Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Tenkaichi is the latest in a series of DBZ video games from Namco Bandai for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This is the most polished of the bunch spanning multiple sections of the Dragon Ball Z universe with destructible environments and a ‘Hero Mode‘ character creator. Dragon Ball Z is a unique license – to the adult in us it’s hard to understand the appeal yet for that young adult who grew up on the show it is held in high revere. DBZ Ultimate Tenkaichi is faithful to the manga series and includes almost all the characters from the show.
As a video game license it does the show justice but as a stand alone product there is much that should be changed. For instance, our least favorite part of the game was all the on-screen text we had to read – there is a ton of it and not well done either. Another issue was the extreme amount of loading screens – time after time. The biggest addition to the game is the character creation (Hero Mode) in which you can make a customizable character from scratch – give him a name and special powers and then take them into the world to do battle and level up. (We’ve provided sample gameplay of the Hero Mode character creation with commentary from Black Nerd Comedy).
The Dragon Ball Z license is in good hands with Namco Bandai producing the game however we’d love to see a more polished and crafted video game experience that doesn’t come off as something pieced together from an anime cartoon.