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Dragonball Z - Harukanaru Densetsu: Reviews

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Game Score: 5/10

Roll back the years to January 1992, when a game called Dragon Ball Z: Supa Saiya Densetsu was released. Roughly translated to english it means "legend of the super saiyan". This was one of my favourite games on the snes, despite its lack of story and repetitiveness, it was one of the original card games and possibly one of the best, despite a few flaws. Roll on forward to June 2002, to when dragonball z, legendary super warriors was released. Also another very good card game with few flaws. well that concludes the history lesson now lets move onto the game play, or lack of.

Story mode and versus mode are your main choices here. in story mode you have the choice of goku, piccolo and gohan, with an extra character unlockable. While you can start with whoever you want, after reaching a certain point of the storyline, you'll be told to play the other stories, which you must complete up to a certain point. For example, starting with Goku, such issue will rise after coming back from the stone serpent, and you'll have to play as Gohan before proceeding, in order to unlock new chapters, which gives you the feeling of no freedom with the game and it makes it seem even more linear.

The game follows the series very strictly with little to no suprises. Don't get me wrong, it is a very long game, if you can bear the pain of going through it all. For example, when you are facing raditz at the start with either goku or piccolo, he brings 4 saibamen with him, two for each character. The storyline is split into several chapters, which if you already know the story you won't be suprised with anything here.

next is the battle system
Let me explain: most cards have a sample effect, alongside with a defensive and an attacking value, which is also used to determine the number of places you can move across. While, on the field, you'd obviously want to pick cards with as much attacking value as possible, such task is disallowed, since the defensive value of the card you played is evaluated at the end of each round. The numbers on the cards can vary from 1-8, 8 being a Z. Also, other characters will appear as support characters in- you guessed it, the form of cards. If the opponent's card, randomly picked, has a value bigger (or equal) to your defensive one, you get into a random battle. As you may think, this is a big turn off, as you'll be facing constant random battles against foes who, usually, you can defeat with a single strike, makeing the game very simplistic and boring.

The leveling up system really doesnt do anything either, as it doesnt really influence gameplay that much, which also adds a more disappointing twist to the game. The way it works is by selecting a capsule when you level up, out of a choice of five you can choose to discard any of the five but you have to pick one and if you choose to discard the other capsules you cant get them back.

The battle fields, while big only make the game worse. Due to the fact its so big means you get lots of random encounters, which can all be defeated easily. The idea is to get to the end of the map and beat the boss so to speak. However, even this is easy because as long as you have a good hand of cards you will win easily without even taking any damage! This really shows the flaws in the game design.

Saying that you could argue that it depends on how well you design your deck, but the question remains what deck!? at certain points in the game you seem to aquire new cards, but as far as i no, unless you can further on in the game, there is no foreseable way to edit your deck.

The graphics is also another mixed bag, the pictures themselves are how akira toriyama would want them to appear, nice and crisp. Thats about the best part of the graphics though, However, that's as far as it goes. There are absolutely no animations, and most attacks are depicted with small special effects included in a single static image. The same goes for the cutscenes, where text is shown and a single image of the character appears. 10 years ago, such features were usual, but nowadays, this is unexcusable, even the snes one had great animations in it that made it a joy to watch through the thousands of fights you'd have levelling up your characters. Where as this game even the most die hard fans would have trouble stomacheing a 100 fights.

Gameplay: From all the ponts mentioned above, despite me being a big DBZ fan, its a real let down. 4

Sound: While none of the music from the series is in the game, the music does fit in. also the character voices are in the game when attacking which is a nice touch. 6

Graphics: From the points mentioned above, also the graphics on the map represent what you might have seen on the snes. 4.5

Lasting appeal: Despite the game being really long, its just got so many downfalls that most people won't be playing the game past the saiyan saga! 5

Overall its getting a very generous 5 from me, and thats only because i like dragonball z so much anyways.