"Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

[Scsigs]

The game does look fun. The graphics look years out of date though, not sure what's going on there.

I'll have to get it one day.

The graphics are good. The only thing that's weird are some of the character models' hair, like Goku's or Vegeta's, & the clothes being rendered with different textures than their skin. Their skin has a shine to it, but the clothes look like actual clothes rather than having the shine too. I don't understand that.

[MeMeDZEHH]

I think it's a really good game but i'm pretty sure CC2 would've loved to have 1 or 2 more years to make the game they wanted. It's obvious they had to reduce the development on some part of the game

[TheSaiyanGod]

Open World
The first point of contention seems to be that there isn't much to do outside the main quests and the larger world is kind of worthless. I wholeheartedly disagree with this. One of my favorite games in recent memory was Spiderman. Granted Spiderman gave you quite a few different task to do in the city, but ultimately they ended up all being either finding different ways of beating people up or swinging around to collect items. Although Kakarot is not quite as intuitive when it comes to variety of what you can do in the world, it's enough to not have it be a strike against the game. The collectables can certainly have more meaning, but I do think they wanted fans to have fun being immersed in the world.

It is sad that most review sites when talking about the open world generally do not take into account the incredible amount of detail in each area. For me the areas do not seem lifeless or empty, they are really beautiful places that have all kinds of living beings (small villages, dinosaurs, roads in the middle of nowhere with cars passing by), the cities are incredible. I think there is no other game where we have King Kai Planet, New Namek and the Land of the Kaioshins as playable places

I gotta say, walking around Gingertown with all the clothes lying around and cars in the middle of the road without a single person is surreal. The love and detail put into this game really shows.

I haven't gotten to that part yet but it looks amazing, it's good that they adapted it. I think the only other game that showed the same thing was The Legacy of Goku 2.

[Dbzfan94]

Dameon Clarke like always kills it as Perfect Cell. You can just tell he’s having fun with the lines. Love it!

[Brojack]

So how are Cyberconnect gonna make a sequel to this? Nobody really cares about the original Dragon Ball for it to sell. Dragon Ball GT was trash so they wouldn't even bother with that.

I suppose Dragon Ball Super is the only thing that could be done but a huge amount of that was just a Tournament with no exploration and too much of it was just Goku and Vegeta.

[Dbzfan94]

So how are Cyberconnect gonna make a sequel to this? Nobody really cares about the original Dragon Ball for it to sell. Dragon Ball GT was trash so they wouldn't even bother with that.

I suppose Dragon Ball Super is the only thing that could be done but a huge amount of that was just a Tournament with no exploration and too much of it was just Goku and Vegeta.

There’s no plans for a sequel.

A DB game in this style would be amazing though. “Nobody cares”? Says who? Speak for yourself. Also GT isn’t trash. I’d love a GT game like this being able to free roam on different planets sounds fun as hell.

[SuperSaiyanPan]

So how are Cyberconnect gonna make a sequel to this? Nobody really cares about the original Dragon Ball for it to sell. Dragon Ball GT was trash so they wouldn't even bother with that.

I suppose Dragon Ball Super is the only thing that could be done but a huge amount of that was just a Tournament with no exploration and too much of it was just Goku and Vegeta.

There’s no plans for a sequel.

A DB game in this style would be amazing though. “Nobody cares”? Says who? Speak for yourself. Also GT isn’t trash. I’d love a GT game like this being able to free roam on different planets sounds fun as hell.

I think I would crap my pants if they announced a GT DLC/Expansion where you have the following playable characters:

Pan
GT Goku
GT Trunks
GT Goten
GT Vegeta
GT Uub
SS4 Gogeta

Imagine all the potential due to GTs unique designs in terms of the planets. Man...I can only dream. Here's hope someone makes a Pan mod for Kakarot.

[Koitsukai]

I'm crazy for this game. It's so fun to just explore, the stages are incredible big, collecting orbs through those worm-holes is really fun too.
I just killed Zarbon, up until this point I got to fight like every single fight of the show, I think, even the little ones. I'm loving Namek, I'm loving the cutscenes, I'm starting to get better at fighting, I'm trying different approaches and enjoying it very much.

I found Dodoria and Zarbon really hard, Dodoria even more so, which I enjoyed quite a lot. Also, I love how there is an animation for Zarbon to defeat you and another for you to defeat Zarbon.

[emperior]

Hello everyone.

I have bought the game on Day 1 and have already completed it and I am a few wishes and instant wins away from getting the platinum trophy. Playtime is around 45 hours. I completed most of the side-quests except for a few ones because I thought I could have completed them all at the end of the game - and even if that will be the case in a future update, right now I can’t do them. So I would suggest you guys to do them AS SOON as you see them, and to always check for the map, or better the “story” menu to see if new ones appeared because some stories stay for very little time.
I don’t know if it’s my fault or not. I don’t remember if the game ever told me that side-quests were bound to the story arcs, and I realized it only once I completed my first one. And I also had no ideas they had to be done as soon as they popped up because going forward with the story would make them disappear.

Now let’s jump to a short review.
First of all, I have loved this game despite it having some flaws. To make it easy, I will make a list of pros and cons:

Pros:
+ Incredibly immersive world, with some beautiful scenarios which are very faithful to the DB world seen in the anime and manga. Exploring it is an awesome experience.
+ The fighting system, which was one of the things which I was most concerned about, is actually very fun.
+ The progression system is very satisfying: a fight from early Saiyan arc at level 3 is completely different from a Buu arc fight at level 70.
+ The 36 cutscenes are very well-made.
+ There are some (very few) additions to the story, such as showing Raditz remembering of his brother.
+ The RPG elements are fun. Unlocking new moves, hunting, fishing, picking up items, gathering the spheres and improving community boards were things that never bored me - and that is, again, a merit of the world they built.

Cons:
- The shading on the characters, outside of cutscenes, is not good. They look very old-gen. I still feel like Burst Limit models looked better, and that’s to avoid the comparison with the incredibly good FighterZ’s models.
I think that, at least for playable characters, they could have made a better job.
- The game was too easy. Way, way too easy. To the point it’s literally impossible to lose, even to enemies with 5+ levels than you, unless you decide to impose some self-rules (such as not to use healing items or OP moves).
Some attacks are completely unbalanced and I can list all of them: Goku’s Genkidama, Piccolo’s Light Grenade and Explosive Wave, Vegeta’s Big Bang attack (the most broken of them all), Trunks’ Burning Attack, Gotenks’ Kamikaze Ghost Attack.
Having these broken attacks made some fights way too easy. And the ease of getting broken healing items made things even easier. I got the senzus once from Korin, and he gave me not 1 but 9. That was a bit too much. Not to mention I was full of other healing items which I didn’t equip on purpose because I wanted fights to be more challenging and to punish me for my errors. Basically I resorted to these “cheap” tricks to make grinding new moves much easier.
This was such a flawed design. The game desperately needs a patch that lowers the availability of senzus, and puts an incredible high price (and a cap) to the other healing items and also nerfs the explosion of the moves I listed, and increases the ki needed to use them because, frankly, even a 3 years old can perfect the Vegeta vs Kid Buu fight by spamming Big Bang Attacks (while Goku’s fight was a bit harder due to his moveset being worse).
- All of this makes a big part of the game, which is hunting and fishing to prepare dishes to eat, completely useless. If the game is too easy, why should I even bother having Chi-Chi prepare me meals to get bonuses?
This was very disappointing for me. I wished so much the game had some inventory limit, and a higher difficulty, to basically force me to grind for this stuff and to go into fights well prepared.
Doing this basically made me too OP, and as a consequence made the boss fights feel underwhelming.
- It’s clear that most of the attention was put in the Saiyan and Freeza arcs. In fact, 24 of the 36 “good” cutscenes of the game are from those two arcs, and even there some fan-favorites such as the Over 8000 scene were missing.
When the Freeza fight ended, the game was a 9, almost 10, out of 10 for me. That’s how good the game was.
Jump to the androids arc, it was clear something was different. In fact that arc is completely shit in the game. For some reason they put almost no love into it, almost as if they shoehorned it and then went on to do Buu.
Vegeta’s Big Bang attack against Android 19? Terribly done with in-game scenes. Tenshinan’s Kikoho? Same as Vegetas Big Bang. Final Flash against Cell? Not there (the whole Super Vegeta fight had no love at all besides a recreation of Vegeta’s transformation, even Cell absoring 18 wasn’t shown). Trunks vs Cell? Off-screen to save on Grade 3 model. Goku’s Instant Kamehameha? Not there. The Cell Games arena was not even destroyed!
Really, I was incredibly disappointed there.
- How to fix this? Having 4 more cutscenes would have done wonders. My choice would be: (1) Over 8000, (2) Vegeta’s Big Bang, (3) Vegeta’s Final Flash, (4) Goku’s Instant Kamehameha.
But honestly, the game would need a few more in my opinion, and I would have preferred to wait a bit longer if that meant having a more complete game.
- Some story changes. Not too important but they were quite easy to notice.
- There is no possibility to change character’s outfits, which I hope will be added with future updates. Why can’t I have Goku wearing his outfit with the Kanjis, or why can’t I have Vegeta wear his Buu arc outfit after Buu arc? The same goes for Gohan, and Piccolo too who can’t be used cape-less. This is a very easy fix.
- On my standard PS4, loading times are too long and sometimes it can get too laggy (mostly in cities when flying with 3 characters, and sometimes in fights with 6 characters).

Conclusion:
Of course I had more to say about the cons of the game. Cause the pros are already pros and there’s not much to expand upon them. An update could fix my main issues with the game, and I hope it happens so that I can replay it and enjoy it more.
In general, this game is a solid 8/10 but, if they were to fix my cons it would easily be a 10/10.
Maybe it’s too soon to say, but this is probably the best Dragon Ball game I have ever played. And I played lots of them.

[Brojack]

A DB game in this style would be amazing though. “Nobody cares”? Says who? Speak for yourself. Also GT isn’t trash. I’d love a GT game like this being able to free roam on different planets sounds fun as hell.

People don't care about Dragon Ball for it sell. That's a series only hardcore fans enjoy, not casuals so it wouldn't sell especially when compared to this one.

And yes GT is absolute garbage, nothing redeeming about that series at all. I thought that was widely acknowledged by now.

[Dbzfan94]

A DB game in this style would be amazing though. “Nobody cares”? Says who? Speak for yourself. Also GT isn’t trash. I’d love a GT game like this being able to free roam on different planets sounds fun as hell.

People don't care about Dragon Ball for it sell. That's a series only hardcore fans enjoy, not casuals so it wouldn't sell especially when compared to this one.

And yes GT is absolute garbage, nothing redeeming about that series at all. I thought that was widely acknowledged by now.

...Dragon Ball, the BEGINNING OF THE STORY, is only something "hardcore fans" like???

And nothing redeemable about GT at all?

Sure buddy, agree to disagree.

Anyway back on topic, I'm finally able to take on more of the villanious enemies. I'm guessing beating them all is how the secret boss is unlocked?

[Dbzfan94]

even if that will be the case in a future update, right now I can’t do them. So I would suggest you guys to do them AS SOON as you see them, and to always check for the map, or better the “story” menu to see if new ones appeared because some stories stay for very little time.
I don’t know if it’s my fault or not. I don’t remember if the game ever told me that side-quests were bound to the story arcs, and I realized it only once I completed my first one.

You can go back and replay story fights to get sidequests you missed.
And its easy to miss, but the game will tell you "available from Cell Episode 3 to Cell Episode 4" for example

[dualist]

Hello everyone.

I have bought the game on Day 1 and have already completed it and I am a few wishes and instant wins away from getting the platinum trophy. Playtime is around 45 hours. I completed most of the side-quests except for a few ones because I thought I could have completed them all at the end of the game - and even if that will be the case in a future update, right now I can’t do them. So I would suggest you guys to do them AS SOON as you see them, and to always check for the map, or better the “story” menu to see if new ones appeared because some stories stay for very little time.
I don’t know if it’s my fault or not. I don’t remember if the game ever told me that side-quests were bound to the story arcs, and I realized it only once I completed my first one. And I also had no ideas they had to be done as soon as they popped up because going forward with the story would make them disappear.

Now let’s jump to a short review.
First of all, I have loved this game despite it having some flaws. To make it easy, I will make a list of pros and cons:

Pros:
+ Incredibly immersive world, with some beautiful scenarios which are very faithful to the DB world seen in the anime and manga. Exploring it is an awesome experience.
+ The fighting system, which was one of the things which I was most concerned about, is actually very fun.
+ The progression system is very satisfying: a fight from early Saiyan arc at level 3 is completely different from a Buu arc fight at level 70.
+ The 36 cutscenes are very well-made.
+ There are some (very few) additions to the story, such as showing Raditz remembering of his brother.
+ The RPG elements are fun. Unlocking new moves, hunting, fishing, picking up items, gathering the spheres and improving community boards were things that never bored me - and that is, again, a merit of the world they built.

Cons:
- The shading on the characters, outside of cutscenes, is not good. They look very old-gen. I still feel like Burst Limit models looked better, and that’s to avoid the comparison with the incredibly good FighterZ’s models.
I think that, at least for playable characters, they could have made a better job.
- The game was too easy. Way, way too easy. To the point it’s literally impossible to lose, even to enemies with 5+ levels than you, unless you decide to impose some self-rules (such as not to use healing items or OP moves).
Some attacks are completely unbalanced and I can list all of them: Goku’s Genkidama, Piccolo’s Light Grenade and Explosive Wave, Vegeta’s Big Bang attack (the most broken of them all), Trunks’ Burning Attack, Gotenks’ Kamikaze Ghost Attack.
Having these broken attacks made some fights way too easy. And the ease of getting broken healing items made things even easier. I got the senzus once from Korin, and he gave me not 1 but 9. That was a bit too much. Not to mention I was full of other healing items which I didn’t equip on purpose because I wanted fights to be more challenging and to punish me for my errors. Basically I resorted to these “cheap” tricks to make grinding new moves much easier.
This was such a flawed design. The game desperately needs a patch that lowers the availability of senzus, and puts an incredible high price (and a cap) to the other healing items and also nerfs the explosion of the moves I listed, and increases the ki needed to use them because, frankly, even a 3 years old can perfect the Vegeta vs Kid Buu fight by spamming Big Bang Attacks (while Goku’s fight was a bit harder due to his moveset being worse).
- All of this makes a big part of the game, which is hunting and fishing to prepare dishes to eat, completely useless. If the game is too easy, why should I even bother having Chi-Chi prepare me meals to get bonuses?
This was very disappointing for me. I wished so much the game had some inventory limit, and a higher difficulty, to basically force me to grind for this stuff and to go into fights well prepared.
Doing this basically made me too OP, and as a consequence made the boss fights feel underwhelming.
- It’s clear that most of the attention was put in the Saiyan and Freeza arcs. In fact, 24 of the 36 “good” cutscenes of the game are from those two arcs, and even there some fan-favorites such as the Over 8000 scene were missing.
When the Freeza fight ended, the game was a 9, almost 10, out of 10 for me. That’s how good the game was.
Jump to the androids arc, it was clear something was different. In fact that arc is completely shit in the game. For some reason they put almost no love into it, almost as if they shoehorned it and then went on to do Buu.
Vegeta’s Big Bang attack against Android 19? Terribly done with in-game scenes. Tenshinan’s Kikoho? Same as Vegetas Big Bang. Final Flash against Cell? Not there (the whole Super Vegeta fight had no love at all besides a recreation of Vegeta’s transformation, even Cell absoring 18 wasn’t shown). Trunks vs Cell? Off-screen to save on Grade 3 model. Goku’s Instant Kamehameha? Not there. The Cell Games arena was not even destroyed!
Really, I was incredibly disappointed there.
- How to fix this? Having 4 more cutscenes would have done wonders. My choice would be: (1) Over 8000, (2) Vegeta’s Big Bang, (3) Vegeta’s Final Flash, (4) Goku’s Instant Kamehameha.
But honestly, the game would need a few more in my opinion, and I would have preferred to wait a bit longer if that meant having a more complete game.
- Some story changes. Not too important but they were quite easy to notice.
- There is no possibility to change character’s outfits, which I hope will be added with future updates. Why can’t I have Goku wearing his outfit with the Kanjis, or why can’t I have Vegeta wear his Buu arc outfit after Buu arc? The same goes for Gohan, and Piccolo too who can’t be used cape-less. This is a very easy fix.
- On my standard PS4, loading times are too long and sometimes it can get too laggy (mostly in cities when flying with 3 characters, and sometimes in fights with 6 characters).

Conclusion:
Of course I had more to say about the cons of the game. Cause the pros are already pros and there’s not much to expand upon them. An update could fix my main issues with the game, and I hope it happens so that I can replay it and enjoy it more.
In general, this game is a solid 8/10 but, if they were to fix my cons it would easily be a 10/10.
Maybe it’s too soon to say, but this is probably the best Dragon Ball game I have ever played. And I played lots of them.

I've only played the game a little and the lack of difficulty was my main concern and am disappointed that we can't change it. Games are generally too easy these days but I love a good challenge. I'm still on the Saiyan Saga since I only really have time to game on the weekends, but 8/10 seems about right. Loving the game so far.

On another note, while I love the music in the game from the original Japanese score, it started to get redundant. So for those of you who like the Faulkner score, I suggest adding the Spotify app on your PS4 and add Fauklner dragonball music. All his stuff is on there. I turned down the music in game and I have to say that the nostalgia levels rose significantly when playing to his score. If you watched DBZ with Faulkner's score, I couldn't recommend playing the game this way enough.

[Brojack]

...Dragon Ball, the BEGINNING OF THE STORY, is only something "hardcore fans" like???

Yes. Dragon Ball was never that popular in the west, it's popularity only ever came as an after effect of Z.

Why are you surprised? Do they make OG Dragon Ball games? No. Why? Because nobody would buy them. There was what...one for the GBA, a couple on DS and one on the Wii... otherwise it's not touched because there's no money in it.

And nothing redeemable about GT at all?

No. The storylines sucked, the old characters were butchered, the new characters were horrific, the fights were forgettable, the animation was poor, the tone was childish, the power scaling was all over the place etc.

The music, maybe the music was the only thing that wasn't completely awful. Nothing else.

[Zeon_Grunt]

So for those of you who like the Faulkner score, I suggest adding the Spotify app on your PS4 and add Fauklner dragonball music.

Alternatively, if you're on PC, I'm working on a quick and dirty Faulconer Score mod that should be ready either later tonight or sometime in the next few days.

[Drayenko]

Yes. Dragon Ball was never that popular in the west, it's popularity only ever came as an after effect of Z.

Why are you surprised? Do they make OG Dragon Ball games? No. Why? Because nobody would buy them.

Hmmm. Not really. That may be the case in the U.S but in South America (and Europe) the original series is/was pretty popular. Yes, Z is the most popular, no one in their right mind would dispute that, but that doesn't mean the other one wasn't a hit.

With that said, the reason it's hard to make original DB games, is the same we probably will never see original Naruto games. It's easier to adapt latter parts, as they are normally more popular. Simple as that. No need to say one is/would not be popular without the other. That's not the case here. There are many factors in the process of making a game.

[emperior]

Brojack is unfortunately right. DB is nowhere as popular as DBZ or even Super. Having a game concentrated on it wouldn’t be a smart choice.

As much as I would love a more grounded RPG focused on the pre-Saiyan stuff, with a bigger focus on exploration similarly to Breath of the Wild and with battles entirely on the ground, I don’t think we will ever get that.

And probably the most complete DB game ever, with a story from chapter 1 to 519, will always be a dream. Such a game would be too long, wouldn’t it?
Well maybe they could fit pre-Saiyan stuff into 15-20 hours of gameplay.
But then, wouldn’t going from the first Yamcha fight to Majin Buu be too big of a jump in power to have an universal fighting mechanic?

Right now Kakarot has lots of assets they can use for another game and save a lot of development time.
I would love to get a sequel for the next generation of consoles. And I would love it even more if, in case this game ends up selling very well, they finally decide to make the sequel an AAA game with a big budget.
In that case, if they keep having CC2 make these types of games, we may eventually also get DB stuff.

[Dbzfan94]

...Dragon Ball, the BEGINNING OF THE STORY, is only something "hardcore fans" like???

Yes. Dragon Ball was never that popular in the west, it's popularity only ever came as an after effect of Z.

Why are you surprised? Do they make OG Dragon Ball games? No. Why? Because nobody would buy them. There was what...one for the GBA, a couple on DS and one on the Wii... otherwise it's not touched because there's no money in it.

And nothing redeemable about GT at all?

No. The storylines sucked, the old characters were butchered, the new characters were horrific, the fights were forgettable, the animation was poor, the tone was childish, the power scaling was all over the place etc.

The music, maybe the music was the only thing that wasn't completely awful. Nothing else.

Again, agree to disagree. Albeit a little ironic.

[Zinnia]

And yes GT is absolute garbage, nothing redeeming about that series at all. I thought that was widely acknowledged by now.

Stop your hate boner. And no, it isn't "widely acknowledged", which is why games like Legends, Xenoverse, FighterZ continue with adding GT. The series has it's loyal fanbase and it's bigger than you would expect.

"Nothing redeeming" says who? I watched it and liked it myself.

[Dbzfan94]

And yes GT is absolute garbage, nothing redeeming about that series at all. I thought that was widely acknowledged by now.

Stop your hate boner. And no, it isn't "widely acknowledged", which is why games like Legends, Xenoverse, FighterZ continue with adding GT. The series has it's loyal fanbase and it's bigger than you would expect.

"Nothing redeeming" says who? I watched it and liked it myself.

Thank you.

But I don’t want this to devolve into another GT Debate thread

Super stuff has been datamined fully now.

Spoiler:

SSG and Blue Vegeta as well

.

I’m gonna try to get a refund for the season pass. No interest in that stuff.