His Power Level Is Incredible!

Once again, I'm late to the party but this time, I'm intentionally late. I came very close to buying Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 (what a long title) earlier this year when it was still priced at $40. However, I knew if I showed some patience and waited, the price would drop. Sure enough, a few months later, it hit the $30 mark. A little more waiting and it was priced at $20. Score!

First off, let me say that I love fighting games but when I pick up a DBZ fighter, I'm not looking for the next Soul Calibur or Virtua Figther. I'm just looking for a good DBZ experience that's respectful of the source material. Now that I've gotten that outta the way, I can continue.

I played the first Budokai Tenkaichi a few years ago. I admired the approach it took to emulate the DBZ style of fighting but more often than not, it's flaws and glitches cropped their ugly heads. Having only a single life bar really sucked when you were up against dudes that could blow up a planet. Some of the super buffed out fighters (Super Trunks, Broly, Bojack) wouldn't even flintch when you hit them and they could inturupt your combo string anytime because of it. A number of battles in the story mode were ridiculously har. The fight where you have to defeat Vegeta in his Great Ape form comes to mind. If you wanted to win, you had to spam Kamehameha attcks because melee attacks would just wind up getting you killed. It was for these reasons that I skipped the sequel. Besides, I had a lot of fun with Super Dragon Ball Z even if the character roster in that game didn't even come close to BT2's.

When I started practice mode to get a feel for the controls, I could tell that I'd be in for a more polished game than the first BT. The controls feel a lot more tighter and fluid. Even flying around feels a lot better, faster.

To avoid dragging this out into a string of lengthy paragraphs, I've decided to list the pros and cons out this game. I'll try to keep it brief but I'll elaborate on a few things.

Pros

• Tons of characters. Over 150 to be exact. This includes everone from DB, DBZ, and DBGT. Every single transformation is here, too. Even all the movie villains are here. I just wish we were able to get the DBZ version of Pan. GT pan is annoying to no end. Arale, from Dr. Slump, Akira Toriyama's first manga series is even playable and she's pretty tough.
• Customizing your figther. This has always been one of my favorite things about the console DBZ games. Dimps came up with the idea in the DBZ Budokai games, and Spike decided to keep running with it in the BT games. Smart move on their part. You can make your fighters that are already insanely powerful even stronger still.
• Improved graphics. They just keep finding a way to make these games look even better.
• Info on every character. There's a mode specifically made that give you the 411 on every fighter in the game. It was in the first BT but it's nice to see it back. With this mode, the game manages to do the impossible: Make Chi-Chi a likable person. She gives amusing commentary on everyone.
• No recycled music from the Budokai games! Thankfully they've decided to go with the music in BT. And what is sure to shut many fans of the original Japanese DBZ version up, the option for Japanese voices is there.

Cons

• A few stupidly hard fights in Dragon History mode. Don't bother trying to use Melee attacks against Perfect Cell after he's "died" and then powered up. Spam him with beam attacks and pray that you win.
• Still not crazy about the behind-the-fighter view.
• Rush attacks can get annoying since they home in on you.
• Some tournaments are only open at certains times in the game.

The good outweighs the bad. For $20 I got a sweet DBZ experience and I honestly believe this is one the best DBZ games out there.