DB Fighting Games: Overall good or not quite what you want?

[InfernalVegito]

All your points are perfectly valid, but in the end most people buy these games because it's Dragon Ball. People just want to fight with their favorite characters from their favorite show. There's nothing more to it.
I've not come across anyone who demands a deep gameplay on a competitive level and buys these games. If it wasn't for the DB textures, models, moves, stages, voices and music these games would sell even less I assure you.

And I am not saying that gameplay is unimportant. UT is the prime example.

[Zykar]

If it wasn't for the DB textures, models, moves, stages, voices and music these games would sell even less I assure you.

Exactly! But that just proves that the DB games lack in many things. If they were good it would sell well to hardcore fans and others alike. It would be more successful this way.

For instance the Blazblue series is a new franchise and it still sold millions of copies, 1.83 million to be precise. So the character textures and models and attacks were new. It sold because it is a good game. DB has the strength of its fans behind, imagine how well it would sell if it were a solid game as well as having DRAGON BALL on the cover. I'd bet 2 million at least. How many did Raging Blast 2 or Burst Limit sell? Well about 0.98 million for Raging Blast 2 and 1.2 million for Burst Limit.

See what i mean? A new franchise almost beat two DB games together from the loved and well known series. If we compare it to an almost as old franchise like Street Fighter it (Street FIghter IV) sold about 3 times the number of copies with a total of 3,76 million sold.

Check this site http://www.vgchartz.com/ and see it for yourselves.

[InfernalVegito]

Yeah I know. But as it seems it's hard to combine the fast-paced adrenaline fueled feeling of the show with a deep and solidly balanced gameplay plus content. I'm not saying it's impossible but yeah, there's no game that does both well. Maybe because they just don't have enough time, the money or the care to pay attention to minor details.

And then we have the 2D vs. 3D debate again. What is better? The feeling of the show can certainly only be represented accurately with the 3D style but the solid gameplay with 2D. Bad predicament. I am at a loss.

[dbboxkaifan]

1. Burst Limit - Short game but sweet, its cutscenes are faithful to the Z series and Dimps did a great job with the gameplay, basically everything. The alternative costumes make it seem like there's more characters, Goku SSJ turns to Vejito SSJ-like, for e.g.

2. Shin Budokai 2 - Pretty much Budokai but on the go.

3. Tenkaichi 3 - Just a game to play with whichever character you'd want, though, due to the music being uninteresting and repetitive, I rather just listen to sound effects.

[Zykar]

Yeah I know. But as it seems it's hard to combine the fast-paced adrenaline fueled feeling of the show with a deep and solidly balanced gameplay plus content. I'm not saying it's impossible but yeah, there's no game that does both well. Maybe because they just don't have enough time, the money or the care to pay attention to minor details.

Yeah i agree, it's really hard to combine those two elements and make a good game from it. But the way i see it if they focused on one gameplay engine and evolved from that, like Dimps was doing with the budokai engine they might just give us something closer to what everyone is looking for. Of course they would have to remove some quick time events and some of the more cinematic stuff in order to do that, but they could still put a very good DB action for the ultimate moves or ultra combos or whatever they would call it.

It's just too bad that a new installment on the budokai series seem to have been abandoned, since it is the one that would be closer to a good fighting game.

And then we have the 2D vs. 3D debate again. What is better? The feeling of the show can certainly only be represented accurately with the 3D style but the solid gameplay with 2D.

Well while that is mostly the case, Tekken is a 3D game and it is pretty successful, not only for most gamers, but in the competitive scene as well. Not sure about Soul Calibur, but i think that is also another good fighting Game in 3D. Street Fighter 4 and Marvel VS Capcom 3 are in 3D even though the gameplay only has 2 dimensons to it. It would work out better in a Street FIghter 4 style in my opinion, but now that's just a matter of taste and personal opinion.

[Ringworm128]

Most of the ones I've played are fun but they seem to be lacking the polish that games like Street Fighter have.

[Jackal puFF]

Attack of the saiyans was pretty damn good. Just the lack of sequels is annoying.

[DNA]

Attack of the saiyans was pretty damn good. Just the lack of sequels is annoying.

You're absolutely right, I guess we're just concentrating on fighting games. Since I personally know Zykar, I know that's what he was going for, he should update the title.

[Hellspawn28]

I always thought Attack of the Saiyans never got a sequel due to bad sales? I think the game only coving 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai through the Saiyan story arc must have turn most people off.

[DNA]

I always thought Attack of the Saiyans never got a sequel due to bad sales? I think the game only coving 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai through the Saiyan story arc must have turn most people off.

It's sad how we don't get sequels for games that were actually good and that said games don't have good sales. And it's even sadder that the reason they don't sell so much is that in order to be good games, they concentrate on bettering the game and going step by step instead of cramming everything they can in one game and call it a day, and apparently most fans/buyers are more interested in how much content one game has instead of said content being good or not. That is truly sad.
Look at Legacy of Goku, it covered everything from early Saiyan Arc to the end of the Freeza Arc and was a piss poor game, but it sold a lot. Versus Attack of the Saiyans which concentrates on the Saiyan Arc and throws a bit of back story by including a short chapter relating to the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai. Thanks, that's all I needed, on to the next on-Oh? No? Okay I'll settle for the shit that keeps being shovelled yearly. Or not.

[Iced]

Sup everyone.

This is one of my favorite topics, Gameplay.

Dragon ball games by the large have been very weak, you will get more characters here, more characters there, and you end up having maybe, three, four unique characters in a roster of forty.
A fighting game isnt made out of cinematics and roster alone. if they were, games like street fighter would be forgotten quickly, instead of played and replayed for years. When creating a game for a loved series like dragon ball you have to take in consideration not only putting in fan favorites, but to actually create something that lasts the ravages of time.


As long as people keep writing love letters to games with fifty plus characters that play the same instead of focusing on gameplay, you might as well have one bigass kinect game where the characters are toys held by hands, and you mash them together until a bar is full, and then a cinematic happens.
Dragonball fans are too hung up on the old times, when having a collection that emcompassed all the toys meant something, nowadays to add all those models to a game they just need to make a base 3d animation for punches and kicks, and then apply the model on top, they could literally spew out a game with 200 characters, and fans would rush to buy them just to have the chance to have the game that has Sansho in it! Hot balls! Sansho! Better get that game!
As long as you keep buying those, they will keep making those. It takes less effort to put a new model in and shoot out a game than to actually coding up gameplay actively.
Heck most of those games dont even have archetypes, you dont have to worry about collision of whatever move you are doing because most of them doesnt really have anything more complex than a throw per char that requires special rigging. This saddens me because there is so much you can do with such an old beloved show.

I will leave you with this, incurring the risk of bragging about stuff I'm involved in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o0063HyzUE
This is a ssj Goku coded in mugen, all his moves are unique to him, and his gameplay is a mix from butoden and super dbz. I would rather have a fully developed game with 15 characters like these than a mashup of 400 characters whose moves consist of balls, beams and the same rush move that gets the opponent locked in the same beat down move that half the cast has.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnWN21yG ... sults_main

There is more to signature moves than beams.

[DBZ Mick]

I quite enjoy the Budokai series, I really enjoyed the board game of B2 best out of all three games. Lots of fun especially with friends. B3 for gameplay- as I cannot find IW anywhere in Australia, I liked learning cancels and such (I'm no fighting game buff though), although I detested the storymode after playing it once.

Sparking Meteor/Tenkaichi 3 was the ultimate fan-service game. I like how it captures the feel of the series. It does get boring quick though, but I'd probably play it more if it had the Japanese soundtrack.

[DBZAOTA482]

Butoden series: The first game sucked. The combat was slow and clunky. Not to mention you couldn't even power up. The second game is great though, and so is the third though not as good.

Ultimate Battle 22: Terrible. The controls are convoluted beyond belief, there's hardly any game modes, and it's a total eyesore (krusty-looking, poorly-animated 2d sprites placed in front of shoddy, third-rate 3d-rendered background; PS1 can do so much better). It sucked then and it sucks forever. The only good thing about it is the soundtrack.

Budokai series: Awesome. From the 1st to 3rd, I ate it all up. It's a major part of perpetuating my fandom for DBZ, and I also think the 3rd installment is the best DBZ game (it truly set a benchmark yet to be surpassed). It's not only a great DBZ game but a great fighting game in general. I want there to be a 4th installment next year.

Taiketsu: Worst DBZ game ever! Should have all it's copies burned and Webfoot should be publicly humilated for making this abomination.

Supersonic Warriors series: I liked this series. It was fast-paced, and it certainly raised my hopes for handheld DBZ games after the inherent awfullness of Taiketsu. I'd definitely buy the 3rd installment for the 3Ds.

Shin Budokai series: This series is also pretty good although I've only played the 2nd installment (the 1st one doesn't that different though) but from I've played, I enjoyed. Some things I don't like are that several of the characters I really like to play as got shafted (Goten, Kid Trunks, Tenshinhan, Yamcha etc.), ■(punch) and ▲(kick) was changed to ■(light attack) and ▲(heavy attack),and the story is written like really bad fanfiction (I will give them props for at least trying to be creative instead of re-telling the same old story).

Super Dragon Ball Z: I enjoyed this game at first but got fairly bored with it not too long after. It does have great gameplay but not enough atethistics and overall content. The only thing remotely worth mentioning about it is that it's the only that has Chi-Chi as a playable character (the teenaged counterpart, not the kid one which I honestly don't care much about). Great arcade game but lazy effort of a port.

Sparking!/Budokai Tenkaichi series: The ultimate fanservice. This series is also super original in being the first fighting game with fully explorable environments (I know Zone of Enders and Armor Core did the practice earlier but those were largely RPGS or whatever you want to call them). As for me, I'm not a huge fan. I do like and respect Spike's effort in being super faithful to the anime, and the 1st installment and especially NEO did indeed blow me away but by METEOR (despite technically being the best of the lot), Spike started becoming more concerned in meeting Shueishia's annual quota and pandering towards hardcore fans than pleasing gamers in general. I much prefer Budokai.

Burst Limit: The first game for the HD consoles is definitely Dimps pulling punches. Sure, the gameplay is rad as fuck (for the most parts) and the visuals are arguably the best in any DBZ game (rivaled only by Ultimate Blast) but it suffers a similar problem that Super Dragon Ball Z does: there's not really much beyond that.

Infinite World: This is the last DBZ developed by Dimps (as well as the last DBZ game published by Atari before they lost distribution rights) and they go out with a whimper rather than a bang, because Infinite World is basically a watered-down version of Budokai 3 with tacked-on features. Budokai 3 was great as it is, no fixing required (except maybe the story mode) and whoever thought that should be castrated.

Raging Blast series: Spike finally throws their hats into the HD console entry with an upgraded Sparking! game and fans rejoiced but the final product turned many fans (me included) off from DBZ games. I do notice it's developed a cult following over the years and I can't say I'm one of them, I just couldn't get into any of these games. They feel like slower, watered-down versions of METEOR (which I don't even like all that much to begin with).

Ultimate Blast: It's at least a nice relief from overly-complicated trash like Raging Blast and it does well with what it does but gameplay-wise, it loses it's steam after awhile of playing because it's too restrictive.


Overall

It's a mixed bag which is a bit of a shame because to the gaming community, DBZ is all about fighting and you'd expect a consistent slew of awesome fighting games based on a series like it.

[Saiga]

No fixing required? Buuullcrap. Hyper Mode was terrible, many characters had hardly any special moves, the fatigue system was poorly done, the capsule system sucked, etc.

While Aura Burn was still terrible, Ultimates were made usable without it and the CPU couldn't knock you into a terrible Dragon Rush any more. Every character was given at least 2 Supers and 1 Ultimate, and several characters now had choices available to them. The fatigue system was improved so that you could actually know when you were close to dropping into the fatigued state, and could work towards exploiting your opponent's fatigue. Capsule system was revamped to be much better, especially the transform! capsule which was a godsend. Getting 100% completion for capsules is also a lot less tedious than Budokai 3. Having to waste money buying a Breakthrough for Cell Jr was stupid.

The improved teleports were also really nice.

[DBZAOTA482]

I forgot about the capsule system, and the characters that have barely any special moves. I disagree with you on Dragon Rush though.

[Saiga]

I forgot about the capsule system, and the characters that have barely any special moves. I disagree with you on Dragon Rush though.

I'd like Dragon Rush if it wasn't purely luck based and therefore difficult to pull off all the cool Ultimates, and also difficult to avoid the computer getting full rushes. It looks great, yeah, but it's terrible for gameplay.

[DBZ Mick]

Dragon Rush is terrible and has no place in a fighting game, same with Hyper Mode, personally. The Capsule system was pretty so-so as well.

I found the story-mode incredibly boring after you finish it once too and to go through it with all the other characters....awful.

[Zykar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o0063HyzUE
This is a ssj Goku coded in mugen, all his moves are unique to him, and his gameplay is a mix from butoden and super dbz. I would rather have a fully developed game with 15 characters like these than a mashup of 400 characters whose moves consist of balls, beams and the same rush move that gets the opponent locked in the same beat down move that half the cast has.

Ok, this is very promising! I'll be checking this out more often. And this is proof that you can have good visuals and capture the feel of DB on a 2D game engine. Those combos, look really something! And if only the Dimps and Spike game developers could look into this and do something good themselves with all the money they have it would be huge. That is highly unlikely however, and since we have something this good going on i think it shouldn't go to waste.

Also i've seen Iced post about his project with Balthazar on another thread, you might want to check it out: http://www.kanzenshuu.com/forum/viewtop ... =6&t=19267

[InfernalVegito]

Yeah I pray they never put a Dragon Rush back into the games. That totally made me hate Budokai 3 in this aspect.

[dbboxkaifan]

I've got DBZ Infinite World back to where I am now, so I'll finally try out the so-called best Budokai game out there is.

Though, with Xbox LIVE chats and all when gaming-time, not sure when I'll get to it.