The reason why Burst Limit gets so much flack from me is because of its lack in content and delivery (for lack of a better word). There were no stage bumps, no new moves and of course they kept the watered down Ultimates from Shin Budokai. Its hard to see Burst Limit as a sequel to Budokai 3 or even Shin Budokai because of the lack in content and you can't really call it, its own thing because its still the basic Dimps formula with better controls. I never played Shin Budokai but I did see enough gameplay footage to see that Burst Limit was just an upscaled version of it, the Stun Punch was in Shin Budokai 2 as well. No one had a real alternate costume except for Vegeta, Trunks and Piccolo and in actuality the whole Nail's costume as an Alternate for Piccolo is played out now and was then once the character became playable in Tenkaichi 2 or 3.SparkyPantsMcGee wrote:No, I wouldn't say graphics are the only good thing about Burst Limit. I'm trying to avoid the Budokai vs Tenkaichi/Raging Blast debate that seems to pop up before every new release but for comparison purposes I guess I don't have a choice. As far as laying the foundation goes, yes both games Raging Blast and Burst Limit had that goal in mind. I'd happily give points to Raging Blast for also adding in the Buu saga to the roster but that one extra saga does not make the game any better.goku the krump dancer wrote: So we can agree that the only good thing about Burst Limit was the graphics huh.
Lets talk controls first. Burst Limit did an awesome job of blending both the console Budokai Games and the PSP shin series, while also adding a few extra gameplay tweaks. Burst Mode was a better rush mode that actually made sense. What was ultimately the biggest flaw in Budokai 3 actually became a functional strategy when playing offense. And yet, at the same time, defense still had plenty of room to counter attack. Also, I'm lacking a term for the move but pressing R2 to punch through your opponent's stomach(basically this) allowed for a good way to shift the advantage. It was a great way to get your attacker off you, shift the advantage, catch your breath and fight back. All of this was done without radically changing the controls so that people familiar with the series had a smooth transition into this game; also the controls were easy to pick up for people who weren't familiar with this Budokai games. My only complaint is that they took away the ability to charge your ki, this led to a lot of spamming matches online. Also, and this is a fault of both Raging Blast and Burst Limit, pulling off your special is way too easy.
Now, looking at Raging Blast Spike did the opposite of what Dimps did. They completely re-worked the combat system for Raging Blast. And to this day, I find their choice to change things(even in RB2) for the worst. Making you use the d-pad to power up makes for some awkward thumb juggling. Before I could fly out of harms way, quickly press L2 and then get back into the action. this was all done between my Thumb and index finger. Now with Raging Blast, my thumb is doing all the work and things aren't as smooth; I'd imagine it's even more awkward on the 360 controller. I have a similar issue with transformations, it's no longer as smooth. Before it was power up and press R3. Now I have to press the transformation button(can't remember which shoulder button) and then with the face buttons decide which form I want to transform into it. That extra beat throws me off. This all may sound trivial but when we are talking about fighting games, and timing in particular, stuff like this can throw off the whole match. Especially when in truth, there wasn't a whole lot wrong with Tenkaichi's control scheme.
Then there are the glitches that came with Raging Blast. Camera issues if you get close to certain objects and even cases of characters just disappearing like in Sagas. To me those are all game breaking elements and it's the reason I was happy to rent and not buy this game. Burst Limit didn't have any of these problems, while shallow, the game was solid. It was smooth there were no game breaking glitches or disappearing characters and that alone makes it objectively better than other games created for this franchise. To Spikes credit, Raging Blast 2 fixed a lot of the issues in the first one, but that's also a problem. Instead of building off the foundation of the first game, they had to go back and fix mistakes in the first game and the game felt more like a Raging Blast 1.5 and not a 2. Now imagine what Burst Limit 2 could have done, with nothing really to fix and a lot to add. Burst Limit 2 had the potential to be an amazing sequel. Do I think it will ever happen? No, we're far past the potential of that ever happening. The sad truth is, even though the game was shallow it's still the best we've gotten this generation and that's saying a lot. Look at the competition, one game is broken, the other is it's patch, then you have a muddy QTE game and that joke of a Kinect game. Is Burst Limit the best game we've ever gotten period? Hell no. But it's one of the prettiest. Making it far from the list of shitty games we've gotten for Dragonball Z.
Personally, I don't want a new game that's in the style of Budokai or Tenkaichi. I'd rather see a completely new system that keeps in mind the best of both systems but doesn't turn into a QTE mess like Ultimate Blast. I'm a fan of what Super DBZ did in terms of how they handled the level design and the ability to move around. Tweaking that system a bit could leave to a perfect experience.
With Raging Blast, the flack it gets from me is a bit different only because the steps back Spike took were different, yeah there was a good chunk of content(Characters) taken out but they kinda made up for it in a way. Even though they took out a shit load of characters they still fixed some of the problems that Tenakichi 3 had, they combined some of the non sensical duplicate characters into one model, like Goku Mid, Early and Late , Piccolo Early and Cell and Boo arc Vegeta. They even added two what if characters. Spike added a ton of new Super Moves that almost looked like they ripped them right out of the show and even freaking team attacks.
They fucked up when they watered down the combat, Switching the controls fine it wasn't that hard to get used to in fact I prefer the new play style to the older one but the combos became extremely limited to the point were everyone literally played the same, there was some diversity in Tenkaichi 3, Natural Kid Goku (DB) played differently from Magic Kid Goku (GT). Now everyone has the exact same combos and with only difference being the ultimates. They tried to fix it with RB2 but they still have a ways to go.
Both companies took steps back with their current Gen games but Spike actually added some shit while Dimps did not.
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