Which is worse? Final Bout or Ultimate Battle 22?

[DBZAOTA482]

DBZAOTA482's Comparison Series #4


Judging by the consensus of fans and gamers alike, these two represent the nadir of DBZ gaming. One thing these two have in common is that they're both failed attempts at bringing the Super Butouden series to the fifth-generation of video gaming consoles (PlayStation) of which only saving grace is nostalgia. Final Bout is critically panned for it's overabundance of Goku characters and painfully sluggish controls. Ultimate Battle 22 for it's ugly visuals, slow-paced combat, and stiff controls. Which of the two do you think is the greater evil?

Personally, I think Final Bout is worse. While I do think Ultimate Battle 22 is a bad game, I found Final Bout to be the absolute bane of all fighting game existence after playing it via Emulator. Everything felt so sluggish and delayed to the point of almost being unplayable. In fact, I got so fed up that I decided to not even play by the rules. I button mashed my way through the "Vs. Com" mode and won (I'm not exaggerating one bit!), thus unlocking almost ALL of the characters in just one go!! Even the final boss (Super Baby) wasn't much of challenge (I beat him with Base GT Goku no less).

Anyways, speak.

[Hellspawn28]

Ultimate Battle 22 was so bad that I return it the same day that I rented it from Blockbuster. Final Bout was shit, but at least I was able to pull off the moves better then I did in Ultimate Battle 22. Not to mention the English voices for Final Bout are so bad that they are funny. A lot of them sound so out of place that it makes me laugh. At least Gohan, Piccolo (reminds a bit of Scott McNeil) and Freeza sound decent in my opinion.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

Neither? Both were fairly decent at the time I played them. Taiketsu is the only truly horrid DBZ game I've ever had the displeasure of playing.

[InfernalVegito]

Yeah obviously if you're going to compare them with today's games then they're going to pale in almost every regard. But back then I played them excessively and still remember the days of joy addicting over it.

In any case, the music is something no other game after it managed to surpass for me.

[Hellspawn28]

Final Bout and Ultimate Battle 22 got bad reviews from critics and fans back in the 90's and early 2000's too. I remember Ultimate Battle 22 got a 1.2 on Gamespot back in 2003.

[Gyt Kaliba]

Taiketsu is the only truly horrid DBZ game I've ever had the displeasure of playing.

This. Always this.

That said though, if I were to choose between these two games as to which is worse, I'd have to easily hand it to Final Bout. To be fair though, I only got it a few years ago, and didn't even play it until maybe a year ago...so my perception of it is obviously skewed. I never played the game prior to having played all of the Budokai games and Tenkaichi games, so there was no way for me to really, truly enjoy Final Bout and it's slowness. It just...argh. I really wish I'd had it back in the day though, like I did UB22, because I do have fond memories of that one. Sure, I mostly got it because I didn't have a PS2 of my own for my own copy of Budokai yet (Budokai 2 was my very first PS2 game that I bought, actually). Did I suck at it? Yeah. Did it move slow? Yeah. Did I mostly just button mash until I finally beat my opponents? Yeah. But I had some good times with it none the less.

[90sDBZ]

Both games have redeeming qualities but I think I prefer Final Bout overall. Not necessarily because it's better but just personal preference. Lets look at them both:

-Final Bout had a bit more depth with the counters and the meteor system
-Ultimate Battle 22 had the better roster overall but Final Bout did have SSJ4 Goku
-Final Bout's graphics didn't look THAT bad for the time while UB22 looked kind of awkward and unatural in the way they handled the animations and backgrounds
-Ultimate Battle 22 had more techniques per character
-Final Bout had better music
-Final Bout is one of the few games to focus on GT more than Z
-Some of the stages in Final Bout looked pretty decent
-Final Bout had much better menus

Also someone said that they look bad when compared to today's games. For the most part that's true but I think I'd take Final Bout over Ultimate Tenkaichi any day. Final Bout at least feels like a game.

[Neshawn]

when I first got final bout I remember when I stayed home sick and really went in on it. cool character selection and I did enjoy it at the time. Of course compared to the new games it is terrible but even when it came out the play station had way more fluid fighting games. Even bushido blade, which was out around the same time, was faster and more fluid than final bout. I had a good day playing final bout and that was about it. don't let your love for the series get into the way of remembering how disappointing that game was. just from watching a video I can safely say ultimate battle looks like the worst thing ever!!

[Quebaz]

Ultimate Battle 22 is worse for the sole reason that Japan later got Shin Butouden which is what Ultimate Battle 22 should have been.

[Hellspawn28]

Releasing Ultimate Battle 2 nearly a decade later was a bad idea. If I was Atari then they should have released Legends in 2003 instead. I remember when the US original version of Final Bout used to be a lot on money on the after market during the early 2000's. It was like $80 - $100 on Ebay and I remember trying to save up money to buy it as a kid because I wanted to play it so bad as a kid until it got re-release in 2004 to cash in on GT on Toonami.

[TTC817]

Ultimate Battle 22 was NOT a bad game. The characters have a ton of special moves to differentiate from one another, there are plenty of stages, plus hidden characters unlockable with a code. The gameplay is not as tight at the SNES games of a similar engine but gets the job done. American gaming mags that bashed the game were reviewing the game like 9 years after its release and comparing it to PS2 games. Japanese version is better than the USA, since the USA version omitted the pre-fight cut scenes.

Final Bout was a steaming pile of you-know-what. Controls were blocky and unmanageable, camera angles shift to where you can't see the super moves your character launches, and the whole thing just feels like a great big mess.

[Hellspawn28]

People thought UB22 was bad before it came out in the US. I remember reading fan reviews on old fan sites saying that the game was slow, boring and the graphics look bad even back when the game came out. The characters look poor and the backgrounds are bad even for a early PS1 title. The bonus fighters like Kid Goku and Roshi were cool, but that was about it. I don't know why Atari grew up Gogeta's name with Vegito. Gogeta was in UB22 because Fusion Reborn came out and it was brand new at the time. Was it a error or to avoid spoilers because DBZ was pretty much finished by the time when the game came out in the US. I think casual fans who watched DBZ on TV knew that something was wrong.

[Thanos]

I think UB22 is worse. I picked it up at Blockbuster a million years ago, and good god. I remember a reviewer describing it as "someone crapped in a jewel case and called it a DBZ game," which I find to be a rather apt description. It's only saving grace is that the sprites look like the anime, which is kinda hideous in execution with the awkward black borders around the characters and out-of-place 3D stages.

Final Bout sucked, but, at least it had awesome music (dat Biggest Fight), pretty art, and the game was at least playable to some degree.

[dbboxkaifan]

The worst? Taiketsu.

I don't know why Dragon Ball Z: Taiketsu even exists, it's so bad that just there isn't anything good to take out of it which would be worth (i.e, like music, models, etc). The gameplay is absolute shit and the characters all look weird.

I've got Advanced Adventure and Supersonic Warriors for GBA but to hell with Taiketsu!

P.S: When I was around 14-15 I used to play Final Bout and knew how the combos worked so it was a fun game but I never really gave Ultimate Battle 22 much of a chance.

[Hellspawn28]

Taiketsu was going to be bad since day one. The previews for the game looked bad back in 2003 and Broli being playable for the first time in the US is the reason why people bought the game. With UB22 and FB, they look like that they could be fun games.

[dario03]

Final Bout
They were both slow and had horrible combo systems, but with some practice you could actually have some half decent 2 player matches in UB22. Final Bout had a more addictive build up mode though. It was entirely pointless especially since unless you and a friend happened to have characters around the same level fights would just be one sided and a waste of time. For example, I for some reason spent enough time to get Vegetto up to lvl187. Highest a friend ever got was lvl127 with Piccolo (even lvl127 would take forever to get to), and it would of taken days for him to chip my health down to zero when we fought, and I could one shot him.

A Marvel vs Capcom style game would have been so much better for the time with hardware limitations. Actually even today that would be a great style for a DBZ fighter.