"Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Xeogran » Sat Jan 18, 2020 1:39 pm

Grimlock wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 2:52 pm
Xeogran wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2020 12:26 pmBardock is referenced too.
Where?
I saw someone post a text mentioning "Dad's Past" in the files. It could technically also be about Kid Goku though (which I would welcome)

Edit: Found it https://twitter.com/KenXyro/status/1217780059915730944
Guess it's not Bardock, nevermind then..

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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Robo4900 » Sat Jan 18, 2020 2:30 pm

sangofe wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 2:04 am Just re inforces your personal bias you had from the get go. I've seen and read way different reviews that are very positive.
I mean, I assumed "lol oof" would get across the sort of half-sarcasm, but to be clear: I had a lot of concerns looking at what this game seems to be, that it might be a game that's not to my tastes, and his review confirms my concerns, so...

Obviously I'd read other reviews before making a definitive decision, but the game never looked hugely interesting to me anyway?... So... Eh, maybe I'll pick it up in a sale sometime, but I don't think I'm gonna be rushing to dive in. It's probably a fun game, but I'm not sure it's to my tastes. Sounds like a fairly shallow but fun enough game that will generally be quite inoffensive and well-liked. Which is fine, a lot of people will probably really enjoy it, but I dunno if it's for me.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Scsigs » Sat Jan 18, 2020 2:49 pm

sangofe wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 2:04 am
I'll say this, though it's based on only ~3 hours of playing since I didn't have a ton of time to play last night & also wanted to take a break at that point. If you're looking for a game with a hugely in-depth combat system, I don't think it's here. The combat system keeps tripping me up because it's enough like Xenoverse's, but not enough to piss me off. And there's no option to change combat styles or remap controls on the console versions as far as I know, but I'll look again during my next gameplay session. The bar for telling you your attacks & controls seems like it's taking cues from Kingdom Hearts as well, only this game isn't directed by Tetsuya Nomura or made by Square's Tokyo Team, so it's incredibly awkward with the cues they also took from Xenoverse mixed in. And the problem with Xenoverse is that it's kinda too easy minus random, inconsistent difficulty spikes with certain bosses, which is especially emphasized with how you can get into a rut gameplay-wise with the physical attacks & special moves. Like, All I had to do was a fairly simple combo into a Kaioken Kamehameha, combined with whatever Super Saiyan transformations I had available at the time that would give me a good power boost.

It also suffers from the Kingdom Hearts 3 problem of poor overall game balancing. What I mean here is that KH3 has 4 difficulty modes. Anything below Critical Mode is too easy, especially if you've played the other games, & Crit is a bit too hard. This all lies in the game's base design, though, for KH3, which they could easily send out a balance patch to fix. DBZ Kakarot doesn't have a difficulty select, meaning you're at the mercy of the game to decide how tough some things are/should be at sporadic intervals. Like, it took me 3 or 4 attempts to fight Raditz because the game suddenly decided to throw a difficulty spike my way. The boss also is consistently annoying for when he went into a guard, which he was somehow able to do right at the end of my physical combos with no warning. The game also places a heavy emphasis on blocking & even holds your hand on if you don't by giving you a prompt that reminds you. KH3 Crit also has that problem. There's also another problem with the bosses DMing randomly & inconsistently. There's phases where they'll do somethings more than others, but the AI just feels too randomized for my liking. Revenge value & clear tells are the way to go, not randomized break-outs of attacks & inconsistent super armor. You also get punished for attacking at times. Yeah. An Action RPG punishes you for doing what you're supposed to be doing with no clear reasons. You're supposed to punish a player for making the wrong moves when there's a clear time & place to do something & reward them for learning, not punish them for learning what you want them to learn & proper strategies.
It also doesn't help that the game has you doing annoying chip damage to the bosses when they have higher attack stats. I get that they're stronger & have higher defense, but when they do a LOT of damage to ME & I don't do jackshit to THEM, even if they're only a few levels higher than me, that's a problem. Goku's health pool is incredibly small at the beginning too, so you can easily get shredded in no time flat. When the game gives you tutorials on how to play it, but doesn't give you sufficient boss battle design to test out what you've learned, that's a problem.

The game also clearly wants you to grind, since there's enemies all over the place, which also gives you a chance to practice strats & moves for boss battles. The problem is that the grunts are pretty piss easy, like you'd expect them to be. It also places a heavy emphasis on food, which games like FFXV & KH3 did as well, but I have no idea how much this'll become important in later boss battles &, if it's very important, that's a failure of the game design. Stat boosting stuff should only help, not be your main source of winning. KH3 Crit also has that problem.
I don't really mind an RPG wanting you to grind, but the grind HAS to be very worth it & be fun or at least not a burden on the player. Pokemon does well in the grinding department because you have battles on the way up to gym leaders & bad guys that get you used to the experience (also, EXP share, since X & Y, has been a goddamn time & life saver that I'm really glad the devs revamped because I didn't even know that was a thing until then because the previous games never told me about it). Kingdom Hearts has a pretty passive grinding system as well that just asks you to play the game. FFXV has trinkets that increase EXP values as well. So, I'm hoping the world exploration really opens up the potential for grinding in this game & they do stuff that really helps speed it along with the community board. I have no problems doing side stuff either as long as it nets me stuff that makes it worth doing them for. Kingdom Hearts BBS has a pretty great grinding system that nets you stuff for your Command Deck that you level up as you go & there are some sweet grinding spots in the game that lets you get what you're looking for pretty quickly provided you look up a melding guide or experiment. The game clearly wants you to take your time with it, so we'll see.

When it comes to the look of it, I think it's ok. It's not FighterZ-level accurate (seriously, expecting it to look exactly like the anime is absurd) or Xenoverse-level consistent (the clothes are rendered differently on the character models than the skin & hair for some reason, making them look weird), but it's fine. Some of the character models are weird though, like Goku's hair being weirdly proportioned, or Vegeta's hair looking more like it did in Budokai than the newer games, but it's ok. Some character faces are weird, though, in terms of some things like eyes being odd in certain angles.

The dub is also pretty good. It's about what you'd expect at this point with the returning cast doing a fantastic job, minus some slightly awkward line reads at times, but they don't ever get the cutscenes or even just storyboards to dub, so they have to make do with the direction Bandai gives them with the scripts & their own figuring out of where certain lines would be. Some lines are weirdly cut off, though, & I don't get why. Like, the last words of lines will oddly cut off in places or parts of the words they're saying will be cut off, which I hope they patch up soon. I know they have to match everything up in terms of timing, but this is sloppy considering no other DB game has done that. I also wish we got a mix of different words for combat dialogue. Hearing Goku punch into a full physical combo & having him always say, "HERE GOES!" has gotten very grating & fast already. Usually games like this will have the actors record a few different lines for the game to randomly choose from in these situations, like Kingdom Hearts 1 having Sora say, "This should help," or "Here!", or "[Insert ally name here]" when healing them. Or it'll just be grunting. Otherwise, I'm legitimately surprised by what they retained in the English dub from the Japanese. Goku's full name of "Son" being retained is awesome, since the English dubs have a weird aversion to it outside of that one moment in Kai & the Narrator is definitely Doc Morgan, they only had Kyle Hebert do that one cheap trailer, which I'm fine with. Though it creates some weirdness with the character introduction titles or descriptions, like Master Roshi should be Muten Roshi, but meh. They're not gonna change that at this point since it's set in stone.

However, one thing I find weird is that they default to the Xenoverse-style of having text dialogue with no lines, but the characters saying something or grunting when the text bubbles appear. WHY do games still do this shit!?! In the year of our dear Lord & benevolent Saviour Mr. Popo, 2020, WHY do games on consoles & PCs still do this shit? It's inconsistent on this too, since it has in-engine cutscenes of the characters talking presented exactly like in FighterZ where they're just standing there & you HAVE to press a button to advance the dialogue after they say their lines to get passed them rather than have the dialogue move at a natural pace & not require button prompts. I HATE this in FighterZ's story mode. It's incredibly stupid. But it's just really inconsistent with the parts that are still like this, but they bothered to have the characters say the lines. With how many characters that return that they HAD to get the casts back for, in both languages, you'd think they'd have the presentation be better. Kingdom Hearts 3 set a new standard to get rid of text bubbles for dialogue in these kinds of games, letting the characters actually say their lines out loud, so what's this game's excuse? It's not a weird MMO/Action RPG hybrid like Xenoverse, which also had more engaging in-engine cutscenes, so I expect better.

Overall, it's ok so far. Bit of a mixed bag, but ok.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pm
This. Everything about this. If you see a game with all of its marketing & what the devs & publisher(s) have said about it, then expect it to be something completely different than advertised &, suddenly, you're shocked to find something that wasn't going with your stupidly set expectations? That's a you problem, not the game's problem. Expecting a deep fighting game or just a fighting game like FighterZ isn't fair to the vision of the game we actually have & the people who do that shit know it, they're just too stubborn. It's easy to compare similar games, like FighterZ to Guilty Gear, Budokai 1-3 to Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter, Pokemon to Final Fantasy 1-13, Kingdom Hearts to Final Fantasy XV or VII Remake, &/or Kakarot to Xenoverse because they're similar games. Comparing Kakarot to FighterZ is going to be incredibly unfair to either game because they're too different in terms of structure & identity. I had a moment when watching the Digital Foundry video on the console ports of Kakarot where the guy narrating the video compared the visuals to that of FighterZ & I left the comment of, "Why would you expect this to look like FighterZ?" To which the few comment replies I've gotten are people basically saying, "Why wouldn't we?" even though that's incredibly unfair to Kakarot. Both teams of devs set out to make different kinds of games with their own creative choices & styles & we need to respect that & just review what was given to us as opposed to what we would've preferred or liked. That's only fair. I have done just that up top.

To say that this game shouldn't have adapted the manga & anime like the older games did is an incredibly gate keeping mentality on what should constitute a Dragon Ball game, especially since we haven't gotten a true DB game that represented the story as-is from the source material in how long? You COULD say the 7th generation, but, if we're being completely honest, probably Budokai 3. Tenkaichi let you branch off story paths if you did crazy shit, Xenoverse has you resetting the timeline from disaster, & every other game has either a bunch of what-ifs or an original story, which is fine, but not what some people want (they also have mostly shallow combat systems & no open world elements). To also deny people the ability to play the actual story of the source material is incredibly awful. Especially when it's incredibly stupid to expect people who probably don't have older consoles to buy said consoles & try to find used copies of the games, which could be hard or expensive. Yes, there's emulators, but most people just wanna play the games on their consoles in a good presentation. The only way you could say that is if Bandai were to rerelease those games with modern HD ports, but that shouldn't arbitrarily constraint a developer from making the game they wanna make. CyberConnect2 wanted to make a DB game that was an open-world Action RPG that told the story of Z with some minor expansions after years of us not having a game or games that did that.
Legacy of Goku 1 & 2 & Buu's Fury are the closest we've gotten to that in the DB franchise. Literally every other game is either a fighting game (go figure), or an action game in some way with no real open world elements in some attempt to give fans of the fighting, & not the characters or stories, an attempt to live out a power fantasy or live out their fanfictions, which is NOT a bad thing, let me make that clear, but there are fans who enjoy the slice of life episodes of Super, the slower filler episodes of the shows, who enjoy Battle of Gods for melding together the comedy & character moments & interactions of OG DB with the action of Z, which GT attempted to do, but it didn't have Toriyama's charm or skill to do so. This is why people like DBZ Abridged. People enjoy the comedy & character moments that they write in their parody of Z. Most of that comedy wouldn't work as most of it does if the characters weren't fun to parody or fun IN the parody. It's why I like a wacky cartoon like Rick & Morty or South Park, but not Family Guy or Teen Titans Go. The characters help the comedy & they're written & portrayed right in the first 2, but not the other, & it makes it extremely hard to watch because I don't have fun with the last 2, so I don't watch them (if anyone brings up the fact that TTG is a kid's show, you're missing the entire point of my bringing it up).
There's a bullshit article that went around on Twitter yesterday by CBR where they said "DBZ: Kakarot Finally Makes Goku a Good Father," which only shows the types of DB fans we have here. The ones that love the action but don't care about the character moments or comedy. IGN also had a critic that didn't like Battle of Gods over Res. F because of "campy filler" & "lack of action," which the majority of fans would probably disagree with. I also think it's unfair since it was meant to be a reunion movie & the first time Toriyama made new DB material in almost 20 years, as well as the films having 2 different goals in mind. This is another example of gate keeping in DB & judging things for what they're not because you don't personally like that they're doing, so you judge it by standards that aren't fair or are readily applicable, only towards the movies.

I, personally, was really looking forward to this game & I'll have my full thoughts when I finish it probably by the end of the week by the time KH3: Re:Mind comes out, but I'm ok with it so far. I like the retelling of the Z storyline, that's not a legit criticism or hinderance of the game at this point. If you prefer how other games do things, that's fine. I'm just absorbing the game as-is & forming my opinions as I go.
Last edited by Scsigs on Sat Jan 18, 2020 4:34 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Lord Beerus » Sat Jan 18, 2020 4:11 pm

Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pmYou're not biased because you don't like the game, you're biased because you didn't give it a fair chance to be what it was trying to be and won't judge it on it's own merits. You had expectations for what you wanted it to be (something no one ever tried to sell the game as) and when it failed in those departments, you've dismissed the game as being bad.
I spent nearly 19 fucking hours playing the game. I think that's enough time to gather a decent opinion on its content, let alone giving it "a fair chance". And did you miss my previous posts where I stated that the combat was poor, the side mission were tedious, the RPG elements were unnecessarily cluttered and cutscenes were aesthetically unappealing?

I refuse to sugarcoat my opinion on this game. If fails in all the key areas that an Action RPG should excel in for me to have a positive opinion on it, I will call it out on those failures.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pm Now it's not a perfect game (the controls are clunky and the side quests are pointless), but to claim this type of DBZ game has been done before and better is misleading. Other than the Legacy of Goku titles, it's the only action RPG in the franchise, more so the only one to do such a complete retelling of the story (most quit after Freeza or Cell, this one actually goes up to Boo). The only thing close on consoles was Sagas and that game is infinitely worse than this one. To claim that LoG did the whole action RPG thing better is also a lie as it's combat is even shallower (and in the case of LoG1, more broken thanks to shit hit detection) than Kakarot's.
A Dragon Ball game where can you can can level up your characters RPG style, play as different members of the cast as go through the major story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc and have the freedom to travel around different worlds to find extra content... yeah... Budokai 3 and Budokai Tenkaichi 2 did this, and did it in much more streamlined and, in my honest opinion, a superior fashion.

I must stress that this is just my personal opinion. There are no objective facts when comparing one RPG to another. You may think I'm lying when I say Legacy of Goku 2 handled its RPG aspects better than Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, but that's the opinion I've come to from playing both games for a extensive amount of time. You can disagree with my opinion, but please don't call me a liar. That's quite childish.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pmI can't think of many action RPGs on the market that don't have shallow as hell combat similar to this game's, where all you do is mash one attack button and break it up with specials/spells. Despite DBZ being a fighting franchise, this isn't a fighting game and to expect fighting game levels of depth in the mechanics was always going to set yourself up for disappointment.
Monster Hunter, The Witcher, Dark Souls, The Elder Scrolls, Diablo, Deus Ex, Dragon Age, Dishonored... these are some of the series of action RPG's that thrived in providing versatility in combat and have been praised for it by many people.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pmPersonally, I think your complaint about the story being retold (as well as everyone else complaining about the story) is complete horseshit. Just because the anime is the definitive adaptation of the source material, doesn't mean we shouldn't/can't also have video games that tell the same story. I'm sorry you're bored of the DBZ story already, but there are tons of us who either aren't or haven't had the chance to play through the actual story of DBZ. This modern belief that because we got Budokai and Budokai Tenkaichi that Bamco needs to permanently stop adapting DBZ's story and exclusively do What-If stories honestly infuriates me. Ignoring that every time they've ventured away from the source material, it's been shit, we gotta remember that while you and I may have played every PS2 game, that was 2 generations and 13 years ago. There are countless fans these days who simply weren't around back then and never got to play through the story on "modern" (read: current gen at the time, so PS3 for last gen, PS4 this gen, PS5 next gen) consoles. Hell, I alone have 5 nephews who all love DBZ but are all too young to have played BT3 in it's heyday and don't care to replay retro games because they admittedly look like shit and control wonky without the last decade's worth of QoL improvements every game genre has made.
If I wanted to see videogame cutscenes of the retelling of the story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc, I'd just play Infinite World. When I was playing Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, the same question kept popping into my mind: why would the fuck should I be still interested in seeing a less visually appealing adaption of Toriyama's work? This isn't a scenario where Toriyama's work hasn't been adapted and the game works as an avenue to present that work in a different visual medium, even taking into consideration the people who may not have been exposed to Dragon Ball Z by this point. I've already bought and watched an adaption of Toriyama's work, and it's still readily available to be purchased and/or watched at any convenience by anyone.

It fucking mystifies that fans would want MORE of the same thing or justify Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot regurgitating the story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc under the premise of bringing new fans into the series. An animated adaption already exists! It's there to be watched! Hell, there's even re-cut edition that trims out a good chunk of the filler and has a decent English dub! And even better yet, it actually includes the ending! But even taking all of that out of consideration, why should I have a good opinion of game that has terrible combat, clunky RPG elements, aesthetically unappealing cutscenes and boring side missions?

If all you guys want is just another regurgitation of the story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc, then you do you. But I'm just done with that angle. I'm not trying to fucking gatekeep anyone from getting into the story Dragon Ball Z. There just so happens to be an animated adaption of Toriyama's work, that does what this game is trying to do with its own presentation of the main story. And it does it better. I just find Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot to be so redundant. And that hard blow would have been softened if the combat wasn't terrible, the RPG elements weren't poorly implemented and the side missions weren't an absolute chore. Forgive me for going into an Action RPG with the hope that the "action" and "RPG" elements would be up to scratch, but I can't help but have some standards.

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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Zeon_Grunt » Sat Jan 18, 2020 5:04 pm

Lord Beerus wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 4:11 pm I spent nearly 19 fucking hours playing the game. I think that's enough time to gather a decent opinion on its content, let alone giving it "a fair chance". And did you miss my previous posts where I stated that the combat was poor, the side mission were tedious, the RPG elements were unnecessarily cluttered and cutscenes were aesthetically unappealing?

I refuse to sugarcoat my opinion on this game. If fails in all the key areas that an Action RPG should excel in for me to have a positive opinion on it, I will call it out on those failures.
There's a huge difference between playing a game for an excessive amount of time and giving it a fair chance. If you're spending the majority of your time just lamenting that it's not something different based on an unwarranted set of expectations (like expecting it to give you a new version of DBZ's story when they never once hinted that this was their intention), you're not giving it a fair chance.

Your issues with the controls, side content, and lacking RPG elements are valid complaints, but that's not the point I was taking issue with, it was your lambasting the story because it's not "something new." As for the cutscenes, I don't get this complaint at all. The fully fleshed out ones are absolutely amazing to watch and the rest are generic JRPG fair. Most JRPGs have shit cutscenes outside the big budget ones.
A Dragon Ball game where can you can can level up your characters RPG style, play as different members of the cast as go through the major story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc and have the freedom to travel around different worlds to find extra content... yeah... Budokai 3 and Budokai Tenkaichi 2 did this, and did it in much more streamlined and, in my honest opinion, a superior fashion.
Except those aren't action RPGs, or RPGs at all, they're fighting games that just happen to have RPG lite elements to their story. There are no other action RPGs on console and Legacy of Goku is the only other action RPGs in the franchise. You can prefer the older games all you want, but to claim Budokai 3 (the game with no side quests, no towns to visit, few to no NPCs outside the Z Fighters, etc) did the open world better, or to claim BT2's story mode is remotely comparable to Kakarot's is a damn lie and you know it.

Monster Hunter, The Witcher, Dark Souls, The Elder Scrolls, Diablo, Deus Ex, Dragon Age, Dishonored... these are some of the series of action RPG's that thrived in providing versatility in combat and have been praised for it by many people.
I guess we should ignore that you're comparing huge AAA titles with massive amounts of production values and polish to a AA liscensed title, but yes, there are some that have deep combat, but they are few and far between. Shallow combat is the norm for action RPGs, not the exception. There's a reason the few games that do do this are regarded as masterpieces.
If I wanted to see videogame cutscenes of the retelling of the story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc, I'd just play Infinite World.
Why in the world would you play a game whose cutscenes leave out HUGE chunks of the story and is only remotely understandable if you already know the story?
When I was playing Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, the same question kept popping into my mind: why would the fuck should I be still interested in seeing a less visually appealing adaption of Toriyama's work? This isn't a scenario where Toriyama's work hasn't been adapted and the game works as an avenue to present that work in a different visual medium, even taking into consideration the people who may not have been exposed to Dragon Ball Z by this point. I've already bought and watched an adaption of Toriyama's work, and it's still readily available to be purchased and/or watched at any convenience by anyone.
Ignoring that the quality of the visuals is purely subjective (I personally find the main cutscenes and the overall game itself gorgeous even if the generic cutscenes are really lacking, which, again, is typical of JRPGs much less licensed ones), which do you honestly think is easier to get into, a 9 season anime with literally hundreds of episodes that cost $15-20 a season or a quick 20h game that only costs $60?
It fucking mystifies that fans would want MORE of the same thing or justify Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot regurgitating the story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc under the premise of bringing new fans into the series. An animated adaption already exists! It's there to be watched! Hell, there's even re-cut edition that trims out a good chunk of the filler and has a decent English dub! And even better yet, it actually includes the ending! But even taking all of that out of consideration, why should I have a good opinion of game that has terrible combat, clunky RPG elements, aesthetically unappealing cutscenes and boring side missions?
You're acting like the game adaptations are meant to replace the anime ones, but that's literally never the case. They exist to supplement the main content, not replace it. Beyond that, you having played the story through a dozen times is a you problem, not an issue with the game. No one held a gun to your head and forced you to play every DBZ game that came out or will come out and there's no shame is just admitting that a certain game just isn't your cup of tea or isn't meant for you and skipping it.
I'm not trying to fucking gatekeep anyone from getting into the story Dragon Ball Z.
No, you're trying to gatekeep the games claiming that there shouldn't be game adapations because anime adapations already exists. You're ignoring that some people want to PLAY the story and be part of it not just watch it.

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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Scsigs » Sat Jan 18, 2020 7:40 pm

Lord Beerus wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 4:11 pm
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pm
I spent nearly 19 fucking hours playing the game. I think that's enough time to gather a decent opinion on its content, let alone giving it "a fair chance". And did you miss my previous posts where I stated that the combat was poor, the side mission were tedious, the RPG elements were unnecessarily cluttered and cutscenes were aesthetically unappealing?

I refuse to sugarcoat my opinion on this game. If fails in all the key areas that an Action RPG should excel in for me to have a positive opinion on it, I will call it out on those failures.
You spend 19 hours on a game that's stated to give you at least 30 & more if you explore everything it has to offer. I'm going to assume you did the bare minimum to progress through the story. In a game that wants you to take your time exploring what it has to offer, you're almost speedrunning it by doing that. Speedrunning should only be done after you've immersed yourself a good amount in playing the game vanilla.

No one is expecting you to hold back if you were disappointed by something you were legitimately let down by. However, you're holding it to some standards that don't make sense & gatekeeping how DB games should be made. That's why people are responding to your forced negativity with more negativity.
Lord Beerus wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 4:11 pm
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pm
A Dragon Ball game where can you can can level up your characters RPG style, play as different members of the cast as you go through the major story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc and have the freedom to travel around different worlds to find extra content... yeah... Budokai 3 and Budokai Tenkaichi 2 did this, and did it in much more streamlined and, in my honest opinion, a superior fashion.

I must stress that this is just my personal opinion. There are no objective facts when comparing one RPG to another. You may think I'm lying when I say Legacy of Goku 2 handled its RPG aspects better than Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, but that's the opinion I've come to from playing both games for a extensive amount of time. You can disagree with my opinion, but please don't call me a liar. That's quite childish.
No, no they didn't. Budokai 3 was a fighting game with a story mode where your fly all over the world getting capsules for moves or doing small fights in between the next boss battle. It has a slight leveling system to it to be able to progress with the game's difficulty, but it's not in-depth enough to actually call an RPG, considering you only power up attributes & the story mode is only there to unlock characters, locations, & moves. Everything else was set up as a traditional fighting game with the DB license.
Budokai Tenkaichi 2 I haven't played much of, but if it's anything like 3, no it didn't. The BT series were basically toybox games. The story wasn't even remotely an RPG, just a simplistic 3D fighting game with dialogue that linked things together for the story beats.
I don't care if you like how they handled things, but you are either remembering things wrong, or you're being willfully ignorant for the sake of complaining about this specific game with comparisons that don't make sense. I like Budokai 3, but I'm not gonna say it's something it's not for the sake of my narrative.

As for the story, why would you expect an Action RPG to not have some sort of in-depth story? That's like asking each Final Fantasy to not have an epic story with a party of colorful characters for the players to latch on to or Kingdom Hearts no to connect each game to each other through an overarching narrative. It just doesn't make sense. If you want an Action RPG that has little to no story, only there to speculate on at best, go play Dark Souls.
Lord Beerus wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 4:11 pm
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pm
Monster Hunter, The Witcher, Dark Souls, The Elder Scrolls, Diablo, Deus Ex, Dragon Age, Dishonored... these are some of the series of action RPG's that thrived in providing versatility in combat and have been praised for it by many people.
None of those are set in a Japanese-based fantasy world where the characters develop superpowers & have super strength as opposed to weapons in what are supposed to be grounded fantasy worlds with realistic physics & fighting. I don't think the combat is that good, but if we're gonna compare apples to oranges in terms of the basis for combat, how about we compare DBZ: Kakarot to Uncharted, why don't we?
Lord Beerus wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 4:11 pm
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pm
If I wanted to see video game cutscenes of the retelling of the story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc, I'd just play Infinite World. When I was playing Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, the same question kept popping into my mind: why would the fuck should I be still interested in seeing a less visually appealing adaption of Toriyama's work? This isn't a scenario where Toriyama's work hasn't been adapted and the game works as an avenue to present that work in a different visual medium, even taking into consideration the people who may not have been exposed to Dragon Ball Z by this point. I've already bought and watched an adaption of Toriyama's work, and it's still readily available to be purchased and/or watched at any convenience by anyone.
If you don't wanna play a game that adapts the source material as much & as closely as DBZ: K does, that's a you problem, fam. You still have FighterZ, Xenoverse, & countless other games to fall back on if you don't care to play it. That's fine. Gatekeeping how a studio of developers should make their game is not. You are basically wanting to wall off a new interpretation of Toriyama's work just because, "It's been done before & better," even before you've experienced the new one. You went into the game wanting to hate it, which really colored your perception of it. You set unreasonable-levels of expectations for it, you had a strike against it for adapting the story, & you were surprised when you ended up hating it after essentially speedrunning the game in 19 hours out of a possible 30 on your first &, most likely, only playthrough. Quelle surprise.
Lord Beerus wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 4:11 pm It fucking mystifies that fans would want MORE of the same thing or justify Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot regurgitating the story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc under the premise of bringing new fans into the series. An animated adaption already exists! It's there to be watched! Hell, there's even re-cut edition that trims out a good chunk of the filler and has a decent English dub! And even better yet, it actually includes the ending! But even taking all of that out of consideration, why should I have a good opinion of game that has terrible combat, clunky RPG elements, aesthetically unappealing cutscenes and boring side missions?
Because people want to have new ways of experiencing the source material that is more engaging than just reading the manga, or watching the anime adaptations. There are also tons of people that like reliving their favorite moments from their favorite shows in video game form. CyberConnect2 is even revered for their work on the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm games. Storm 3 is even heralded by many, including Kishimoto, as the definitive or favorite way to experience that part of the manga's storyline. If game devs weren't allowed to adapt the storylines of a source material, then we wouldn't have gotten that particular game.
This particular argument both doesn't make sense & is similar to the classic subs VS dubs argument. Yes, you CAN watch a show or movie in its original language if it's not your own subtitled, but not a lot of people care to do that & would love to watch a foreign thing dubbed into their own language with a good dub, on top of others who watch dubs for other reasons. Or the argument that books shouldn't be adapted into movies, even though movies appeal to a broader range of people than books & can even bring awareness to the source material. That's why we have the anime adaptations of many manga series as well. Hell, we wouldn't have The Witcher game series if it wasn't allowed to adapt the books they're based on, though I'm not sure how close they are to their books adaptation-wise.
Lord Beerus wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 4:11 pm If all you guys want is just another regurgitation of the story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc, then you do you. But I'm just done with that angle. I'm not trying to fucking gatekeep anyone from getting into the story Dragon Ball Z. There just so happens to be an animated adaption of Toriyama's work, that does what this game is trying to do with its own presentation of the main story. And it does it better. I just find Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot to be so redundant. And that hard blow would have been softened if the combat wasn't terrible, the RPG elements weren't poorly implemented and the side missions weren't an absolute chore. Forgive me for going into an Action RPG with the hope that the "action" and "RPG" elements would be up to scratch, but I can't help but have some standards.
1. Yes, yes you are. You have literally said, "I don't get why there are video games that adapt the original story when there are adaptations already & the source material's available to experience" &, "There just so happens to be an animated adaption of Toriyama's work, that does what this game is trying to do with its own presentation of the main story. And it does it better" literally right after that sentence, on top of you complaining about the game existing in the first place. By saying you don't get it & that you don't want the game to exist, you are saying, point-blank that you would rather people get the definitive experience of the source material through 1 or both of only 2 sources. You are doing exactly that. Maybe not from getting into the story, but from experiencing it how they want to.
2. DBZ has been around for almost 31 years, receiving an anime adaptation of the manga into it, then receiving a recut of said adaptation 20 years later. Games, though? Not a lot as thorough as DBZ: Kakarot for telling the story.
3. If you find Kakarot to be redundant, why buy or play it in the first place? If you had so many strikes against it, why bother? If you're not gonna be critical of it for reasons that make sense, why give it a try? If you were just looking at the gameplay, ok, but you were gonna be disappointed in it anyways. If the gameplay were excellent, you were still gonna be shitting on it for retreading the story. This was a lose-lose situation it seems.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Dbzfan94 » Sat Jan 18, 2020 8:13 pm

Lord Beerus, if you found the game to be redundant? Further, if you didn’t like it, why did you continue?

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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by EXBadguy » Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:02 pm

So wishing the games to stop retelling the same story and twist things up and/or do a original story is considered "gatekeeping" now?
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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Scsigs » Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:04 pm

Dbzfan94 wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 8:13 pm Lord Beerus, if you found the game to be redundant? Further, if you didn’t like it, why did you continue?
Probably so people couldn't say, "Well, you didn't even play it, how do you know it's bad?" Something like that.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Zeon_Grunt » Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:07 pm

EXBadguy wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:02 pm So wishing the games to stop retelling the same story and twist things up and/or do a original story is considered "gatekeeping" now?
It is if you're demanding that the games never revisit the classic story again. Not everyone plays all the games and we shouldn't bar new or future fans from getting their chance to play through the story just because some of us have been religiously playing the games since 2001.

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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Scsigs » Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:28 pm

EXBadguy wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:02 pm So wishing the games to stop retelling the same story and twist things up and/or do an original story is considered "gatekeeping" now?
Kinda, yeah. That's literally the definition, "the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something." Saying that no DB game should revisit the original story is limiting the potential of a future game. For all we know, a great game can come along that tells the story in a new, interesting way that can be seen as an excellent alternative to the other adaptations of the manga.
And, no one's saying DB games can't or shouldn't mix things up or tell an original story, just that, if a developer wants to retell the events of the manga in their own way, they should be allowed to. It's not like every DB game tells the original story anyways. Xenoverse uses time travel to mix things up, Heroes does...whatever the fuck it's doing, Legends is a mobile game I have no intention of playing, & FighterZ does an original story. Literally you have to go back to the 2000s to find a game that just "retells the story." Unless Battle of Z does that, but I haven't played it. Even then, that was early 2014. Literally 6 years. You have 5 years' worth of games to play that don't just completely rehash the original story to pick from, yet the one in over half a decade that does is suddenly a problem? That's gatekeeping if I've ever seen it.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Grimlock » Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:46 pm

Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:07 pmIt is if you're demanding that the games never revisit the classic story again.
Who is doing that?


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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Lord Beerus » Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:56 pm

Scsigs wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 7:40 pmYou spend 19 hours on a game that's stated to give you at least 30 & more if you explore everything it has to offer. I'm going to assume you did the bare minimum to progress through the story. In a game that wants you to take your time exploring what it has to offer, you're almost speedrunning it by doing that. Speedrunning should only be done after you've immersed yourself a good amount in playing the game vanilla.

No one is expecting you to hold back if you were disappointed by something you were legitimately let down by. However, you're holding it to some standards that don't make sense & gatekeeping how DB games should be made. That's why people are responding to your forced negativity with more negativity.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 5:04 pmThere's a huge difference between playing a game for an excessive amount of time and giving it a fair chance. If you're spending the majority of your time just lamenting that it's not something different based on an unwarranted set of expectations (like expecting it to give you a new version of DBZ's story when they never once hinted that this was their intention), you're not giving it a fair chance.

Your issues with the controls, side content, and lacking RPG elements are valid complaints, but that's not the point I was taking issue with, it was your lambasting the story because it's not "something new." As for the cutscenes, I don't get this complaint at all. The fully fleshed out ones are absolutely amazing to watch and the rest are generic JRPG fair. Most JRPGs have shit cutscenes outside the big budget ones.
Playing the game for nearly 19 hours is giving it a fair chance? How the fuck can I invest that much time an game and that not be considered giving a fair chance? I played the main story and was very unimpressed with the combat, presentations of the narrative and RPG elements. And the side mission going very repetitive and I figured them out to be unnecessary to my progression in the main game, so I skipped them after a short while.

My begrudging attitude towards playing from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc isn't solely rooted in the fact that its been done before, it's also due to the fact that the presentation of it isn't good. I mentions MANY times about how I think the cutscenes are aesthetically unappealing or did go that over your head? Never did I mention the negative of the games story is the fact that it isn't "something new."

I could perhaps have spent more time playing some more of the side missions and exploring what the open world had to offer but the problem is that I didn't fucking want to. Because when I initially did, the game turned into a slog. So I quickly stopped bothering to explore the open world and just focused on the main story. You may view this as unfair, I view this as efficient.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 5:04 pmExcept those aren't action RPGs, or RPGs at all, they're fighting games that just happen to have RPG lite elements to their story. There are no other action RPGs on console and Legacy of Goku is the only other action RPGs in the franchise. You can prefer the older games all you want, but to claim Budokai 3 (the game with no side quests, no towns to visit, few to no NPCs outside the Z Fighters, etc) did the open world better, or to claim BT2's story mode is remotely comparable to Kakarot's is a damn lie and you know it.
Those games may not be action RPGs in a strict sense, but they sure as hell do what Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot wanted do in the key areas better (combat, RPG levelling up mechanics, going through the story beats from the Saiyan arc and Majin Boo arc). What Budokai 3 and Budokai Tenkaichi 2, may have lacked in quantity in comparison to Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, they sure as made up for in quality. But then again, I personally don't care for interacting with NPC's or doing fetch quests. But that's just me.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 5:04 pm I guess we should ignore that you're comparing huge AAA titles with massive amounts of production values and polish to a AA liscensed title, but yes, there are some that have deep combat, but they are few and far between. Shallow combat is the norm for action RPGs, not the exception. There's a reason the few games that do do this are regarded as masterpieces.
Yes, budget can be a factor, but that hasn't prevented independent games in the Action RPG, despite the minimalist approach they may have to take with the limited resources they have to work with.
Scsigs wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 7:40 pmNone of those are set in a Japanese-based fantasy world where the characters develop superpowers & have super strength as opposed to weapons in what are supposed to be grounded fantasy worlds with realistic physics & fighting. I don't think the combat is that good, but if we're gonna compare apples to oranges in terms of the basis for combat, how about we compare DBZ: Kakarot to Uncharted, why don't we?
Is Dragon Ball Kakarot an Action RPG? Yes. So forgive for me deciding to compare it to other Action RPGs so that I have an idea of what it does well and what it doesn't.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 5:04 pmWhy in the world would you play a game whose cutscenes leave out HUGE chunks of the story and is only remotely understandable if you already know the story?
And this goes back to my original question: why should I care for a video game adapting Toriyama's story when an adaption already exists? And if the presentation of it was at least good there would SOME merit to this. But I don't think cutscenes look good. What more do you want from me?
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 5:04 pmIgnoring that the quality of the visuals is purely subjective (I personally find the main cutscenes and the overall game itself gorgeous even if the generic cutscenes are really lacking, which, again, is typical of JRPGs much less licensed ones), which do you honestly think is easier to get into, a 9 season anime with literally hundreds of episodes that cost $15-20 a season or a quick 20h game that only costs $60?
I'd prefer the medium that has better acting, can be watched for free and in any order at any time, has the ending is included and general better visuals. And as I mentioned before there's even a re-cut version that trims out a good chunk of the filler and reduces the 291 episode anime by nearly half.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 5:04 pmYou're acting like the game adaptations are meant to replace the anime ones, but that's literally never the case. They exist to supplement the main content, not replace it. Beyond that, you having played the story through a dozen times is a you problem, not an issue with the game. No one held a gun to your head and forced you to play every DBZ game that came out or will come out and there's no shame is just admitting that a certain game just isn't your cup of tea or isn't meant for you and skipping it.
All I ever stated was that I wasn't interested in another visual adaption of the story, but because I'm a fan of Action RPGs and being a fan of Dragon Ball, I gave it a shot. And while the cutscenes weren't good and ending was missing, those issues could have been mitigated if the combat was good, the RPG elements were well implemented and side mission were fun. And it failed in all those aspects as well. So as adaption of Toriyama's work, it's subpar. And as Action RPG, it's not good, in my opinion.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 5:04 pmNo, you're trying to gatekeep the games claiming that there shouldn't be game adapations because anime adapations already exists. You're ignoring that some people want to PLAY the story and be part of it not just watch it.
Did I say they should stop adapting the story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc? No. Have I expressed my contempt and absolute burnout at this angle being done too many times? Yes. And I've made it clear in a previous post that I'm never going to buy a game like this again.
Scsigs wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 7:40 pmAs for the story, why would you expect an Action RPG to not have some sort of in-depth story? That's like asking each Final Fantasy to not have an epic story with a party of colorful characters for the players to latch on to or Kingdom Hearts no to connect each game to each other through an overarching narrative. It just doesn't make sense. If you want an Action RPG that has little to no story, only there to speculate on at best, go play Dark Souls.
:eh:

Where the FUCK did I EVER mention that an Action RPG had to have an in-depth story? And what the fuck does that have to do with Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot? I just simply said the story was presented in a fashion that was aesthetically unappealing, in my opinion.
Scsigs wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 7:40 pmIf you don't wanna play a game that adapts the source material as much & as closely as DBZ: K does, that's a you problem, fam. You still have FighterZ, Xenoverse, & countless other games to fall back on if you don't care to play it. That's fine. Gatekeeping how a studio of developers should make their game is not. You are basically wanting to wall off a new interpretation of Toriyama's work just because, "It's been done before & better," even before you've experienced the new one. You went into the game wanting to hate it, which really colored your perception of it. You set unreasonable-levels of expectations for it, you had a strike against it for adapting the story, & you were surprised when you ended up hating it after essentially speedrunning the game in 19 hours out of a possible 30. Quelle surprise.
I played this game despite because, as I've stated I'm fan of Action RPG's, I'm a fan of Dragon Ball, and I believe that even if I have reservations on a game I should at least give it a decent amount of time before I come to conclusion as to whether I had fun with it or not. And after spending nearly 19 fucking hours playing Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot game I didn't have fun with it at all.

Yeah, I may hold the opinion, that game have retold the major story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc, but that doesn't give this game the excuse in how it presents the major story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc. I didn't want this game to suck or for me to be justified in having low expectations for it. I truly want every Dragon Ball game to be good. The sad reality I have to face after 19 hours of playing Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot was that, in my opinion, it wasn't good. Why is that so hard to understand?

I am not in the interest of standing on a soapbox and dictating how Dragon Ball games should be made. I just wanted a Dragon Ball Action RPG to excel at being an Action RPG, and it didn't fucking do that for many reasons. If this opinion upsets you, I don't really care. I gave this game my time, and wasn't worth in the end. Oh well. Better luck next time.
Scsigs wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 7:40 pm Because people want to have new ways of experiencing the source material that is more engaging than just reading the manga, or watching the anime adaptations. There are also tons of people that like reliving their favorite moments from their favorite shows in video game form. CyberConnect2 is even revered for their work on the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm games. Storm 3 is even heralded by many, including Kishimoto, as the definitive or favorite way to experience that part of the manga's storyline. If game devs weren't allowed to adapt the storylines of a source material, then we wouldn't have gotten that particular game.

This particular argument both doesn't make sense & is similar to the classic subs VS dubs argument. Yes, you CAN watch a show or movie in its original language if it's not your own subtitled, but not a lot of people care to do that & would love to watch a foreign thing dubbed into their own language with a good dub, on top of others who watch dubs for other reasons. Or the argument that books shouldn't be adapted into movies, even though movies appeal to a broader range of people than books & can even bring awareness to the source material. That's why we have the anime adaptations of many manga series as well. Hell, we wouldn't have The Witcher game series if it wasn't allowed to adapt the books they're based on, though I'm not sure how close they are to their books adaptation-wise.
The problem I have is that this isn't a new way of experiencing the story. Travelling in a big world to go from one major fight to the next has been done before. The occasional fetch quests that the game pushes you to do, don't enhance the experience by one fucking iota. It just acts as padding before you can get to the shit that you really want to do: fight. And unfortunately that element of the game falls apart because of how terrible the combat is. If you're the kind of person who gets a kick out doing the driving mission based on that overrated filler episode, playing baseball or going around the map to do useless side-quests in the hope that you're nostalgia for the show is satisfied, then you do you. I personally don't buy Dragon Ball games for that fucking shit.
Scsigs wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 7:40 pm1. Yes, yes you are. You have literally said, "I don't get why there are video games that adapt the original story when there are adaptations already & the source material's available to experience" &, "There just so happens to be an animated adaption of Toriyama's work, that does what this game is trying to do with its own presentation of the main story. And it does it better" literally right after that sentence, on top of you complaining about the game existing in the first place. By saying you don't get it & that you don't want the game to exist, you are saying, point-blank that you would rather people get the definitive experience of the source material through 1 or both of only 2 sources. You are doing exactly that. Maybe not from getting into the story, but from experiencing it how they want to.
2. DBZ has been around for almost 31 years, receiving an anime adaptation of the manga into it, then receiving a recut of said adaptation 20 years later. Games, though? Not a lot as thorough as DBZ: Kakarot for telling the story.
3. If you find Kakarot to be redundant, why buy or play it in the first place? If you had so many strikes against it, why bother? If you're not gonna be critical of it for reasons that make sense, why give it a try? If you were just looking at the gameplay, ok, but you were gonna be disappointed in it anyways. If the gameplay were excellent, you were still gonna be shitting on it for retreading the story. This was a lose-lose situation it seems.
"I don't get why there are video games that adapt the original story when there are adaptations already & the source material's available to experience". I did NOT say that, or even fucking insinuate that. I said that I couldn't understand why fans want MORE of the same thing. Which is putting yourself in the position of the characters to play out the major fights from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc, which, yes, is a road that has been travelled down by Dragon Ball video games for many years. If fans want more of that shit, they can fucking have it. That won't stop me expressing absolute bewilderment as to why they want that kind of shit over and over again. And it sure as hell doesn't mean they denied access to that kind of content. I'm just stating the obvious: a visual adaption of the Toriyama's work exists, making the whole selling point of watching videogame cutscenes adapt the same story seem a little redundant.

How many times do I have to answer the same fucking of why I bought the game? I bought the game so could have an true understanding of whether it was good or bad. I was weary of playing from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo again, but if the core fighting loop was stimulating and fresh enough to keep my interest, the side mission weren't monotonous, and the cut-scenes were of better quality, it could have made the presentation of Toriyama's story very good. But it failed in those aspects, making the game worthless, in my opinion.

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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Nightbane » Sat Jan 18, 2020 10:24 pm

Lord Beerus wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 4:11 pm
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pmYou're not biased because you don't like the game, you're biased because you didn't give it a fair chance to be what it was trying to be and won't judge it on it's own merits. You had expectations for what you wanted it to be (something no one ever tried to sell the game as) and when it failed in those departments, you've dismissed the game as being bad.
I spent nearly 19 fucking hours playing the game. I think that's enough time to gather a decent opinion on its content, let alone giving it "a fair chance". And did you miss my previous posts where I stated that the combat was poor, the side mission were tedious, the RPG elements were unnecessarily cluttered and cutscenes were aesthetically unappealing?

I refuse to sugarcoat my opinion on this game. If fails in all the key areas that an Action RPG should excel in for me to have a positive opinion on it, I will call it out on those failures.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pm Now it's not a perfect game (the controls are clunky and the side quests are pointless), but to claim this type of DBZ game has been done before and better is misleading. Other than the Legacy of Goku titles, it's the only action RPG in the franchise, more so the only one to do such a complete retelling of the story (most quit after Freeza or Cell, this one actually goes up to Boo). The only thing close on consoles was Sagas and that game is infinitely worse than this one. To claim that LoG did the whole action RPG thing better is also a lie as it's combat is even shallower (and in the case of LoG1, more broken thanks to shit hit detection) than Kakarot's.
A Dragon Ball game where can you can can level up your characters RPG style, play as different members of the cast as go through the major story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc and have the freedom to travel around different worlds to find extra content... yeah... Budokai 3 and Budokai Tenkaichi 2 did this, and did it in much more streamlined and, in my honest opinion, a superior fashion.

I must stress that this is just my personal opinion. There are no objective facts when comparing one RPG to another. You may think I'm lying when I say Legacy of Goku 2 handled its RPG aspects better than Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, but that's the opinion I've come to from playing both games for a extensive amount of time. You can disagree with my opinion, but please don't call me a liar. That's quite childish.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pmI can't think of many action RPGs on the market that don't have shallow as hell combat similar to this game's, where all you do is mash one attack button and break it up with specials/spells. Despite DBZ being a fighting franchise, this isn't a fighting game and to expect fighting game levels of depth in the mechanics was always going to set yourself up for disappointment.
Monster Hunter, The Witcher, Dark Souls, The Elder Scrolls, Diablo, Deus Ex, Dragon Age, Dishonored... these are some of the series of action RPG's that thrived in providing versatility in combat and have been praised for it by many people.
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 12:00 pmPersonally, I think your complaint about the story being retold (as well as everyone else complaining about the story) is complete horseshit. Just because the anime is the definitive adaptation of the source material, doesn't mean we shouldn't/can't also have video games that tell the same story. I'm sorry you're bored of the DBZ story already, but there are tons of us who either aren't or haven't had the chance to play through the actual story of DBZ. This modern belief that because we got Budokai and Budokai Tenkaichi that Bamco needs to permanently stop adapting DBZ's story and exclusively do What-If stories honestly infuriates me. Ignoring that every time they've ventured away from the source material, it's been shit, we gotta remember that while you and I may have played every PS2 game, that was 2 generations and 13 years ago. There are countless fans these days who simply weren't around back then and never got to play through the story on "modern" (read: current gen at the time, so PS3 for last gen, PS4 this gen, PS5 next gen) consoles. Hell, I alone have 5 nephews who all love DBZ but are all too young to have played BT3 in it's heyday and don't care to replay retro games because they admittedly look like shit and control wonky without the last decade's worth of QoL improvements every game genre has made.
If I wanted to see videogame cutscenes of the retelling of the story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc, I'd just play Infinite World. When I was playing Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, the same question kept popping into my mind: why would the fuck should I be still interested in seeing a less visually appealing adaption of Toriyama's work? This isn't a scenario where Toriyama's work hasn't been adapted and the game works as an avenue to present that work in a different visual medium, even taking into consideration the people who may not have been exposed to Dragon Ball Z by this point. I've already bought and watched an adaption of Toriyama's work, and it's still readily available to be purchased and/or watched at any convenience by anyone.

It fucking mystifies that fans would want MORE of the same thing or justify Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot regurgitating the story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc under the premise of bringing new fans into the series. An animated adaption already exists! It's there to be watched! Hell, there's even re-cut edition that trims out a good chunk of the filler and has a decent English dub! And even better yet, it actually includes the ending! But even taking all of that out of consideration, why should I have a good opinion of game that has terrible combat, clunky RPG elements, aesthetically unappealing cutscenes and boring side missions?

If all you guys want is just another regurgitation of the story and character beats from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc, then you do you. But I'm just done with that angle. I'm not trying to fucking gatekeep anyone from getting into the story Dragon Ball Z. There just so happens to be an animated adaption of Toriyama's work, that does what this game is trying to do with its own presentation of the main story. And it does it better. I just find Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot to be so redundant. And that hard blow would have been softened if the combat wasn't terrible, the RPG elements weren't poorly implemented and the side missions weren't an absolute chore. Forgive me for going into an Action RPG with the hope that the "action" and "RPG" elements would be up to scratch, but I can't help but have some standards.
As someone who's top 100 in FighterZ with over 1000 hours in that game, you're objectively wrong about the combat system being bad. It's honestly just as deep and on the level of FighterZ. I'm not sure why you have such a problem with it, but the majority opinion is that the game is good. This game is easily on the level of FighterZ, I'm surprised at how deep this combat system is for a single player game

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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Zeon_Grunt » Sat Jan 18, 2020 10:32 pm

Grimlock wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:46 pm Who is doing that?
have you not been reading/watching reviews for this game? Complaining that it's the same story again is the single most promenant complaint about the game. That said I was specifically referring to Beerus here who is expressing "contempt" for the fact that there's a game that dares retell the story without delving into What-If stories (which I personally wish would stay out of DBZ games forever).

Lord Beerus wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:56 pm Playing the game for nearly 19 hours is giving it a fair chance? How the fuck can I invest that much time an game and that not be considered giving a fair chance?
Giving a game a fair chance has nothing to do with how much time you force yourself to play it. I don't know how you can go into a game not liking it on a conceptual level and not see how you went in with a bias against the game...
My begrudging attitude towards playing from the Saiyan arc to the Majin Boo arc isn't solely rooted in the fact that its been done before, it's also due to the fact that the presentation of it isn't good. I mentions MANY times about how I think the cutscenes are aesthetically unappealing or did go that over your head? Never did I mention the negative of the games story is the fact that it isn't "something new."
Idk how you can watch something like this https://youtu.be/XnWHgxzbX8Q?t=306 and tell me it looks unappealing. If you're referring to the generic text-only cutscenes where the characters are just standing around, you'd have to fault literally every JRPG ever made for doing it because they ALL do it. It's an industry standard and expectation that your JRPG isn't going to flesh out every single dialogue scene with a high quality cutscene.
I could perhaps have spent more time playing some more of the side missions and exploring what the open world had to offer but the problem is that I didn't fucking want to. Because when I initially did, the game turned into a slog. So I quickly stopped bothering to explore the open world and just focused on the main story. You may view this as unfair, I view this as efficient.
This is starting to read like this is your first anime RPG... Of it's peer's this game's story presentation is easily top tier.
But then again, I personally don't care for interacting with NPC's or doing fetch quests. But that's just me.
This is pretty much the meat and bones of a typical RPG, much less a JRPG... much less an anime based JRPG like this one..
Yes, budget can be a factor, but that hasn't prevented independent games in the Action RPG, despite the minimalist approach they may have to take with the limited resources they have to work with.
Budget isn't just a "maybe" factor, it absolutely is. It's 100% unfair to compare the polish and production values of an indie or AA tier game with AAA titles that have hundreds of developers and get tens of millions dumped into them. To expect any DBZ title to compare is unfair because Bamco is never going to give the franchise the kind of money necessary for that level of polish. The games just don't make enough back to justify the costs.
And this goes back to my original question: why should I care for a video game adapting Toriyama's story when an adaption already exists?
No one is asking you to personally care about the game at all (hell, no one asked you to buy the game in the first place), just not to knock the game because it's retelling a story you personally subjected yourself to countless times. The game retelling the story isn't a flaw of the game, it's a personal issue born out of personal experiences and preferences.
I'd prefer the medium that has better acting, can be watched for free and in any order at any time, has the ending is included and general better visuals. And as I mentioned before there's even a re-cut version that trims out a good chunk of the filler and reduces the 291 episode anime by nearly half.
That's good for you, but not everyone has your preferences. Why should we miss out on good game adapations just because there are some people who don't like the concept of them?
So as adaption of Toriyama's work, it's subpar. And as Action RPG, it's not good, in my opinion.
It is the most faithful and in-depth retelling of the story of DBZ in the franchise's game history barring potentially the Legacy of Goku series... Literally every other game skips fights and huge swatches of the story to just hit the main talking points. I honestly don't get how they could have retold the story any better short of just being the anime.
And I've made it clear in a previous post that I'm never going to buy a game like this again.
Honestly, this makes me happy. The more people who realize that not every game is for them and learning to not subject themselves to something they're fundamentally opposed to (as you seem to be about faithful game adaptions) the better.

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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Grimlock » Sat Jan 18, 2020 11:04 pm

Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 10:32 pmhave you not been reading/watching reviews for this game? Complaining that it's the same story again is the single most promenant complaint about the game. That said I was specifically referring to Beerus here who is expressing "contempt" for the fact that there's a game that dares retell the story without delving into What-If stories (which I personally wish would stay out of DBZ games forever).
Not quite, don't care much about reviews. But if anything, I'm glad that there are more people out there who are fed up with the same story being told over and over for more than a decade.

But these people hardly want the Dragon Ball games to stop retelling the series like you said, no, these games can still be made... Once in a while. Not every single installment doing it. Ever since 2015/Xenoverse we got new stuff, but compared to over a decade of the same nonsense, it's quite appalling. It's probably okay that we got Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot that just retells the story, but who's to say the next game won't be doing the same thing? We can only hope for a Xenoverse 3, FighterZ 2 or a new game with the intention to bring something new.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Zeon_Grunt » Sat Jan 18, 2020 11:13 pm

Grimlock wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 11:04 pm
Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 10:32 pmhave you not been reading/watching reviews for this game? Complaining that it's the same story again is the single most promenant complaint about the game. That said I was specifically referring to Beerus here who is expressing "contempt" for the fact that there's a game that dares retell the story without delving into What-If stories (which I personally wish would stay out of DBZ games forever).
Not quite, don't care much about reviews. But if anything, I'm glad that there are more people out there who are fed up with the same story being told over and over for more than a decade.

But these people hardly want the Dragon Ball games to stop retelling the series like you said, no, these games can still be made... Once in a while. Not every single installment doing it. Ever since 2015/Xenoverse we got new stuff, but compared to over a decade of the same nonsense, it's quite appalling. It's probably okay that we got Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot that just retells the story, but who's to say the next game won't be doing the same thing? We can only hope for a Xenoverse 3, FighterZ 2 or a new game with the intention to bring something new.
Except this is the first game to actually retell the story without diverging into what-ifs or original stories since Raging Blast 1 in 2009, and yet here we are with people still acting like every single game has been doing it til now.

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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Grimlock » Sat Jan 18, 2020 11:22 pm

Few what-if here and there is harmless, quite irrelevant (especially because we're talking specifically about Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta and Super Saiyan 3 Broly. The only what-ifs we got in that time). In the grand scheme of things, 2010 saw Raging Blast 2 doing the same. 2011 saw Ultimate Tenkaichi doing the same. 2012 saw for Kinect doing the same. And finally, the last game of the dark age, 2014 saw Battle of Z doing the same. Things only changed in 2015 with Xenoverse, thankfully.

Like I said, it's probably okay that we got this game now since it's been five years in a great era for the Dragon Ball games, but we can't go back to keep getting future titles retelling the same story for Dende knows how long again...
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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Zeon_Grunt » Sat Jan 18, 2020 11:47 pm

Grimlock wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 11:22 pm Few what-if here and there is harmless, quite irrelevant (especially because we're talking specifically about Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta and Super Saiyan 3 Broly. The only what-ifs we got in that time). In the grand scheme of things, 2010 saw Raging Blast 2 doing the same. 2011 saw Ultimate Tenkaichi doing the same. 2012 saw for Kinect doing the same. And finally, the last game of the dark age, 2014 saw Battle of Z doing the same. Things only changed in 2015 with Xenoverse, thankfully.

Like I said, it's probably okay that we got this game now since it's been five years in a great era for the Dragon Ball games, but we can't go back to keep getting future titles retelling the same story for Dende knows how long again...
I'll agree that a few what-ifs here and there are harmless, but mostly in the way they were handled in the Budokai Tenkaichi games and Raging Blast 1; a fun side thing to do after you complete the main story. Raging Blast 2 didn't have a story mode at all and instead featured battle routes where you fought random characters to unlock random characters. Ultimate Tenkaichi did retell the story to a degree, but the main focus of the game was the What-If create-a-character mode and that game is honestly so trash we should all completely disregard it. Same for Kinect, which bombed because no one bought it. Battle of Z was a retelling in the same vein Budokai 2's story was a retelling, but instead of being a board game, you played through a proto-type Xenoverse Parallel Quest system.


You call it a great era for Dragon Ball, but all of the game stories have been fanfiction-tier gargbage significantly worse than Super and GT. The only great aspect of it is that FighterZ is, on a technical level, an EVO level arcade fighter that just happens to be laced with DB fanservice and the fact that Xenoverse finally let us create our own characters in a semi-competent game (a shit fighter that just happens to edge out being Rock/Paper/Scissors: the Game). I don't remotely want their types of stories to remain the norm until we get the one perfect retelling of DB's story. I won't even mention the colossal shit show that is Heroes World Mission.

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Re: "Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

Post by Scsigs » Sat Jan 18, 2020 11:58 pm

Zeon_Grunt wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2020 11:47 pm Same for Kinect, which bombed because no one bought it.
I think we can all agree that the Budokai HD Collection was only put out because they new Kinect was going to fail as hard as it did. That game WAS the only way us Westerners could see Episode of Bardock in any official capacity anyways. Wish it was dubbed, though.
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