by Chris Garrett

Created on: January 23, 2007   Last Updated: April 12, 2007

Dragon Ball Z: Sagas

In a word, this game is terrible. I am one of the biggest DBZ fans and this game is a horrible representation of the series. Like any other DBZ game it follows the storyline of the TV show, loosely.

The game is ridiculously confined as there are invisible barriers that guide your character to the end point of the level. This is highly annoying and gives the player a sense of helplessness as you can hardly evade them in your attempt to progress in the level. Also you can only jump so high and some of the collectables are way out of reach to jump up to them. It's like there is an invisible box that you are stuck in and even though there objects that you should be able to get, they hang mysteriously outside the box.

One of the major disappointments is the gameplay. It is just a standard 2-D beat'm up with 3-D elements. Your characters are so weak that even the weakest enemies present a challenge. You need to collect coins to buy power up items that allow you to perform special moves. The problem is that these items are expensive. You have to collect these coins that blend into the background and even when you do find them some are out of reach for your character.

The one shining point, which is not really that great, is the audio. It has the music from the show and the voice actors. But even then the repetitiveness of what each character says is above and beyond annoying. Still this is the only good thing about the game.

They should have focused on gameplay and level design. This game could have been great. The concept was solid but the delivery was terrible. Most DBZ games are fighting games and this was trying to introduce a platform element to the franchise.

They should have made the world open ended and the enemies varied. You fight the saibamen half a billion times before you face the boss of the level and even then the boss, who you should be able to handle, destroys you in a few moves. This could have been avoided with an open world and the difficulty more progressive.

The level design was horrible as well. You can only move between walls of rocks. No flying above them, no alternate route, just run, fight, and run some more. They could have fixed this by giving players more of a choice on each level, like say Mario Bros.

This could have been the shot in the arm the franchise needed but instead it nearly destroys it. Definitely stay away from this game.

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