Mark Bozon over at IGN has finally put up a review of “Budokai Tenkaichi 3” focusing on the Wii version, though mentioning the PS2 version where appropriate:
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 is far from being a failure of a game. When looking at the core gameplay, and ignoring the titles before it, BT3 is a fast, fun, and amazingly deep experience for fans of the award-winning anime. There are more characters here than in any other fighter out there (161 total), with a huge story, impressive library of information and extras for each of the fighters in the game, and as much fan service as there is actual gameplay throughout. After so many iterations of the same design, however, we’ll admit the series is starting to lose steam, and while newcomers to DBZ fighters or loyal fans may swear the contrary, we couldn’t shake the overwhelming “been there, done that” feel. The main story mode is thinner, the modes gained from PS2 disc fusion could have simply been included on both PS2 and Wii without the need for previous purchases, and the online for Wii is currently broken. Yes, the core fighting experience is better, and with nearly 200 fighters there’s a ton to see and do in BT3.
With such a mix of positives and negatives overall though, it is hard to recommend Tenkaichi 3 for purchase when you could just as easily pick up BT2 for a fraction of the price, or skip a year and wait for the inevitable sequel to come along. Should online play be fixed, however, or if you’re looking for the single largest roster of fighters out there in an experience that’s astonishingly true to the anime, Budokai Tenkaichi 3 is still a great choice. A word to the wise though: There’s always another DBZ game on the way.
Honestly, I could not agree more with the review. If you check out what we have been saying on the podcast (just this week with our final thoughts, and back on Episode #0099 with our initial thoughts), you will pretty much hear a mirror of what was written up here, concluded with a very fair score of 8.0
Right now, the metacritic.com score is hovering at 75/100, while the user score is 9.8/10…