"Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot" Official Discussion Thread

[Grimlock]

So...

Spoiler:

• Bardock was outright stated to be stronger than Nappa in-universe. The latter's power level was never mentioned, we only knew it through a guidebook that puts him at 4,000. So even though this was popular knowledge, it's still cool that being stated in-universe.

• What confirms Goku to be Bardock's son is his hair. I immediately remembered Gine also saying something about the hair, which apparently is weird-looking even among the Saiyans.

• It seems Bardock is a sleepyhead and always get late. A bit more to his personality!

• Tottepo can actually speak! It's the first time we hear his voice.

• Yes, Solid State Scouter is in the game and it's a nice remix of it! As well as some other awesome Dragon Ball Z soundtracks.

• It seems there is nothing after the credits, no Bardock OVA or a new scenario featuring Mira and Towa... Come on, Cyber Connect2... After a spectacular job in Trunks DLC, how the hell could you have missed this gold opportunity? Damn...

May someone please tell me if I need to play through the entire story before diving into the DLCs or if I can just go straight into the DLCs without having to play the story mode?

[TheSaiyanGod]

So...

Spoiler:

• Bardock was outright stated to be stronger than Nappa in-universe. The latter's power level was never mentioned, we only knew it through a guidebook that puts him at 4,000. So even though this was popular knowledge, it's still cool that being stated in-universe.

• What confirms Goku to be Bardock's son is his hair. I immediately remembered Gine also saying something about the hair, which apparently is weird-looking even among the Saiyans.

• It seems Bardock is a sleepyhead and always get late. A bit more to his personality!

• Tottepo can actually speak! It's the first time we hear his voice.

• Yes, Solid State Scouter is in the game and it's a nice remix of it! As well as some other awesome Dragon Ball Z soundtracks.

• It seems there is nothing after the credits, no Bardock OVA or a new scenario featuring Mira and Towa... Come on, Cyber Connect2... After a spectacular job in Trunks DLC, how the hell could you have missed this gold opportunity? Damn...

May someone please tell me if I need to play through the entire story before diving into the DLCs or if I can just go straight into the DLCs without having to play the story mode?

Spoiler:

It seems that there is a ''Kid Vegeta story mode'' after you finish Bardock's story. I believe this is the extra content equivalent to the fight against Dabura in Trunks DLC But there are no gameplays showing it yet, so we don't know to what extent Vegeta's story is shown (but Kid Vegeta is playable).

IIRC, you can play the DLCs without having to finish story mode.

[Mr Baggins]

I expect them to add Yamcha and Tien playable, would be for the best. They both had important fights and would be weird for these to be just cutscenes (Yamcha vs Shen and Tien vs Cyborg Tao)

Yeah, there's no way in hell they wouldn't make those characters (along with maybe Kuririn) playable. There's very little point in covering the 23rd tournament at all otherwise.

As for the "why", I'd assume CC2 just chose the stories they're most interested in rather than the ones contingent on fan demand. I respect that, even if I would've rather played as the other version of Bardock.

[Grimlock]

Spoiler:

It seems that there is a ''Kid Vegeta story mode'' after you finish Bardock's story. I believe this is the extra content equivalent to the fight against Dabura in Trunks DLC But there are no gameplays showing it yet, so we don't know to what extent Vegeta's story is shown (but Kid Vegeta is playable).

Yeah, just saw some gameplays. It's cool that we're finally able to play as him for a while, thought that would only be possible in Dragon Ball Heroes (kid Vegeta is a playable character but not the likes of GT Goten, in any game. How crazy is that?).

IIRC, you can play the DLCs without having to finish story mode.

Thank you! Never thought I'd be buying a game just for a couple of DLCs but here I am... That's life, I guess.

[Xeogran]

I'm glad they have Solid State Scouter playing in the important moments after all. The trailers made me feel like it'd be weirdly ommited but seems like it was being kept a secret. Great job CC2, respect where it's due

[Cold Skin]

It's a bit complicated, which is not unexpected. It's available at midnight for your country, but not directly apparently.

To go from PS4 to PS5, look for the game in the store and lower the screen to see the various editions.
One of them is called "PS5 upgrade" of the Standard Edition and instead of the price / download button, it will offer you to "know more" and tell you that it's impossible for you to have this product right now.

However, the Deluxe Edition next to this "PS5 upgrade" Standard Edition, while not labeled as the upgrade, will be at a price tag of 0.00 if you had it originally. It will offer you both the PS5 and PS4 downloads of the game and all DLCs included.

So I guess that's the way to go, the "upgrade" labelled as such is unavailable for some reason but the Deluxe PS5 Edition next to it appears as costing zero, so it's all the same.

All DLCs will download in no time as they are just passes weighting a few MOs, the DLC data is already in the base game.

This game belongs to the Elden Ring category of save transfers: you just need your save file from your PS4, but you do need to select an option on the title screen for it to be effective, which is luckily more visible than in Elden Ring: after all the messages telling you about the type of graphics you'd like (Quality or Performance) and all the DLCs that's unlocked, the main menu will appear and you'll immediately see the "Transfer save data" option.
By clicking on it, the game will search for your PS4 data on your console, say it found the save and ask you if you want to transfer it to the PS5 version. Saying "Yes" will immediately make your saves available just like old times and instantly unlock all trophies for the PS5 version (unlike Elden Ring, but similarly to Final Fantasy VII Remake, Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3).

First observations:

- Loading times are much faster (around 5 seconds to go from West Capital to Goku's house for example).

- Overall graphics are way crispier, even for details at a great distance (at least in Quality mode on a 4K screen, can't vouch for other circumstances).

- Landscapes are more crisp with better textures for rocks and grass (even far).

- Grass has a less "radioactive" shade of green than before.

- Water has been colored blue instead of being transparent and showing the muddy brown ground at the bottom, which makes it way more appealing with the new blue.

- Paths are now more yellowish rather than very brown like mud.

- A gentle breeze constantly makes little bits of grass fly around. This is also true for Namek.

- While mostly invisible when you're in the air, higher grass and flowers will become visible when you get close to the ground. The transition isn't shocking to the eye.

- Specific spots have very colorful, thick patches of flowers added that remain visible even at a distance. They will appear in the landscape at about 30 meters away, right after the shadows of trees, so you keep seeing them in most locations where you would pay attention to the landscape. Those are not present on Namek (which has little patches of red mushrooms near trees instead), but they are present on Earth and in the Kaio Shin realm.

- All in all, the combination of extra grass and flowers, specific colorful flower patches, bits of grass flowing to the air and high-resolution rocks even afar makes the landscape feel much nicer and lively.

- The button icons have been adapted to the new controller (which isn't always the case in every game upgraded for PS5). Text errors regarding the button prompts have been corrected in the French version (which displayed the tag for the button to be displayed rather than the button itself).

- In the menus, the 2D pictures are very crisp, but strangely the characters appear blurry when viewing your playable/assist characters. In the diary, 3D models of the various entries will be lower resolution (with aliasing) compared to the models outside of the menus.

- Stangely enough, the music pages show the normal size for text on the left pages, but a printing reduced to half its size on the right pages.

- There seems to be more detailed shading on the characters, but it may be the increased resolution that plays tricks on my mind.

- The surface of the water (looking at the sea) is definately more beautiful than before, whether it's due to a new shade of blue, the light reflecting on the ripples until far into the distance, etc... Perhaps you could clearly see the sand through the sea around Kame House before, with the water looking realistically turquoise due to the mix of transparency between the blue water and the yellow sand since the water isn't deep around his island, but if it was the case before, then it's much more striking and impressive now with the crispiness. It's true for all beaches: when 10-20 meters from the edge of the water, the sand becomes gradually visible as the surface of water is reduced and the water gradually takes a turquoise tint and loses its ripples / small waves, reflections and deep blue tint.

- Very impressive and imposing snow mountains, with their rocky surface appearing in full detail even far away. I'm impressed! Can't remember if snow was falling or if the landscape was reflected in the lake, but that's the case now.

- Goku's hair move with the air. Was that the case before? His big strands of hair will wiggle independantly if you fly gently and all of his hair will be taken forward or backward if you fly at normal speed, similar to the anime when he rushes. Perhaps that was already here in the previous gen, I can't remember, but it did take me by surprise when I flew backwards and his whole hair was pushed forward in a "bent Super Saiyan hair" style like in the anime.

- A few things are flying around and casting shadows on the surrounding (ground, houses, buildings...), like vehicles in the cities or eagles in the desert. Was that the case before? Maybe I just don't remember it.

- Lower-resolution prerendered cutscenes are still the same lower-resolution prerendered cutscenes.

[LettuceJUMP]

Loaded DLC on PC this morning via steam. Graphics look the same. I already ran on high settings. So far content is good. I’m about 45 minutes in and I think it is a decent amount of gameplay. Hoping to play more later. But I don’t see that the PC got any visual upgrades like ps5/xsx

[Scsigs]

So, gotta love the 11th hour tweet from the Dragon Ball Games account about the Xbox Series X/S version, eh? The game can't read old save data from the Xbox One version of it for some reason.
And, from what I'm seeing, some people can't redeem the PS5 version of the game if they bought the PS4 version digitally.
Bang up job, CC2, Bandai Namco, & Sony. Classy.

[Cold Skin]

^ Yeah, I mentionned some difficulties and workarounds about it, but it might not apply to everyone and might be reliant on the format you had on PS4 (disc or digital) and the edition.
For me - who owned the digital version of the game on PS4 -, the "upgrade" edition was said to be unavailable, but when displaying the other editions on the page, the PS5 "Deluxe Edition" was listed as costing 0.00 euros, so that's the way I could upgrade and retrieve my save file just fine. Perhaps it was the same edition I had on PS4, I can't remember.

It doesn't need to be the "upgrade" edition as long as it's one of the other editions that's listed as costing 0.00! But sometimes, you won't see the various editions if you don't ask to see the editions by clicking the "..." button. So some people - maybe not everyone having the problem - might have actual access to it without knowing it, simply because the right edition doesn't appear on the page if they don't "ask" for it to be displayed, and the right edition might not be the expected "upgrade" edition for them somehow.

On the topic of other details of this current-gen edition...

- I've quickly noticed when starting a new game that lighting and shading have definitely been improved.

- The inside of Goku's house displays the outside landscape through the windows (though with a pixelated circular picture, but it's still better than windows you couldn't see through for the immersion and feeling of well-being in the house). The landscape picture is from the new version, with the river appearing blue. This is not the case with the closed window near the sink in Kame House for example.

- Some pre-timed cutscenes (with subtitles rather than dialogue boxes), probably the ones that are prerendered, appear in lower resolution with aliasing just like on the previous gen, but they do show the new current-gen landscapes with new flower packs, blue water and all. This would mean that they re-encoded prerendered "in-game graphics" cutscenes to include the new landscape but chose to keep the lower resolution for them?
For example, this is the case when Goku and Gohan say goodbye to Chichi before heading to Kame House to introduce Gohan there.

- Other pre-timed cutscenes (with subtitles rather than dialogue boxes), probably the ones that are handled in real time, naturally have the full upgraded resolution of the current gen.

[nato25]

So...

Spoiler:

• Bardock was outright stated to be stronger than Nappa in-universe. The latter's power level was never mentioned, we only knew it through a guidebook that puts him at 4,000. So even though this was popular knowledge, it's still cool that being stated in-universe.

• What confirms Goku to be Bardock's son is his hair. I immediately remembered Gine also saying something about the hair, which apparently is weird-looking even among the Saiyans.

• It seems Bardock is a sleepyhead and always get late. A bit more to his personality!

• Tottepo can actually speak! It's the first time we hear his voice.

• Yes, Solid State Scouter is in the game and it's a nice remix of it! As well as some other awesome Dragon Ball Z soundtracks.

• It seems there is nothing after the credits, no Bardock OVA or a new scenario featuring Mira and Towa... Come on, Cyber Connect2... After a spectacular job in Trunks DLC, how the hell could you have missed this gold opportunity? Damn...

May someone please tell me if I need to play through the entire story before diving into the DLCs or if I can just go straight into the DLCs without having to play the story mode?

My thoughts on the dlc and a reply to some of the points in the above posters post

Spoiler:

I don't really like the hair thing to be honest. Kind of goes against turles thing about saiyans not having many looks.

There also is some bonus story after with kid vegeta. While not chilled which I was hoping for at least it's something. Haven't played it yet so not sure how substantial it will be.

I don't think they gave the bardock special the same amount of love they gave history of Trunks but I was still pretty impressed with what they got out of a 40 minute special. I was surprised we didn't get little Easter eggs for broly in the nursery or any mention of gine or raditz. I guess they really wanted to stick to the script om this one. Not the way I would have gone.

They could have perhaps made tora playable at least so we could do the fight on Meat ourselves. So it did feel a few corners were cut. You kind of forget how short the special is, it's basically kanassa, meat and then Freeza, it was nice they added that first battle at least.

[Scsigs]

- Some pre-timed cutscenes (with subtitles rather than dialogue boxes), probably the ones that are prerendered, appear in lower resolution with aliasing just like on the previous gen, but they do show the new current-gen landscapes with new flower packs, blue water and all. This would mean that they re-encoded prerendered "in-game graphics" cutscenes to include the new landscape but chose to keep the lower resolution for them?
For example, this is the case when Goku and Gohan say goodbye to Chichi before heading to Kame House to introduce Gohan there.

- Other pre-timed cutscenes (with subtitles rather than dialogue boxes), probably the ones that are handled in real time, naturally have the full upgraded resolution of the current gen.

That's really weird that the pre-rendered cutscenes aren't at full resolution, but they went to the trouble of re-encoding them to reflect the new versions of the environments. You'd think that wouldn't be the case.

[Copirachez]

Imo they had such potential to combine DBZ Bardock, 2011 Bardock and DBMinus Bardock by time travel and future changing, but they choose to follow only DBZ canon. Ngl I was disappointed, but I liked this DLC, even though it didn't bring anything new.

[Grimlock]

Spoiler:

I don't really like the hair thing to be honest. Kind of goes against turles thing about saiyans not having many looks.

There also is some bonus story after with kid vegeta. While not chilled which I was hoping for at least it's something. Haven't played it yet so not sure how substantial it will be.

I don't think they gave the bardock special the same amount of love they gave history of Trunks but I was still pretty impressed with what they got out of a 40 minute special. I was surprised we didn't get little Easter eggs for broly in the nursery or any mention of gine or raditz. I guess they really wanted to stick to the script om this one. Not the way I would have gone.

They could have perhaps made tora playable at least so we could do the fight on Meat ourselves. So it did feel a few corners were cut. You kind of forget how short the special is, it's basically kanassa, meat and then Freeza, it was nice they added that first battle at least.

Well, considering that the movies take place in another dimension, what Turles said can still work just fine. It's not necessarily a contradiction.

Spoiler:

They expanded that scene where we see Vegeta eating and learning that the planet was destroyed. We actually see the race he killed. And there's a bit more to the Vegeta and Cui "relationship".

Yeah, I'll have to agree. It is a massive disappointment to get a straightforward retelling of the Bardock TV Special without anything of major significance being added. What's more frustrating is that this comes right after they have done the exact opposite in Trunks DLC. I understand Gine not appearing, but Raditz should have (and there's no mention of him, as far as I can tell). Also, as I said in another thread, Bardock without Super Saiyan or the Time Breaker outfit feels like I'm playing as an outdated version of him. It's like we are still pre-2010. If there's more to a character, use it. Still, it is the first and only material that allows me to explore planet Vegeta. We even see it at nighttime. I never thought I would live to see that day (or should I say, "night"?). Some degree of love was put into it, but I really was expecting more.

For those that haven't actually played the entirety (by that I meant post-credits entirety...) of the Trunks DLC and are expecting this to be a fairly straightforward, faithful retelling of exclusively the 1990 Bardock TV special...

... I'm almost willing to bet money on you being in for a surprise!

[Scsigs]

Imo they had such potential to combine DBZ Bardock, 2011 Bardock and DBMinus Bardock by time travel and future changing, but they choose to follow only DBZ canon. Ngl I was disappointed, but I liked this DLC, even though it didn't bring anything new.

Meh, I'm not surprised they didn't do that. While I'm kinda surprised they didn't try to combine OG & Minus Bardock, I'm also not surprised they just chose to just adapt OG Bardock. They've been pretty consistent with just adapting & expanding on the Z materials only, though taking ideas from the other stuff, like when they showed Trunks training under Supreme Kai & Kibito, which was only explored in the Super manga, & doing their own spin on it.

[sangofe]

Imo they had such potential to combine DBZ Bardock, 2011 Bardock and DBMinus Bardock by time travel and future changing, but they choose to follow only DBZ canon. Ngl I was disappointed, but I liked this DLC, even though it didn't bring anything new.

Meh, I'm not surprised they didn't do that. While I'm kinda surprised they didn't try to combine OG & Minus Bardock, I'm also not surprised they just chose to just adapt OG Bardock. They've been pretty consistent with just adapting & expanding on the Z materials only, though taking ideas from the other stuff, like when they showed Trunks training under Supreme Kai & Kibito, which was only explored in the Super manga, & doing their own spin on it.

They'll be doing a DB portion soon though.

[Scsigs]

They'll be doing a DB portion soon though.

True, though it's easy for them to do because they can literally reuse a lot of assets they already made for the base game for character models & shit. They just need to design the World Tournament arena if they don't already have it. Gotta also remember that the Battle of Gods & Resurrection F DLCs had a lot of new assets, with Beerus' planet, Golden Frieza, Goku & Vegeta's clothes from Res F. The Trunks DLC, while having new character models for younger Future Trunks, Future Gohan, & I think Future Bulma, they also reused a lot of older assets for the other character models & didn't have to do much for the environments. The Bardock DLC is definitely the most that they've had to do for the DLCs because they had to model Planet Vegeta & wherever else, as well as make models for all of the Saiyans & alter Goku's model for Bardock. Plus whatever else they have in there (haven't played yet because Xbox, RIP). So, while they could've definitely done Mins Bardock mixed with OG, I'm not surprised. Not to mention that OG Bardock's the more popular & well-known of the 2.

For them to do stuff from DB before the last tournament, they'd have to make a LOT of new assets for character models & locations. They'd be better off making a whole new game, tbh. Even for the materials in Super passed Res F, I'd like to see it get the full game treatment. Then they can also adapt shit from the manga & put a timeline to things that haven't been animated yet. Then we could get like Dragon Ball: Goku, or Dragon Ball Super: Kakarot. It'd be really cool. Dragon Ball's material in general would lend more to an Action RPG as well than Z's or Super's, imo.

[nato25]

Spoiler:

I don't really like the hair thing to be honest. Kind of goes against turles thing about saiyans not having many looks.

There also is some bonus story after with kid vegeta. While not chilled which I was hoping for at least it's something. Haven't played it yet so not sure how substantial it will be.

I don't think they gave the bardock special the same amount of love they gave history of Trunks but I was still pretty impressed with what they got out of a 40 minute special. I was surprised we didn't get little Easter eggs for broly in the nursery or any mention of gine or raditz. I guess they really wanted to stick to the script om this one. Not the way I would have gone.

They could have perhaps made tora playable at least so we could do the fight on Meat ourselves. So it did feel a few corners were cut. You kind of forget how short the special is, it's basically kanassa, meat and then Freeza, it was nice they added that first battle at least.

Well, considering that the movies take place in another dimension, what Turles said can still work just fine. It's not necessarily a contradiction.

Spoiler:

They expanded that scene where we see Vegeta eating and learning that the planet was destroyed. We actually see the race he killed. And there's a bit more to the Vegeta and Cui "relationship".

Yeah, I'll have to agree. It is a massive disappointment to get a straightforward retelling of the Bardock TV Special without anything of major significance being added. What's more frustrating is that this comes right after they have done the exact opposite in Trunks DLC. I understand Gine not appearing, but Raditz should have (and there's no mention of him, as far as I can tell). Also, as I said in another thread, Bardock without Super Saiyan or the Time Breaker outfit feels like I'm playing as an outdated version of him. It's like we are still pre-2010. If there's more to a character, use it. Still, it is the first and only material that allows me to explore planet Vegeta. We even see it at nighttime. I never thought I would live to see that day (or should I say, "night"?). Some degree of love was put into it, but I really was expecting more.

For those that haven't actually played the entirety (by that I meant post-credits entirety...) of the Trunks DLC and are expecting this to be a fairly straightforward, faithful retelling of exclusively the 1990 Bardock TV special...

... I'm almost willing to bet money on you being in for a surprise!

Yeah exploring vegeta itself, seeing the pods fly off in the distance, visiting the nursery and medical room were a highlight, seems like that was where most of the effort went.

I'm happy enough with the dlc as it is, it's cool that after 30 years or so of games the two TV specials got fully represented in probably the best way possible.

Gotta say I'm disappointed in the post credits secret character path though, was way shorter than I thought it was going to be and there was a ridiculously glaring mistake made during one of the cutscenes, like so obvious I don't know how the devs made it.

[Kanassa]

I love how Bardock's future flashes are stills from the Anime. It's just so suddenly jarring. Like, guys, most of these are scenes you've already made cutscenes of in the game, you went through the effort of making a Granpa Gohan model, but you couldn't just pose some models for the one or two extra shots there?

[nato25]

I love how Bardock's future flashes are stills from the Anime. It's just so suddenly jarring. Like, guys, most of these are scenes you've already made cutscenes of in the game, you went through the effort of making a Granpa Gohan model, but you couldn't just pose some models for the one or two extra shots there?

That was very jarring to me I thought the same thing. I don't rmemeber the base game doing that (although it came out in 2020,which makes it seem ridiculous it's getting this level of dlc so much later)

It's interesting to me how much the games have slowed down in interest of pay to win. Sure we had breakers but let's be honest that was such a low effort, low budget release also reflected in its price point. So really kakarot, xv2 and fighters have carried us through the last 5 or so years? Deservedly so they are some of the best dbz games we've ever had in my opinion.

[Trouser]

The DLC's are the highlight of this game. Both Trunks' and Bardock's DLC's are way, waaaay more interesting than Z stories covered in base game. I'm having way more fun with them. Wish we'd get Tree of Might story and other movies (and GT too).

Can't wait for the Dragon Ball DLC even if it's just one story.