As the old adage goes, better late than never, right? Well, perhaps not in this case.
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We reviewed the game in podcast form back on Episode #0277 of our show, but the launch of Kanzenshuu itself pushed back the written review quite a bit. Before we jump into Dragon Ball Z for Kinect later this year, I felt it was important to document the train-wreck that was last October’s Ultimate Tenkaichi.
Is that spoiling the review too much? Oh, well. Disappointment is par for the course in this update — might as well get used to it now while you still can.
On the plus side, this review out of the way clears room for the over-a-year-late review of the Nintendo DS game Dragon Ball Kai: Ultimate Butōden to hit your eyes soon.
2 Comments
Thank you for a legibly well written, engaging and unbiased review sir.
I haven’t supported a Dragon Ball video game myself since ‘Budokai 3’. Honestly, due to no income at the time and ease of access I regrettably pirated post titles throughout the Playstation 2 generation. With ‘free’ content, it was still obvious that subsequent releases to the ‘Budokai’ series weren’t fielding my desire to interact with these characters in the fighting genre.
At present, fortunately even with the means, none of the titles in the current PS cycle have warranted a purchase because of the repetitively appearing ‘upgrades’. If anything, I’m considering turning back & purchasing ‘Super Dragon Ball Z’ or ‘Legends’ (a binary example of quality, individualised video games of the franchise.)
I’m still waiting for an extremely well-developed rendition of ‘Sagas’ from the beginning of the series (Revenge of King Piccolo being the closest thus far). At the moment, nothing sounds better than a ‘platforming RPG action-adventure’ as Son Goku, facing the trials and tribulations of locating the Dragon Balls through making allies, fighting enemies and exploring the world presented by Toriyama in greater detail. A Dragon Ball-ised ‘Ni No Kuni’ if you will. (Makafushigi Adventure, anyone)?
Speaking of games ‘me want’, I wonder what the possibilities for a ‘Battle Stadium D.O.N. 2’ #instantimport
To be honest I felt that the controls for Raging Blast 2 were just fine, after playing for a short period I picked up a feel for the controls quite quickly. I’m surprised anyone thought they were convoluted, clunky or confusing to say the least but I guess not everyone can pick up a controller and just play a game right off the bat.
I agree that the controls of Ultimate Tenkaichi are way too simplistic and I would have liked to see the same level of complexity of the Raging Blast series or even older games. To me this game was a huge let-down which was obviously just there to pave way for the DBZ kinect game that’s supposed to be release later this or next year. What I did feel from the game however is the Raging Blast vibe so they must have just used it as a template and started cutting out as many mechanics as they could.
All in all I would say this was a very sloppy piece of work by Spike who could have made an excellent DBZ simulator crossed with a some very good fight mechanics with the instalment of a 3rd Raging Blast but all we get is a DBZ cut-scene experience with hardly any control or flow of the battle. It just seems they kind of stuffed us out of a really good DBZ game title for a watered down copy of their previous game. They are probably laughing at us right now while rolling in the money they accumulated from people like me who bought the game and the extra money they didn’t have to spend on making a new game as they just used their previous game with heavily removed features.