A collection of screenshots for every 3D DBZ game. Which one has the best graphics?

[Asura]

With video games, the answer as to which game in the series has the best graphics will almost always be the latest release because of the advent of new technology. However, when it comes to video games that are based off of an existing art style in a different media, is there a point where constantly upgrading the graphics brings us further and further away from the art style it's being based off of? This is an especially good question when it's a 2D art style being translated into 3D, like that of the DBZ anime.

Have the recent DBZ video games been getting better and better graphically, or did we reach a pinnacle somewhere before with how the graphics are presented in correspondence with how the anime looks? I'm looking to find that out, and I've brought lots of pictures to share and compare. So without further ado, I'll start us off with the first 3D DBZ game, Final Bout, and work our way down the list from there. I'll try and include both original and remastered versions of the games if they exist, as well as any emulated versions just to see how the game would look rendered at a higher quality. This list will not include handheld or arcade games.


Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout (1997)

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Dragon Ball Z: Budokai (2002)

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Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 (2003)

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Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 (2004)

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Dragon Ball Z: Sagas (2005)

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Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi (2005)

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Super Dragon Ball Z (2005)

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Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (2006)

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Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 (2007)

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Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit (2008)
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Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World (2008)

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Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo (2009)

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Dragon Ball: Raging Blast (2009)

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Dragon Ball Online (2010)

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Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 (2010)

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Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi (2011)

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Dragon Ball Z: For Kinect (2012)

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Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z (2014)

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Dragon Ball Xenoverse (2015)

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Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 (2016)

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Dragon Ball FighterZ (2018)

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So which one's your favorite?

[Draconic]

Including Final Bout is kind of a joke. Those graphics are terrible even by the standards of the time.

Budokai is super dated. When it was released, I'm sure it looked like the coolest stuff, but's it's really hard to take seriously now.

Budokai 2 is a step up for sure. I think it looks fairly good even today, but I think a lot of the details, especially on the faces, make the characters look weird.

Budokai 3 is a step up, but none of my issues with the previous game are really fixed and on top of that, the shading looks much worse in this one.

Sagas is not a good looking game, but I feel the screenshots don't do it justice even so. The game looks better in motion than in those. Still not that great tho.

Super Dragon Ball Z is easily the best up to this point. The screenshots really don't do it justice. Don't love it, but it's certainly a notch above the rest.

In the Tenkaichi series the character models are way too blocky. You used the remastered version of the game to get the screenshots, right? It looks much better than what I am used to, but again, the blockiness of the characters makes them look very unnatural.

Burst Limit is amazing, but I think the shading and colors drag it down a lot. Everything is muted and murky.

Never played Infinite World, so going from the screenshots only, it has most of the problems I have with Budokai 2. It looks better than that, though, I guess due to coming out at a later time.

Revenge of King Piccolo is another one I never played, since I never got a Wii, but from what I've seen I thought it always looked great! Pretty acurate to the show and vibrant.

Raging Blast would easily be the best on the list, if not for the atrocious shading. Everything looks made of cardboard.

Online looks great for an MMO, but I think compared to the better looking entries on the list it doesn't come close to any of them.

Raging Blast 2 is terrible. I always hated that look. Everybody looks like they got pissed on. It has the best backgrounds, though. Stages are really pretty in this one.

Ultimate Tenkaichi and the Kinect game are trash too. I hate whatever they tried to do with that look. I really don't understand who thought this kinda realistic but not really style is good.

The details in Battle of Z are amazing... but again there's something that doesn't sit right with me. It's kind of a combination of the UT look with the classic PS2 era look. Could easily be amazing looking, but there's some glaring flaws there that hold it back.

Xenoverse and Xenoverse 2 are basically the same and I really don't like how this game looks. Colors are weird, everything looks too shiny and the aura during transformations isn't doing it any favors. Playing this game without the Cel-Shading mod is almost criminal. With the mod it's easily the best one out there, since the models are pretty great, but since the mod is not the game... well... sorry but it's flawed.

FighterZ is easily the best looking one since it's the only one going for the Cel-Shaded look. Actually having the game look like the show, which is super easy this days, really, just does wonders. I am not sure what Bandai was thinking not doing this earlier and I hope it never stops. The Naruto games always looked like the show and I always loved those graphics (if not the games) and always hoped to see more of that. Hope the reception to this game's look gives some incentive to bring it to the 3D games too.

[Ringworm128]

The models in Burst Limit looked great great, but the copy and paste cookie cutter animation really brought it down.

[ErikB]

Super Dragon Ball Z, Ultimate Tenkaichi and FighterZ are all up there in my mind. They all have art direction that does things their own way and it's paid off immensely. Kind of a shame that Ultimate Tenkaichi was so bad (or so I hear, I basically skipped that entire generation of Dragon Ball games).
And despite the game being of the modern era, and the character models being technically among the best we've seen, I really think Xenoverse is an especially ugly game. Hair, clothes and skin all lit and shaded like chrome? What?

As for what's out now, I'm going with Super Dragon Ball Z. I absolutely love those soft, inviting manga colours. If it weren't for FighterZ, Super DBZ would still be my favourite.

[Asura]

I initially thought Burst Limit looked the best, but FighterZ definitely captures the feel of the anime more than any other game. Some of those screenshots literally look like they came right out of the anime, especially that last picture with Gohan. My only complaint with FighterZ is I feel some of the characters eyes are too close together. Otherwise it's an absolutely fantastic looking game, and easily the best. I think Budokai Tenkaichi 3 on an emulator also looks really good.

I really dislike the way Xenoverse looks. Everyone looks so blocky and stiff and angular and they're always glowing. "Shaded like chrome" is definitely a good way to describe it as ErikB said. It's not a bad looking game by any means, it's just ugly when trying to capture that Dragon Ball feel. I'm also surprised at how horrible Battle of Z looks. I never paid the game much mind when it came out or looked at it too much, but damn the fact that they put the game on the Vita too seemed to really hurt even the PS4 version's graphics. It really looks like something from over 10 years ago.

Honorable mention to Revenge of King Piccolo. Never played it or even heard of it before this, but those cutscene pictures look really, really good.

[Doctor.]

Outside of FighterZ, which is just stunning in every way, Raging Blast 1 still has my vote for the most faithful colors and aesthetic, even if the models leave something to be desired. They really nail Super Saiyan's hair color and lighting. Never got the hype over Burst Limit, really; the colors don't really look like Dragon Ball to me, too much saturation.

Revenge of King Piccolo is pretty great, too.

[Lord Beerus]

FighterZ is without a doubt the best looking game in that list. It's colour palette, shading and modeling is just on fucking point. Burst Limit and Raging Blast 1 also look stunning.

[Apollo Fungus]

Considering FighterZ isn't out yet, I'm going to stick with Raging Blast 1. The effects work isn't the best, and the environments are a bit bland, but I'm just a sucker for the clean visual style they went for. I don't know what it is, but something about the minimal use of shadows/highlights, really brings out the best in the characters' designs and colour schemes.

Never got the hype over Burst Limit, really; the colors don't really look like Dragon Ball to me, too much saturation.

I think it largely comes down to two things:

1. This was the first Dragon Ball Z released for the PS3/360, and after the last few games contained overall pretty good but unspectacular graphics, having brand spanking next-gen visuals made a really big impression on a lot of people.

2. The direction of the cutscenes (or at least, those that were specifically recreating scenes from the series) are superb. The considered use of camera angles and pans, the little bits of animation in certain areas to give characters life, the attempt to actually make them feel cinematic; for anyone who played previous Dragon Ball games, which had cutscenes that were mediocre at best, these new scenes would stick out in players' minds like nothing else and by extension, be tied inextricably to the visuals for some people.

[Bullza]

FighterZ, I could probably be fooled into thinking some of those screenshots were taken from the anime or something, I don't know how they could be made to look much better really.

The Xenoverse games look very good but they have too much of a metallic look to them at times. The lighting and shading on them can be off too.

Raging Blast has some spot on character models though the particle effects aren't that great. Not when compared to Burst Limit anyway.

[Nia]

I'd say model wise, FighterZ probably looks the best, but I hate the way it looks in motion. The animation just looks so janky.
Xenoverse/2 has weird looking models, and I think the shading isn't great, but the characters move so well, and they have really well done expressions.

...So, I'll put my vote on Burst Limit, since it looks somewhere inbetween. The characters were expressive, and it had some glorious looking cel-shading (not as good as say... Budokai 3 or Super Dragon Ball Z, but still pretty great), and the character's movements felt believable.


As someone previously mentioned, it also just had some really good cutscene direction. I think XV/XV2 did a decent job of inhereting some of this, thankfully.
Plus, to my knowledge, it's the only one with the derp death faces.
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...Now if XV3 can look like the pre-rendered cutscenes in XV2, then I'll have a harder time deciding.

[Asura]

Am I the only one who thinks Goku's Super Saiyan hair looks horrible in Xenoverse? It's so strange looking and I don't think it really looks all that accurate. Instead of flowy hair with lots of spikes we just get a few giant spikes of hair with one massive spike of hair in the middle.

[Anime Kitten]

You're not the only one, no. I noticed that way back in XV1, but thankfully, it doesn't bother me every time I play as him. Other than the stiff spikes, it's also far too tall. I do really like SSJ Gokū's face though.

[Nickolaidas]

Dimps was never good at faces. Or realistic body types, for that matter. Always made the male Saiyans look super blocky. But I never really had a problem with them.

FighterZ is easily the best. It's like the 3D ArcSys game graphics engine was literally made for DragonBall games.

Super DragonBall Z always looked like weird to me - never got that LOOKS LIKE A MANGA vibe a lot of people got.

Raging Blast 1 was also spectacular, it's just a shame they made 1st Stage Frieza so short (as he was in the Planet Vegeta flashbacks, while Dimps took the Vegeta vs 1st Stage Frieza road and made his 1st stage model far better looking)

Final Bout couldn't even do Frieza's face right in terms of artwork.

[omegalucas]

FIghterZ wins easily, though it has it's own problems, mainly the characters being a tad too bulky (it was a problem with Xenoverse too), something that Burst Limit actually handed pretty well.

[Dbzfan94]

FighterZ hands down.

Budokai and Burst Limit are close though.

I hate the models for Xenoverse too. They’re way too bulky and the auras make the colors way too dark.

[Avenant]

This just makes me laugh:

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But seriously, DragonBall FighterZ has the best graphics hands-down. I absolutely cannot wait to play it!

[goku the krump dancer]

PS2 era = Tie between Super DBZ and Infinite World. Though I've always wondered what the graphics would look like should they continue the non Cell-Shaded route ala Budokai 1 but I guess that leads me to my next choices.

PS3 era = Raging Blast 1.. with Ultimate Tenkaichi being a close second.. Continuing from my PS2 era selections I think Raging Blast is pretty much what DBZ game graphics would look like bar some draw backs had they never gone the full Cel-Shaded Route. the colors in RB1 are spot on and not over the top shiny like its predecessors or plasticky like RB2 and Battle of Z. I think Ultimate Tenkaichi's is Good because of the almost Manga-esqe style of Cel-Shading,

Current/PS4 era= I Think this one is obvious for obvious reasons.

[KBABZ]

FighterZ obviously. There's just so much passion and love and attention for detail there that it's palpable in every frame. But there's actually one area that I think it's bested on, and that's backgrounds. For whatever reason the environments in FighterZ don't feel that much better than Xenoverse's (which I consider bad, for the record), and they don't look at all like the background art on the show. For me the winner in that category is Super DBZ.

I think the last good-looking one of these was Raging Blast, because it's the last one to have that flat shading look. After that we see the developers trying to add needless stuff to make it look more impressive like textured shading and bloom and stuff, but then it looks frivolous and no longer like the show.

Also for whatever reason I don't think any of these has nailed the look of ki blasts, which are overly gradienty and showy. I like the "glowing shape of white" lightsaber-type look seen in the show itself.

[sintzu]

Final bout, sagas & Battle of Z are the only ones I think look bad. Raging Blast looks very off and plastic like.

The Budokai games and Tenkaichi ones look better with each new game.

Xenoverse 2 is slightly better than the first one but that already looked really good. Burst limit also looks good.

UT & Super DBZ seem to have been going for a manga feel so I'd say they got it.

FighterZ looks AMAZING, it's probably the closest thing we'll get to a playable anime so it's as of now the best one.

[Hyena_Yamcha]

Burst Limit , Raging Blast 1 , Ultimate Tenkaichi were the best imo

but FighterZ is without a doubt the best looking dragon ball game atm .