Best game with Budokai in its name. (DragonBall Z: Budokai 3 (PS2))

Member Name: randomreviews

Product:	DragonBall Z: Budokai 3 (PS2)
Date:	29/08/09 (29 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: incredible visuals, awesome battle options

Disadvantages: hyper mode

The Dragon Ball Z Budokai series is an incredible fan service that really wows players with incredible graphics and the ability to wage epic battles with characters from the insanely popular anime and manga series.

Unlike traditional fighting games, the Budokai games seem to have their own flow about them. Many moves lead into cutscenes where you simply watch your character unleash a massive attack against your opponent in stunning visuals. You don't have to be a pro at fighting games to hold your own in Budokai 3.

Character design is spot on and awesome. The game introduced a much better system of evasions - now permitting you to fade and beat your opponent around several times like a ping pong ball as opposed to before where all you could do to avoid getting hit was sidestep in Budokai 1 & 2. Also, with the right timing, you can even dodge punches and kicks while standing in place.

Through capsules you can equip a character with techniques like transformations, energy attacks, or armor and recovery items. Transformations are amazing in this game and the auras are very realisitic to the anime standards.

One major flaw is Hyper Mode. Its a 1 button technique where your character is engulfed in a red aura while their ki steadily drops. In this time you can either use special techniques or attack your opponent to enter Dragon Rush, which is a series of attacks in a cutscene where you and your opponent press a random button, if they don't match, the dragon rush continues, dealing more unblockable damage.. if it does match, the regular battle returns and both sides have control of their characters again. The CPU pretty much only lives to use Hyper Mode and Dragon Rush.

There's a fatigue system where if you take series damage, your character will be tired and unable to move. This also happens if your KI is drained before you're able to do any special moves in hyper mode.

The game allows you to fly whenever you want to but you usually go into the air anyway during a fight so this feature just doesn't seem that useful.

There are fusions you can perform as well, but they require you to be in Hyper Mode and input a specific chain of buttons to do the right fusion or you'll end up weakened.

This game's got about 40 characters to choose from but they're 40 unique characters, unlike the Tenkaichi series where they let you play as every form in a character's life. You really don't need 10 Goku's.. 1 is enough.

Like the other DBZ games you also get a story mode, world tournament and versus mode for 2 on 2 battles. It even has a special mode where you can train your character and gain experience to level them up and boost their stats, which is also what you can do in story mode where you freely fly around the world seeking out battles and dragon balls.

And of course there are beam struggles as well where if 2 big ki waves clash, the players must mash buttons as quickly as possible to try to overpower the other and win out so their blast deals damage to the other.

Awesome game exclusively for PS2. Its a must have for any DBZ fan! The Budokai Tenkaichi series may offer more characters, but I find this game's controls are much more enjoyable and skill based whereas Tenkaichi really just seems like who can button mash the fastest.

Summary: Every DBZ fan should own this game.