It isn’t easy to recreate something and have it accurate enough to appease everybody who is a fan, but the team over at CyberConnect2 and Bandai Namco have pulled off a wonderful play through the series with their latest release of DragonBall Z: Kakarot! Bringing in missions from mainly the important storyline and including stuff from the filler episodes made this anime game feel as authentic as watching the show itself. Is the game itself a perfect version of the series? No, but it is by far the closest you could expect.

Story

If you don’t already know the storyline to the DragonBall Z series than know it is broken up into four sagas. You start off the game at the very beginning with Goku and Gohan bonding over fishing and training which flows into the Saiyan Saga. From there you will continue through to kill Frieza, decimate Cell, and obliterate Buu. Each Saga has a different reason the bad guy is attacking the Earth, but to give you the gist of it, they are here to either gather the Dragon Ball’s for a selfish wish or simply want to kill the strongest fighter around, Goku.

I have to give them props for how well the reconstructed the series and didn’t cut any corners from start to finish. Everything that I played through and watched was exactly how it was in the show. My only issue with their remake version is the lack of ability to properly catch the dramatic moments. Scenes like Goku turning Super Saiyan for the first time and Gohan losing control of his anger which releases his true power are the shining moments the series builds you up for and almost every time these moments come up they either feel rushed or just are simply not done with the same respect that the overall project is given.

Gameplay

There is just so much to cover when it comes to the gameplay! Honestly, I would suggest checking out my First Impression of this game to get a better detail when it comes to orb collection and the character menu as I will be summarizing these sections to make space for other details.

At first, it does seem like orb collecting is a necessary task to ensure you can power up your people, but honestly just use it to learn your flight control. You will get plenty of orbs through fighting through the storyline and side quests, not to mention you can just wish for them with the Dragon Balls. Wishing for the orbs will give you 15,000 of each color and 15 Rainbows. The reason I say it isn’t a big deal is that by the time I reached the end of the game, I had over 1,500 Rainbow orbs and 50-70,000 of all the other colors. Trust me, you will get your fill with minimal effort in collecting as long as you do quests.

In order to unlock new moves in the character menu, you do have to use these orbs, but you will also have to unlock certain moves with training. This means that you have to collect D Medals, which can be found in every section of the world, and then go to a training spot. When you pull up the world map, it shows you where you can find your main quest, all side quests, each Dragon Ball, and how many D Medals you have collected from each region. Once you learn a new move in the training area you can then power that up and it will lead to more moves you can unlock in training. There are also passive traits on the side that act as power-ups for your fighters, so be sure to unlock those and equip them as well.

Another part of the game that aids the player is the Community section. As you meet and help more characters, you will unlock their Soul Emblem. Honestly, it seems a lot of them are behind side quests because I spent my whole 28 hours focusing on just the main questline. Yes, it took me 28 hours to be the entire main storyline without touching any side quests! Anyways, once you have the Soul Emblem of a character you can apply them to a different trait that they have. Partnering them up with specific characters give them a boost in the stats as well, so be ready to plan how you will place your many characters because you can always get a better set up by putting specific ones together on specific boards. Leveling up each area of the community board provides a different set of aid to the player so look over each list, prioritize what you like, and set characters in there to level up that section. You will get items that you can use to power up the different traits of each Soul Emblem, so try and keep them where they are best suited.

Before we move on to the fighting details, the last side aspect of the game is the cooking area. As you travel the world you will be able to collect ingredients and random items from all of the places. Then you can also go fishing, hunt animals, and even take down dinosaurs for their meat. Taking these ingredients to someone who can cook, like Chi-Chi or the market, will provide a menu where you can have dishes and full course meals cooked for you. These food items will give both a permanent boost in stats as well as a temporary boost in a specific stat. Eating these before big fights can easily give you the advantage you need to take them out so keep a few dishes at the ready.

Finally, we are here in the combat section. So you have unlocked all the different moves you can, organized them in the different places you want to the top 4 moves of your choice are readily available to use in action. Now you just need to know when to attack, when to defend, when to dodge, and learn the cues of your enemy.

Fighting isn’t as straight forward as it has been in previous games. This time the action is just like the actual anime where it can take you anywhere in the area and there is going to be a lot of damage to the environment, yourself, and the opponent(s). It auto-locks on to the target enemy and you are able to change who you are targeting by simply pressing left or right on the camera analog, so keep track of their location won’t be hard, but now you have a lot of things to consider. Your distance from the enemy, what attack they’re gearing up for, what attacks you have at the ready, how much energy do you have, do you have for a transformation, is there time to power up into the energized fighter now that the power meter is filled, and how quick of a decision can you make, are all examples of things to keep in mind while fighting.

Once you start getting used to fights you will find easy attack moments. For instance, if you are throwing a series of melee attacks and they suddenly stop reacting to the blows and start glowing red then quickly vanish backwards three or four times and throw a Kamehameha at them because they are about to do a heavy melee attack which leaves them open for a direct blast. You will be vanishing a lot so be ready to be smashing the A, X, or whatever button you have set for that to quickly evade attacks and move around the opponent. You can dash at them, but note that this leaves you open for an attack so be sure that you have the opportunity to charge at them directly.

No matter how used to the fighting I got nor how repetitive some of the aspects seemed, I always had fun in the battles and never found myself bored with the repetition. They did a good job giving us a balance of understandable mechanics, personalized character setups, and a multitude of aspects to keep in mind during a battle.

Random fighting tip that I learned through frustration for you all: If you are fighting an opponent that can make multiples of themselves to fight against you with them, do not charge at them immediately. Wait for all of them to do their onslaught attack, change your target to one of the clones, and quickly take out the added enemies. The rate in which a team can take out your health is devastating, to say the least.

Graphics

Aesthetically speaking, it really looked like we were in a 3D rendered Dragon Ball world. The details of the terrains, characters, and enemies all matched up to what we used to see on the screen. They used the perfect anime-like style to make everything visually appear as if it came straight out of the DragonBall Z universe.

Sounds

All of the music and sound effects were just as accurate as the visuals were. It did well to compliment the series and brought back all the nostalgia of the show. However, this is where they had a few issues as they didn’t always play the right music at the right time, ruining some of the dramatic and build up moments. Also, it seemed like a few of the characters just simply didn’t sound like they did in the show, but I admit that they were pretty close to it.

Replayability

Once you beat the game, there is plenty left to do! Completing the storyline opens up the option to go to other world locations like New Namek and Land of the Kais, plus you can talk to Bulma about the time machine she is setting up. I personally couldn’t confirm if we could use it for anything just yet, but it is possible they could use the Time Machine for DLC options and to fill in some missing opportunities. You can collect all the Dragon Balls and fight against most of the other fighters you defeated before, however, they don’t have any of the main fights listed, so no Freiza, Cell, or Buu’s there. There is honestly a lot this game offers in terms of continued play after completion.

What Could Be Better

I have to say that I was disappointed that they failed to handle the dramatic moments of the series properly. As a huge fan of the Gohan vs Cell fight, seeing Gohan’s eruption interrupted by chapter title that could have been placed prior to the scene and then the mood-killing theme song playing during the Father-Son Kamehameha. It was like they wanted the scene to look less triumphant than it was. And that is just one example.

Some of the main quests didn’t really give proper directions. By that, I mean all the ones that felt more like side quest material, in which I tend to call them “fetch quests.” The worst of which was finishing training before the Cell Games and going back home for the days of rest only for Chi-Chi to send us on a fetch quest to gather very specific meat but not mentioning where to get it. The world map showed the mission marked at Goku’s house so I searched those plains for quite some time only to figure out you need to go to the tundra area and get all of the different items from that zone. This isn’t explained or anything and the quest itself seemed unnecessary to include to start with, especially since you just had me hyped up and training for a big boss battle. Don’t get me wrong, I love that they included the small stuff like this as it is in the canon lore storyline, but give proper direction if you are going to make it forced on the player in order to continue the main quests.

Overall the dialogue didn’t move at a natural pace. There were a lot of pauses where it seemed like there shouldn’t have been. I am not sure if this is intended or if there was some sort of lag in the dialogue section of my game, but the entire time I saw this issue. I am only talking about the scenes where I don’t control the dialogue skipping speed of course, but an example of an odd pause is when Gotenks blasts a dimension portal out of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber when he and Piccolo were trapped so he jumps through and yells “Hurry! It’s closing!” and then it shows Piccolo just standing there for at least two seconds before he finally goes “Right!” and jumps through as well.

If the Dragon Balls allow me to fight against a defeated foe, how come I can’t do this will any of the main villains? It honestly just doesn’t make sense that I can’t wish any of the main sagas fights back to have a rematch against literally the greatest foes in the game. I seriously hope this is either added on with a patch or they do something with these missing fight opportunities with the time machine you know Bulma has.

Conclusion

DragonBall Z: Kakarot is a must-have for every single DragonBall fan out there! I don’t care if you like the original, the Z series, the non-canon movies and GT series, or have only been watching the Super series. If you like DragonBall, then this game is an absolute treasure to have in your collections. It provides an excellent rendition of the entire Z series and truly lets you live through the Saiyans Z-days. I thoroughly enjoyed playing through the story and plan on diving back in for all the other aspects it has to offer.