Goku and his fellow Z fighters are here to save the universe yet again. Players will get to fight from the tried and true Saiyan Saga to an all new one based on Dragon Ball Z Battle of the Gods. The Dragon Ball Z Battle of Z demo only covered the fight up to Nappa so the selection of characters was fairly slim, but it showed enough to give an idea of how the game would play. Unfortunately this left me a barely wet appetite and an even worse taste in my mouth.
Replaying the same story arcs over and over can be tiresome, but Dragon Ball Z Battle of Z changes the formula enough to attempt to make it fun. Gameplay feels more like a team-based arena-style fighter, which adds the benefit of having help and drawback of worrying how your team is doing. This lends itself fantastically to co-op, but going through the motions with A.I controlled allies becomes nothing short of tedious. Imagine if Goku had to save Krillin every five minutes and you get an exact idea of how this system doesn’t work. Sometimes it would be easier to leave your teammates out of the fight entirely because of the sheer waste of energy. There was a neat feature shown with which you could share energy with other people fighting over the Internet, but in a game where everyone can just power-up for the same result it seemed redundant.
While many of the DBZ games can be playable on their own merits, this one seems entirely passable. Iconic lines were thrown to the wayside, making this seem like nothing more than a use of assets. Hopefully there is far more to the game than the demo had implied, as the fights felt more like a slog than intense brawls over the fate of the planet. Making this game fun might be a task even the Z fighters can’t surmount.
Dragon Ball Z Battle of Z Demo Gameplay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHc4QrUJ3Ng