Post by GuardianAngel1911-Admin on Feb 11, 2014 3:39:47 GMT
Ladies, Gentlemen, Members, Staff, and Guests. Welcome to my review thread, I'm going to start off with a head to head comparison review of two Dragon Ball Z games.
Ultimate Tenkaichi and Battle of Z
Having recently bought Battle of Z for the promise of Battle of Gods characters I was feeling extremely optimistic, I hadn't heard much of it's mechanics but after Ultimate Tenkaichi's success at adapting DBZ, even if made by a different company than BoZ I was fairly optimistic that they would build off the success of other games. After downloading SS1 Bardock and SS1 Goku in Naruto's Sage Mode outfit I started the game and began what was sure to be an amazing experience. Par for the course of DBZ games the first none developer logo was an anime intro movie of anime scenes that never happened. As always this scene was beautiful, awe inspiring, and showed SSgod Goku vs Bills. Following that I came to a screen showing a blue sphere flying around DBZ Earth and Goku shouting lend me your energy followed by the menu screen showing a massive Spirit Bomb getting energy with a world energy counter at the bottom. I saw the various game modes, Single Player, Online Battles, Online Co-op, Options..wait...no offline Co-op? But what if your internet is down you ask? Well you'll have to play a different game with your friend who came over or play the Single Player and take turns. Now the game allows you to unlock more than 70 characters...although a lot of slots are just the transformed states of the various Sayians Freeza, Cell, Buu, Cooler....spots that could potentially have been other characters. As I entered the "tutorial mission" of single player after customizing Goku's outfit I found combat had gone to a very..unusual format. Gone was the ability to charge Ki and blow people away with the Kamehameha wave..or charge ki at all, true there was some...special L1+O beam attack that...looks Kamehamehaish but...the actual Kamehameha is an attack that has to be built up to..with some specific mechanic of beating people and the energy bar reaching a certain point and then flashing. Of course your often lucky if you use this 1 time a battle with any character.
Also new to combat is the RPG like skill boost cards for various stats that raise character power levels, however the process is painfully tedious and collecting them through missions seems almost annoying. Yes it's nice to be able to increase characters abilities but why not be able to do that through training with your stats increasing with every victory? The card gimmick is irksome as are the sudden addition of "items" which can temporarily boost stats much like items in the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series. Again..I suppose there's nothing wrong with the RPG elements but again it seems tiresome and the fact you have to buy these items with points seems pointless, I've yet to use them in single player and after my one attempt at online I still didn't and while on the online mode I'll be blunt, the matchmaking is tedious, it has no sense of player skill levels, and due to the nature of the RPG system it's entirely possible for a team of 4 high end characters to rapestomp a team of 4 midtiers in a matter of seconds to a few minutes despite lower tiered characters having more respawns.
Now back to single player since I've mostly avoided multiplayer, as I said you make a team of 4, yourself and 3 AI bots...or well A bots..the I is debatable. I say that because...they are dense as the mostly non destructible environments. The respawn I mentioned can be avoided being lost (you get x amount for an entire team) by you or allies flying over and healing to a degree by giving energy. This mechanic is a good idea...for multiplayer...and for enemy AI, for your AI bot buddies...they'll leave you to die alone, in the dirt, even if there's no respawns left. I've lost singleplayer missions because the partner standing right next to me as I hit the ground flies off, to get one shot ko'd. They also had the lovely habit against Perfect Perfect Cell to...stand there and let him unleash his Ultimate Attack in their faces. This has the generally predictable result of nearly one shot koing or fully one shot koing them, leaving you to try and race around to heal them while the more intelligent enemy AI does everything it can to stop you in a far more tactically sensible way then your allies act even if you order them to fight to their full potential. While you can rank them up and card them up it doesn't change the horrendous lack of competence.
Of course it's not all negative, though simple the combat is fairly fun, and the ability to team up all four of your characters to collectively beat the shit out of someone is all too fun.The right combination of melee support and ki fighters can be a nigh unstoppable force, if their competent. However even with these facts you've got issues. Your allies might help you with this but they can just as easily leave you to be swarmed by enemies who will do that to you. It gets annoying when your multi enemy ki striker is punching people while your being hit from every angle by dozens of mook enemies. As I said there's nothing truly wrong with the idea of four person battles, but the problem is the lack of competence from the AI. After playing games like ME and Skyrim with very to fairly competent AI allies...watching Vegeta let himself get one shot killed by Cell is disconcerting.
Other features absent from combat that I haven't mentioned are the loss of beam of war clashes, inability to use your super attack very freely, a lack of counters and the fact it's not possible to escape from an enemy pounding on you until they smack you away. While I understand this was more an RPG than a fighting game...if I wanted a DBZ RPG I'd want to create my own character from scratch, when I pick up Goku, or Cooler, etc. I want to feel the raw power of a godlike character I want to see massive ki attacks clash and explode in a frenzy of power, I want to watch the environment get torn a new asshole as the most powerful of characters clash in an epic contest. That's the thing about DBZ games, that's what makes them fun. I love the idea of putting it to Com vs Com and having the most powerful Goku and Vegeta clash in head to head combat. I didn't get that here though.
The story mode is in depth, it's interesting, it's fun, there are various non canon missions that are a lot of fun. The graphics are...decent, I've seen sharper DBZ games but they aren't the worst. The environments...aren't very destructible, at best you can destroy a few tree's and houses..but even the Ultimate attacks do little to the environment and as they are enders you don't exactly get any enjoyment from it. On the subject of Ultimates there is only a handful characters out of the roster with Ultimate moves and you need a special card to use them. The mechanic of giving players around the world energy and getting it in return is..fun to a degree.
Overall I was disjointed after Tenkaichi 3 and Ultimate Tenkaichi gave such in depth beautiful games. Battle of Z is a good game, but I don't know if it's a game that'll have a lot of long lasting once you've gotten all the characters. The lack of offline co-op, and the somewhat dull combat system left little impression on me, but if you really love DBZ you'll probably enjoy this game, I've enjoyed it but I've had better DBZ game experiences. I understand this was a different company than the Tenkaichi series but that's no excuse for the flaws.
a sample of BoZ gameplay
Now to the next Half of this review Ultimate Tenkaichi
When I put in UT I had a similar experience, I was optimistic about the game and I was excited about create a Sayian mode. So after seeing two of the base create a sayians in the anime opening I decided to go straight for that. I chose the balanced character model and went about creating a suave "cool voiced" character admittedly there is not much variety to what you can do and you'll likely find many looks seem similar to real characters. The create a character story opens in an alternate universe where a mysterious force wished for chaos and it's up to a hero to stop them. That hero is you...or more specifically your male Sayian (no female sadly and very depressing) one of three classes balanced (Goku sized) physically powered (looks like Broly sized or Super Super Sayian Trunks with Raditz hair at base) and beam powered (Krillin sized). You then encounter your first trainer for me this was Ginyu, after he explained he was captain of the Ginyu force my Sayian decided instead of wanting to join them he wanted to lead the Ginyus. After beating the shit out of him my guy then said he had better things to do. This was an aspect I liked you gained new moves and fighting styles by training with a character and mastering their style through multiple training battles which also leveled your stats. You could master dozens of fighting styles and mix and match super and ultimate moves of any characters. It was a great mechanic and fun, it allowed me to customize and give a new feel to my Sayian. As you go through this mode battling to restore the proper order to Earth you encounter dozens of characters from the series, the Androids, Fat Buu, and surprising secondary big bad Omega Shenron who is a disk one final boss of sorts once you collect the Dragonballs you face him and whether you win or not he trolls you by redispersing the balls. Later on after battling through more villains running rampant and training with more heroes and villains you soon gain Super Saiyan 1 your only transformation but more then enough if your leveling up right as your Sayian can quickly become the most powerful character in the game. Then you come to the penultimate battle after you get the Dragon Balls...a battle I never thought I'd see in all of the DBZ games, you vs Red Shenron! In one of the most difficult and epic battles of the story mode it was the most amazing way to end the OC story. Punching your wish out of the dragon. After you beat it you can go back and fight all the bosses again, and again. It also gives you the right to train with SS4 Gogeta and to surpass him.
The combat in this game is different from previous installments in a good way, as opposed to a straight fighter it's far more cinematic in a vein similar to Asura's Wrath with many combat quick time events after combos to push you even further in momentum while giving your opponent a chance to counter you. Beating the shit out of your opponents gives you spirit raising which lets you use super moves, and once one of you hits the red you can use your ultimate move once you hit spirit high (although it's also incredibly likely by that point that you'll beat them to death to get there). The visuals in this game are amazing bringing the DBZ anime to life in ways that previous games have only tried but fell short of, and in a way that BoZ couldn't accomplish. The super moves can cause massive damage to the environment causing multikilometer trenches and craters, and the biggest attacks create explosions visible from orbit. While the chase combos get repetitive after a while it's forgivable for just how amazing and cinematic it looks and feels. Beam of Wars and Rush clashes can happen multiple times a battle leading you to possibly close matches won with a single strategic choice or move. Sudden shifts in battle momentum are very possible adding to the feel of the game. While you don't charge ki for supermoves you now charge up energy for your reaction to enemy super moves, if fully charged your able to fire back with a chance of losing but also of causing a lot of damage back, if only at the middle one you dodge, if at the lowest bubble you block and take damage, and if you have less or 0 you're fucked.
Giant battles (vs Great Apes, Hirudegon Janemba) are altered by the enemies being almost interactive cutscenes against the massive foes with a deadly risk of being squished to death or blasted by energy blasts of immense power that require more than just button masshing to dodge but need a rank level in the OC mode at any rate. The change is interesting and it works with the general cinematic feel of the gameplay. Especially in the story modes.
Combat story and graphics aside this incredibly faithful DBZ game has one very major flaw, that of the massive amount of loading screens...it gets annoying after a while really and breaks up the flow of the game very often. The story mode also has this issue with a lot of times large walls of text being used as summaries for an arc up to that point, made all the more aggravating by the generally beautiful flow of the game. When not doing the game graphics cutscenes UT does do something very interesting, some cutscenes are actually scenes from the anime (specifically DBZ Kai I believe) which is a fun experience, and had they done that more often I think it would have made the flow even better.
The interesting thing about the roster is that the transformations are all on the same character as part of it as in the past games, but you can actually transform in mid combat, allowing you to change up your supermoves throughout the match (you can actually decide on a super move setup at the screen and have multiple lists) and increasing your power. The change mechanic has been used before but it's more streamlined in this game.
Overall this game restored my faith in what a great DBZ game could be, there are faults in it but the streamlining and the features of devastation make up for it in my opinion.
sample of Ultimate Tenkaichi gameplay
Now to compare them, UT was far more streamlined, which considering BoZ is the newest game is startling even with the different people on BoZ the drop in graphics looks is disappointing. While UT is a fighting game and BoZ is an RPG style...BoZ's style just felt lacking for a DBZ game. Going from UT to BoZ I was underwhelmed with the mechanics of BoZ, I felt it was a step backwards even though I told myself that they are different companies it just bugs me. If nothing else they could have taken some cues from the Tenkaichi series. It wouldn't be the first time. In the end both of these are good games but if I had to pick only one, and only one it would be Ultimate Tenkaichi for the overall cinematic feel, the Create a Sayian and the experience, while it lacks SSG the Ultimate Tenkaichi 2 game reported to be in the works will likely rectify that. BoZ is a good game to get if your a DBZ fan, and really both these games require a love of the show to truly enjoy but in the end for me Ultimate Tenkaichi takes the cake for it's superior combat, graphics, and the fact it really gives you the feel of unleashing the raw awe inspiring power of the Z-Fighters.
Ultimate Tenkaichi and Battle of Z
Having recently bought Battle of Z for the promise of Battle of Gods characters I was feeling extremely optimistic, I hadn't heard much of it's mechanics but after Ultimate Tenkaichi's success at adapting DBZ, even if made by a different company than BoZ I was fairly optimistic that they would build off the success of other games. After downloading SS1 Bardock and SS1 Goku in Naruto's Sage Mode outfit I started the game and began what was sure to be an amazing experience. Par for the course of DBZ games the first none developer logo was an anime intro movie of anime scenes that never happened. As always this scene was beautiful, awe inspiring, and showed SSgod Goku vs Bills. Following that I came to a screen showing a blue sphere flying around DBZ Earth and Goku shouting lend me your energy followed by the menu screen showing a massive Spirit Bomb getting energy with a world energy counter at the bottom. I saw the various game modes, Single Player, Online Battles, Online Co-op, Options..wait...no offline Co-op? But what if your internet is down you ask? Well you'll have to play a different game with your friend who came over or play the Single Player and take turns. Now the game allows you to unlock more than 70 characters...although a lot of slots are just the transformed states of the various Sayians Freeza, Cell, Buu, Cooler....spots that could potentially have been other characters. As I entered the "tutorial mission" of single player after customizing Goku's outfit I found combat had gone to a very..unusual format. Gone was the ability to charge Ki and blow people away with the Kamehameha wave..or charge ki at all, true there was some...special L1+O beam attack that...looks Kamehamehaish but...the actual Kamehameha is an attack that has to be built up to..with some specific mechanic of beating people and the energy bar reaching a certain point and then flashing. Of course your often lucky if you use this 1 time a battle with any character.
Also new to combat is the RPG like skill boost cards for various stats that raise character power levels, however the process is painfully tedious and collecting them through missions seems almost annoying. Yes it's nice to be able to increase characters abilities but why not be able to do that through training with your stats increasing with every victory? The card gimmick is irksome as are the sudden addition of "items" which can temporarily boost stats much like items in the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series. Again..I suppose there's nothing wrong with the RPG elements but again it seems tiresome and the fact you have to buy these items with points seems pointless, I've yet to use them in single player and after my one attempt at online I still didn't and while on the online mode I'll be blunt, the matchmaking is tedious, it has no sense of player skill levels, and due to the nature of the RPG system it's entirely possible for a team of 4 high end characters to rapestomp a team of 4 midtiers in a matter of seconds to a few minutes despite lower tiered characters having more respawns.
Now back to single player since I've mostly avoided multiplayer, as I said you make a team of 4, yourself and 3 AI bots...or well A bots..the I is debatable. I say that because...they are dense as the mostly non destructible environments. The respawn I mentioned can be avoided being lost (you get x amount for an entire team) by you or allies flying over and healing to a degree by giving energy. This mechanic is a good idea...for multiplayer...and for enemy AI, for your AI bot buddies...they'll leave you to die alone, in the dirt, even if there's no respawns left. I've lost singleplayer missions because the partner standing right next to me as I hit the ground flies off, to get one shot ko'd. They also had the lovely habit against Perfect Perfect Cell to...stand there and let him unleash his Ultimate Attack in their faces. This has the generally predictable result of nearly one shot koing or fully one shot koing them, leaving you to try and race around to heal them while the more intelligent enemy AI does everything it can to stop you in a far more tactically sensible way then your allies act even if you order them to fight to their full potential. While you can rank them up and card them up it doesn't change the horrendous lack of competence.
Of course it's not all negative, though simple the combat is fairly fun, and the ability to team up all four of your characters to collectively beat the shit out of someone is all too fun.The right combination of melee support and ki fighters can be a nigh unstoppable force, if their competent. However even with these facts you've got issues. Your allies might help you with this but they can just as easily leave you to be swarmed by enemies who will do that to you. It gets annoying when your multi enemy ki striker is punching people while your being hit from every angle by dozens of mook enemies. As I said there's nothing truly wrong with the idea of four person battles, but the problem is the lack of competence from the AI. After playing games like ME and Skyrim with very to fairly competent AI allies...watching Vegeta let himself get one shot killed by Cell is disconcerting.
Other features absent from combat that I haven't mentioned are the loss of beam of war clashes, inability to use your super attack very freely, a lack of counters and the fact it's not possible to escape from an enemy pounding on you until they smack you away. While I understand this was more an RPG than a fighting game...if I wanted a DBZ RPG I'd want to create my own character from scratch, when I pick up Goku, or Cooler, etc. I want to feel the raw power of a godlike character I want to see massive ki attacks clash and explode in a frenzy of power, I want to watch the environment get torn a new asshole as the most powerful of characters clash in an epic contest. That's the thing about DBZ games, that's what makes them fun. I love the idea of putting it to Com vs Com and having the most powerful Goku and Vegeta clash in head to head combat. I didn't get that here though.
The story mode is in depth, it's interesting, it's fun, there are various non canon missions that are a lot of fun. The graphics are...decent, I've seen sharper DBZ games but they aren't the worst. The environments...aren't very destructible, at best you can destroy a few tree's and houses..but even the Ultimate attacks do little to the environment and as they are enders you don't exactly get any enjoyment from it. On the subject of Ultimates there is only a handful characters out of the roster with Ultimate moves and you need a special card to use them. The mechanic of giving players around the world energy and getting it in return is..fun to a degree.
Overall I was disjointed after Tenkaichi 3 and Ultimate Tenkaichi gave such in depth beautiful games. Battle of Z is a good game, but I don't know if it's a game that'll have a lot of long lasting once you've gotten all the characters. The lack of offline co-op, and the somewhat dull combat system left little impression on me, but if you really love DBZ you'll probably enjoy this game, I've enjoyed it but I've had better DBZ game experiences. I understand this was a different company than the Tenkaichi series but that's no excuse for the flaws.
a sample of BoZ gameplay
Now to the next Half of this review Ultimate Tenkaichi
When I put in UT I had a similar experience, I was optimistic about the game and I was excited about create a Sayian mode. So after seeing two of the base create a sayians in the anime opening I decided to go straight for that. I chose the balanced character model and went about creating a suave "cool voiced" character admittedly there is not much variety to what you can do and you'll likely find many looks seem similar to real characters. The create a character story opens in an alternate universe where a mysterious force wished for chaos and it's up to a hero to stop them. That hero is you...or more specifically your male Sayian (no female sadly and very depressing) one of three classes balanced (Goku sized) physically powered (looks like Broly sized or Super Super Sayian Trunks with Raditz hair at base) and beam powered (Krillin sized). You then encounter your first trainer for me this was Ginyu, after he explained he was captain of the Ginyu force my Sayian decided instead of wanting to join them he wanted to lead the Ginyus. After beating the shit out of him my guy then said he had better things to do. This was an aspect I liked you gained new moves and fighting styles by training with a character and mastering their style through multiple training battles which also leveled your stats. You could master dozens of fighting styles and mix and match super and ultimate moves of any characters. It was a great mechanic and fun, it allowed me to customize and give a new feel to my Sayian. As you go through this mode battling to restore the proper order to Earth you encounter dozens of characters from the series, the Androids, Fat Buu, and surprising secondary big bad Omega Shenron who is a disk one final boss of sorts once you collect the Dragonballs you face him and whether you win or not he trolls you by redispersing the balls. Later on after battling through more villains running rampant and training with more heroes and villains you soon gain Super Saiyan 1 your only transformation but more then enough if your leveling up right as your Sayian can quickly become the most powerful character in the game. Then you come to the penultimate battle after you get the Dragon Balls...a battle I never thought I'd see in all of the DBZ games, you vs Red Shenron! In one of the most difficult and epic battles of the story mode it was the most amazing way to end the OC story. Punching your wish out of the dragon. After you beat it you can go back and fight all the bosses again, and again. It also gives you the right to train with SS4 Gogeta and to surpass him.
The combat in this game is different from previous installments in a good way, as opposed to a straight fighter it's far more cinematic in a vein similar to Asura's Wrath with many combat quick time events after combos to push you even further in momentum while giving your opponent a chance to counter you. Beating the shit out of your opponents gives you spirit raising which lets you use super moves, and once one of you hits the red you can use your ultimate move once you hit spirit high (although it's also incredibly likely by that point that you'll beat them to death to get there). The visuals in this game are amazing bringing the DBZ anime to life in ways that previous games have only tried but fell short of, and in a way that BoZ couldn't accomplish. The super moves can cause massive damage to the environment causing multikilometer trenches and craters, and the biggest attacks create explosions visible from orbit. While the chase combos get repetitive after a while it's forgivable for just how amazing and cinematic it looks and feels. Beam of Wars and Rush clashes can happen multiple times a battle leading you to possibly close matches won with a single strategic choice or move. Sudden shifts in battle momentum are very possible adding to the feel of the game. While you don't charge ki for supermoves you now charge up energy for your reaction to enemy super moves, if fully charged your able to fire back with a chance of losing but also of causing a lot of damage back, if only at the middle one you dodge, if at the lowest bubble you block and take damage, and if you have less or 0 you're fucked.
Giant battles (vs Great Apes, Hirudegon Janemba) are altered by the enemies being almost interactive cutscenes against the massive foes with a deadly risk of being squished to death or blasted by energy blasts of immense power that require more than just button masshing to dodge but need a rank level in the OC mode at any rate. The change is interesting and it works with the general cinematic feel of the gameplay. Especially in the story modes.
Combat story and graphics aside this incredibly faithful DBZ game has one very major flaw, that of the massive amount of loading screens...it gets annoying after a while really and breaks up the flow of the game very often. The story mode also has this issue with a lot of times large walls of text being used as summaries for an arc up to that point, made all the more aggravating by the generally beautiful flow of the game. When not doing the game graphics cutscenes UT does do something very interesting, some cutscenes are actually scenes from the anime (specifically DBZ Kai I believe) which is a fun experience, and had they done that more often I think it would have made the flow even better.
The interesting thing about the roster is that the transformations are all on the same character as part of it as in the past games, but you can actually transform in mid combat, allowing you to change up your supermoves throughout the match (you can actually decide on a super move setup at the screen and have multiple lists) and increasing your power. The change mechanic has been used before but it's more streamlined in this game.
Overall this game restored my faith in what a great DBZ game could be, there are faults in it but the streamlining and the features of devastation make up for it in my opinion.
sample of Ultimate Tenkaichi gameplay
Now to compare them, UT was far more streamlined, which considering BoZ is the newest game is startling even with the different people on BoZ the drop in graphics looks is disappointing. While UT is a fighting game and BoZ is an RPG style...BoZ's style just felt lacking for a DBZ game. Going from UT to BoZ I was underwhelmed with the mechanics of BoZ, I felt it was a step backwards even though I told myself that they are different companies it just bugs me. If nothing else they could have taken some cues from the Tenkaichi series. It wouldn't be the first time. In the end both of these are good games but if I had to pick only one, and only one it would be Ultimate Tenkaichi for the overall cinematic feel, the Create a Sayian and the experience, while it lacks SSG the Ultimate Tenkaichi 2 game reported to be in the works will likely rectify that. BoZ is a good game to get if your a DBZ fan, and really both these games require a love of the show to truly enjoy but in the end for me Ultimate Tenkaichi takes the cake for it's superior combat, graphics, and the fact it really gives you the feel of unleashing the raw awe inspiring power of the Z-Fighters.