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Ungainly gameplay will keep Tenkaichi 2 from appealing to those just looking for a good fight, but the sheer volume of fighters and content will likely satiate DBZ fans. There are dozens of playable characters from throughout the run of both Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT, including Goku look-alikes Bardock and Turles, minor DBZ players like Yajirobe, and powerful DBGT villains like Bebi Vegita, Broly, and Android #13. Most of these fighters must be unlocked in the game's adventure mode before they can be used in the separate tournament and duel modes. The adventure mode is long and chronicles basically the entire run of DBZ and DBGT. It's a surprisingly long-lasting mode, especially for a fighting game, but you have to slog through a lot of stuff that has already been covered in numerous other DBZ fighters before you get to see anything new. Though it's cool to see more obscure content like the stories from The Tree of Might and Lord Slug alongside the more predictable Saiyan, Freeza, Cell, and Buu sagas, the game does a poor job of telling the stories. While the actual fights move fast enough and are brimming with enough crazy energy attacks and hard-hitting melee action to make them fun to watch, little effort was put into the cutscenes used to drive the story. You'll notice a blockiness to the characters that's not apparent during a fight, especially around their hands. Though occasional efforts are made to re-create specific scenes from the anime, the cutscenes usually try to get by with the in-game animations, which look awkward in a dramatic context.
You'll often need to beat an opponent to advance the story, only to see that in the next story sequence, your characters have been thoroughly thrashed, a contradiction that creates a real disconnect between the action and the story. Worst of all, the game will often sum up story arcs with a little bit of text that describes the most exciting parts, rather than showing them. So, instead of getting to see Goku summon an incredible spirit bomb from the Tree of Might to destroy Turles, you get to read about it. The pacing of the story mode is further stifled by nearly constant load times. You'll wait 15 seconds to watch two characters exchange a line of dialogue, then wait another five seconds to load a character select screen, and then another 20 seconds before you get to fight. It could take you a good 20 hours to get through the whole adventure mode in Tenkaichi 2, but you'll likely grow bored with it before then. The voice actors in the game, who are mostly the same actors who voice the Funimation-dubbed US version of the anime, also seem pretty bored at this point, though it's tough to blame them after having to energetically spout lines like "This is the end for you, Freeza!" over and over again for the past 10 years. There's some catchy music thrown in there, but you end up hearing the same two or three upbeat tunes over and over again.
Save for the different control schemes and some marginally improved graphics on the Wii, there's not much difference between the two versions of Tenkaichi 2, and neither is easy to recommend. Those who were able to wade through the problems of the original will find a lot of content to play around with here, but this is a game that is simply not suitable for anyone else.
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Where to buy
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (Wii):
$27.79 - $29.99
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RadioShack.com
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$29.99 | Yes |
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$29.99 | Yes |
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Amazon.com
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$27.79 | Yes |
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