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description Dragon Ball Z Taiketsu

Dragon Ball Z: Taiketsu is a 2D fighting game based on Akira Toriyama’s manga-turned-anime series, and it is downright awful. Atari showed how willing it was to turn a quick buck off the Dragon Ball Z name earlier this year when it released the 8-year-old Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 for the PlayStation, and Taiketsu is as offensively bad. Perhaps even more so, since the age of Ultimate Battle 22 could be blamed for its terrible quality, while Taiketsu is a brand-new title.

The selection of fighters in Taiketsu is a predictable mix of heroes and villains from across the Dragon Ball Z timeline, with the only real surprise being the inclusion of Broly. The combat in Taiketsu is on the verge of being totally broken. For starters, the hit boxes are wildly inconsistent, causing some erratic behavior–characters will slide across the screen seemingly at random, and they’ll regularly pop over to the other side of one another when in close-quarters combat. The actual fighting itself is sloppy and simplistic, with every character only having a few combos and a special move or two of its own, outside of the catalog of punches and kicks that all of the characters share. The only component of Taiketsu that’s even moderately original is the sky battle mode, where both characters will jump into the air and exchange a quick volley of punches and kicks, but all you need to do to come out on top here is mash buttons. Actually, the gameplay is so sloppy and the artificial intelligence so simplistic that all you need to do at any point in Taiketsu is mash buttons. The game also contains link cable support, so you can play this mess with a friend, if you’re so inclined. While playing with a friend takes the sloppy AI out of the way, it really isn’t any more fun.

As proven with the past two Legacy of Goku titles released on the Game Boy Advance, a game that features the Dragon Ball Z brand is, essentially, a license to print money. Regardless of the quality of the software within the box, Dragon Ball Z: Taiketsu will no doubt be considered a successful holiday release because of the popular franchise as its selling factor. And that’s just a shame, since the game is an absolute mess of a GBA fighter; it’s not necessarily “thrown together,” but Taiketsu is incredibly unpolished. The game reeks of the same horrendous quality of the games released during the success of Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat fad when everybody and their brother tried to capitalize on the craze as quickly as possible…quality be damned.

Features

15 characters
Unlockable extras
Link cable support for two players
Cartridge save

Legacy of Goku and Legacy of Goku II actually lifted its adventure situations and scenarios from the cartoon series, but for this fighter, developed by the same studio, you just get the characters and locations. Simply put, fifteen characters from the Dragon Ball Z series get together to pummel the hell out of each other. Goku, Gohan, Krillin, Piccolo, Android 16, Android 18, Cell, Frieza, Vegeta, Broly, Buu, Nappa, Gotenks, Raditz, and Trunks are either freely accessible during the fight, or unlockable by winning fights. At least the Budokai console fighter series tied everything together with cutscenes that revolved around the anime; here, there’s no rhyme or reason for these battles. To the game’s credit, there are plenty of other unlockables that encourage multiple playthroughs; there are character bios, images, and tunes to make available by spending Z points earned in a battle.

But all of the elements, both hidden and available, can’t hide the fact that Taiketsu is an extremely lame fighting design. Sure it’s got a mighty army of fighters to choose from, but they all have similar styles and very few unique attacks, and the fighting engine offers very poor feedback for when a punch or kick actually connects. The balance is completely off as well; no matter how well a combo has been pulled off, the damage dealt is not nearly as effective as it seems it should have been. There are also occasional glitches during the battle; leaping into a character occasionally forces the two to awkwardly bounce apart, and some of the super moves are far too much for the engine to handle without causing some nasty flicker and sprite tearing.

Character models, while 3D, are very stiff in their animations, lacking that whole “anime” flair that gives the series its, for lack of a better word, “charm.” And like many licensed games on the Game Boy Advance, this fighter doesn’t have a whole lot of sound samples from the television series…unless you call the occasional nondescript “grunting” a licensed sound sample.

The worst part of the game is in how the air battles, an absolute trademark to the Dragon Ball Z franchise, has been thrown in with very little thought or effort. Essentially, a player can initialize an air battle with a specific controller and button command, which sends him flying up into the air; the opponent can opt to follow him or just wait it out to make the player come back down. When an air battle starts, it’s a simple matter of playing Track ‘n Field, rapidly hitting the button to win the fight. Really. That’s the way it was designed. No strategy, just button mashing. Honestly. Very. very lame.

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