for him. Vegeta has no super saiyan 2 form, and Gotenks and Teen Gohan both have no base form. After all this, I only have one question to ask: WHAT THE FLYING F*CK!?
I miss Raging Blast 2.
I guess we could start off with the one thing that I did like about this game though: the character creator. It was a little bit limited, but I never even expected them to put a character creator into a DBZ game, so it's alright. This character creator can be pretty fun to mess around with, especially for someone like me who likes to come up with new super saiyan forms. The character that I ended up with at the end was this super saiyan 4 looking guy with red hair (like Gogeta) and saiyan armor. I didn't actually get to put any fur on him to really make him into a super saiyan 4, but I colored parts of the arms and legs of the saiyan armor dark red to make it look like he had some fur.
Now, onto the two main disappointments of this game. The combat is completely dumbed down, and it has the stupidest character roster I have ever seen. Let's start with the combat.
When pulling off a combo, there are really only six different things you can do. One of them is to simply mash the X button. That's it. The others are simply mashing the Y button, but you can point the left analog stick in a certain direction at the end of your Y mashing to get a different finish to the combo. Besides these combos, the only things that you can use to cause damage are punches and blasts that precede these combos, a move that lets you switch between melee range and blast range, and supers/ultimates. The move that lets you switch between the different ranges is actually pretty useless. Both ranges allow you to pull off the exact same combos, and this move causes very little damage. Now, when it comes to supers and ultimates, they are all exactly the same with the exception of ultimates causing more damage. They took out all the different kinds of supers from the Raging Blast series and just left blast supers and rush supers, which they tweaked to be practically identical to each other. You'll also notice that in my list of attacks that cause damage, I did not include signature skills. Yes, you guessed it. They removed signature skills! These skills were unique to each and every character, and they were what made it possible to string together combos in ways that no other character could, and now they're gone. Not only do all these points about the game's combat suck, but they also ensure that each and every character is exactly the same. It used to be that players had certain characters they were best with, and everybody had their own fighting styles. Well, that is now completely gone.
Now, onto the character roster. Man, they really f*cked this up. First of all, they announced that GT characters would be included in this game. Nobody's expectations could have been low enough to be satisfied with the amount of GT characters that actually made it into the game though. They have a boss fight with the giant golden great ape Baby, and you can play as Omega Shenron and SS4 Gogeta. That's it! They don't even have SS4 Goku or SS4 Vegeta. They also took out a considerable amount of characters, mainly movie characters. There is no Goten, Kid Trunks (these two are especially ridiculous since Gotenks is in the game), Nail, Mecha Frieza, Future Gohan, Pikkon, Dabura, Cooler, Meta Cooler, Salza, Neizu, Doore, Android 13, Android 14, Android 15, Bojack, Zangya, Hatchiyack, Turles, or Tarble. Also, the form of Future Trunks where he has longer hair and can transform into an ultra super saiyan is gone. You can only play as him with his shorter hair and his sword. And finally, certain characters are missing different forms. Broly only has his legendary super saiyan form. There is no base or regular super saiyan form for him. Vegeta has no super saiyan 2 form, and Gotenks and Teen Gohan both have no base form. After all this, I only have one question to ask: WHAT THE FLYING F*CK!?
I miss Raging Blast 2.
