Post
by Herms » Wed May 06, 2009 1:43 pm
OK, so I finished the game today. Where did I leave off in my summary, the part with Raditz in the Ensei Tree forest? When you meet up with him, he says that he's destroying the Ensei trees to gain power, so that he can surpass Enma Daio. When you beat him, he flies off, and you return to Kaio's.
Then there's a chapter where everyone gathers dragonballs to eventually bring Goku back to life. And it is literally everyone: Piccolo and Gohan join up with the Earthlings, and even Goku returns to Earth with Uranai Baba's help. This is the first time you get access to all the characters at once. You can only have 3 in your fighting party at any one time, but you can swap out characters at any time. You can go after each dragonball in any order; the areas that they're in are indicated on the world map. You already have the dragonball that was in Gohan's hat, so you don't have to search for that. There are actually only 5 locations to search for dragonballs in, even though there should be 6; this gets explained later, sort of.
There's one in Muscle Tower. You meet up with Sno, who says that General White has returned and Hacchan has gone missing. When you get to the top floor, you find that General White is controlling Hacchan (in a way that they never actually explain), and so you fight a boss battle against the two. Hacchan returns to normal, and gives you the dragonball, which he had found earlier. Incidentally, I guess it wasn't actually Sno's daughter you helped earlier in the game. I thought it was because the house that the sick girl is in has a snowman with a pipe outside the door, and a person making another snowman somewhere else says that Sno always makes pipe-smoking snowmen. But the sprites for Sno and the sick girl's mother look completely different.
There's another dragonball in the sea-bottom cave from the RR arc. You have to go to Dr. Brief and have him lend you a submarine before you can get down there. The dragonball is held by a giant octopus, like the one Goku fought back then (the giant octopus says that Goku seems familiar somehow, but I guess this octopus must just remember him from a past life, inasmuch as Goku killed and ate the giant octopus from back then). The octopus says he is being paid by "a certain army" to guard the dragonball. You fight him and get it.
Another dragonball is on Yunzabit Highlands. You pass by Kami's spaceship on the way there. It's frozen in ice that you can't melt with ki, so you have to go ask Annin for some flames from the Furnace of Eight Divinations. When you get back, the RR Army shows up to take the dragonball, so you fight a version of Black's Battle Jacket. Then another one is in a desert, but I don't remeber anything too interesting happening as you get it.
The last area to search is the Devil's Great Toilet, modeled after the Devil's Toilet arena at Uranai Baba's place. It's basically some giant ruins with the same sort of decoration. and the entrance is in the shape of the gaping mouth of one of those toilet-sitting demon statues from Baba's place. When you get in there are two dragonball readings, but it turns out that this is because the dragonball has been split into two halves. To get each half, you must track down and fight two bosses, each a living version of those toilet-sitting demon statues, named "Menz" and "Leidez" (haha...get it?). Once you get both halves, you can take them to Mister Popo to put them back together.
At this point, Goku returns to the afterlife. Pilaf and co. then show up. They have the remaining dragonball (apparently they're keeping it in that dragon radar-resistant box from the RR arc). They steal your dragonballs (...as everyone just stands there watching...) and flee to New Castle Pilaf. The place looks just like Pilaf's original castle (right down to the glass-roofed death chamber, the control room, and lots of other neat details). You go into the giant pinball room from the anime, and fight 3 giant pinball bosses, one after the other: a bronze ball, then a silver one, then a gold. After that, you enter Pilaf's room and fight the Merged Pilaf Machine. With all the dragonballs gathered, everyone splits up again.
In order to train Gohan, Piccolo makes him go into the Nemlia ruins (the ones from that filler episode with Gohan and the robot), and retieve some item he placed in the very bottom floor. Gohan is happy, since he remembers the ruins from when he got lost in there months ago, and wants to see the robot again (apparently the robot wasn't destroyed in the game's version of things). Gohan finds the robot, but he is out of energy, so Gohan goes and finds his spare battery and wakes him up. They talk, but the robot doesn't know where the special item (whose name I forgot) is. Piccolo then decides that it was too harsh to send Gohan in alone, so he joins up with him. They reach the bottom floor, but some ruin-plundering bad guys are checking the item out. They send Excavation Robot-Modified to fight you, which is essentially an evil version of Gohan's robot friend.
After that, things switch to Kuririn and co. training at Kami's palace. Chaozu is missing for some reason, so Kami gives them permission to go ask Uranai Baba to find him. She says that Chaozu is at where Mutaito used to train his pupils, and that he has been taken there against his will. So you go to the training grounds, and it turns out that Chaozu's kidnapper was Tsuru-sennin. Tsuru-sennin is apparently still not too happy with Tenshinhan and Chaozu for leaving him, and he's even more mad at Tenshinhan for what he did to Tao Pai Pai at the 23rd Tenkaichi Bodoukai (it seems Tao Pai Pai will never recover). So in his stead, Tsuru-sennin brings out a robot that has been programmed with all of Tao Pai Pai's fighting data...TPP-EX! This is essentially a modified version of Cyborg Tao Pai Pai's head stuck on the body of the pirate cave robot. You beat him and Tsuru-sennin runs away.
At Kaio's, Kaio is going to begin teaching Goku the Genk-Dama. But first, Goku must go get the Genki Crystal, which is held by the great elder of Gregory's race, Mongomeri. It seems that Gregory is from a race of fairies who live in the Ensei Tree Forest. The Ensei Trees serves as the entrance to their world, but since Raditz went around smashing those trees, their world can't be reached right now. So Goku must go around regrowing the trees that Raditz smashed by using some special fertilizer that Kaio made with...Bubbles's help. It's called "Bubble's That", and is, apparently, Bubbles's poop. So this game basically has a quest where you go around regrowing trees by smearing monkey poop on their stumps. Surely this must officially be the greatest DB game of all time. Once you've regrown the trees, a portal appears to the fairy world, a big Ensei Tree.
There, Raditz's soul appears again. He wants to get the Genki Crystal, which he says will give him enough power to surpass Enma Daio, and become the ruler of Hell (apparently the Ensei Tree Forest is a part of Hell). You battle him, and you can use the Kaio-ken now, since Kaio gave it to you at the start of the mission. It's an Ultimate Technique, so you must fill your anger meter before you can use it. Once you've activated it, all your stats will double for several turns, but at the end of those turns you become stunned, and can't move for a few more turns. Despite this drawback, it's still a very good technique, as you can imagine. All your attacks do twice their normal damage, your enemies' attacks do only half what they would, and they're much easier to dodge, since your speed is greater.
Once you beat Raditz, he will fly off again, despite you offering him to come train with you at Kaio's. Mongomeri will appear and give you the Genki Crystal, which actually doesn't give you great power; it seems Gozu and Mezu were just spreading stupid rumors again. But the crystal is essentially approval to learn the Genki-Dama, and after Goku leaves, Gregory asks Mongomeri if he really should have given it to Goku. Mongomeri says that Goku has great character, and will only use the Genki-Dama for good, so it's alright. Kaio then teaches you the Genki-Dama. It's another Ultimate Technique, and once you select it after your anger meter fills up, it takes several turns to charge up, but it does absurdly high damage, something like over 10,000 points when all your other most powerfull attacks do about 1-2,000.
Finally, Vegeta and Nappa come to Earth. You fight as Tenshinhan in a one-against-one fight with a Saibaiman, then do the same with Yamcha. Yamcha dies, then you fight as Piccolo, Kuririn, and Gohan against the remaining 4 ones. Then you fight Nappa a few times and, well, it's all pretty straightforward from here. Oozaru Vegeta is in the game, and the final fight is Gohan and Kuririn against wounded Vegeta. But Vegeta getting hit with the Genki-Dama and being finally flattened by Oozaru Gohan are only in cutscenes. The final cutscene continues on with Vegeta leaving Earth, and Kame-sennin and co. arriving to pick everyone up. At the end, the words "To be continued" appear on the screen, and the credits roll. After the credits, the shadowy figure of final-form Freeza appears briefly. So I think they just might be planning a sequel.
If you leave the area before heading into the final battle with Vegeta, Bulma will contact you and say that Mister Popo wants to talk to you. Mister Popo will say that, having watched Kami make the dragonballs, he attempted to make some of his own. He failed however, and this semi-dragonballs (Popo Balls?) can only grant a limited number of wishes. Still, they might be useful even like that, so Popo tells you to use the dragon radar to look for them. He also tells you that Uranai Baba wants to speak with you. Uranai Baba will bring back Yamcha, Tenshinhan, and Piccolo for you, so that you can use them. She'll bring them back one at a time, but you can ask her as many times as you want. Once you get them, you seem to have them forever. The ghost nearby will take you to the afterlife if you speak to it.
So you can use your full team to go search for the Popo Balls as many times as you like. The areas with dragonballs in them will be indicated on the world map, and you can use the dragon radar in each area to pin-point their location further. When you collect all 7, Shenlong appears and you can pick one of several wishes: you can wish for lots of money, you can wish for lots of experience points, you can wish for lots of AP points (used to level up your techniques), you can wish for "an amazing item" (which turns out to be heavy clothing which gives you experience points as you walk), and you can wish to visit a new area. The new area turns out to be part of East City. The place got wrecked by Nappa when he and Vegeta arrived on Earth, and radiation-suited men block off part of it, but when you make the wish, you'll get a permit to visit the sealed-off area. It has the strongest random enemies in the game, mostly Saibaimen and Saibaimen-rip offs, and you can get some good items there.
You can gather the Popo Balls as many times as you want, and you can wish for money, exp, or AP as many times as you want. However, you can only wish for the amazing item and the new area once. After you've gotten one of those wishes granted, there will be a new wish available: the ability to fight with the strongest enemy. When you make this wish, Shenlong will tell you that a portal to another dimension has opened up at a place that looks like a dragon, which references a dragon-shaped rock between Goku's house and Yamcha's lair, and this portal will take you to an unrivaled opponent. An opponet with just one thing to say:
"Kakarotto!!!"
So yeah, the secret boss in the game is Broli. How random is that? I think Tullece would have fit into the game much better, but whatever. Broli is insanely tough, having a battle power of 999,999 (compared to Oozaru Vegeta's 180,000). You get a ton of experience and AP if you beat him, but so far I haven't managed to.
She/Her 
