Gameplay

Dragonball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 is a fighting game unlike most fighting games out there. Instead of the usual point of view from the side of both fighters, this game is played mostly like a third-person action game. You see all the action from behind your character, and move around freely in the battlefield. The battle really starts when you lock-on your opponent. When locked on your movement is slightly limited to make you circle your opponent when you’re moving left or right. You can also jump and fly, changing your altitude as you want, making you feel even freer in your movements. Finally, the last part of movement is dashing. You can dash left, right or backwards to evade attacks, or forward to go towards your opponent for an attack. In battle you start with a few life bars, and the goal is to deplete the opponent’s life bars by attacking them. Pretty normal in a fighting game. Other than that you have a Ki bar gauge, which restores itself in time or by charging up, and a blast bar, which also restores itself in time, but is only used for certain special attacks.

Now for attacks, the beef of the battles. There are basically 2 types of attack: energy attacks and physical attacks. Attacking physically requires pressing the A button, many times to do different combos, and in conjunction to the B button after pressing A for yet more different attacks. Pressing B uses energy attacks. There is only one basic energy attack, so mashing B will only send out a few more of the character’s basic beams. For both attack types there is a more powerful version as well. Holding A will charge a heavy attack which sends the enemy flying, while holding B will charge a more powerful beam attack.

Finally, the most important part in the gameplay definitely are the special attacks. Big attacks that do big damage. When your Ki bar is at a high enough level, you can execute special attacks, which are done by pressing B and Z at the same time and doing a motion with the Wii Remote (which I will cover later on). When your attack is unleashed, your opponent has to quickly react or he will get heavily damaged, as the special attacks hit hard, and sometimes even a bit too hard… That was it for Blast 2 attacks. There are 2 other types of specials: Blast 1 and Ultimate Blast. Blast 1 attacks are done by pressing Z and a direction on the d-pad or both a direction on the d-pad and on the analog stick. They vary between teleporting, powering up, or small beam attacks. Ultimate Blast is normally the characters’ strongest attack, which requires you to charge up to max power (filling the ki gauge and then continue charging to turn it blue), and then is executed in the same fashion as Blast 2 attacks. A lot of those attacks are quite enjoyable to watch and are nicely done. Some of them trigger cut scenes (a bit like special attacks in the naruto fighting games), and display animations similar to what is seen in the Anime.

You are obviously able to transform in the game. What is a dragonball game is goku can’t go from normal form to SSJ3 form? To transform, you have to press the 1 button on the Wii Remote. Transforming will have 2 effects: making you stronger, and changing all your special attacks. It doesn’t make you THAT stronger though, since you can decide to start the battle at an advanced form, but the special attacks of the stronger transformations tend to be much stronger than it’s predecessors. Also, some special attacks can destroy the planet you’re on (either Earth or Namek), which is kind of interesting.

There is one last gameplay element that is quite important: Evolution Z. In story mode, you win experience points by winning fights. Those experience points are automatically assigned to items you equip to your characters, and that, in time, level up. Those items can increase the character’s attack power, defence, speed, health, energy attack power, the number of equipment slots, and the power of all the different special attacks. Not only that, but there are also items (that can be bought in a shop) that give different special powers. Evolution Z is mostly used in story mode as you need to make your characters stronger so you can fight stronger opponents.
Verdict Gameplay-wise All-in-all the gameplay in DBZ:BT2 is awesome. When you play it really makes you feel like you’re playing an actual DBZ fight, as the animations and the way you fight is pretty much the same as in the Anime, because of all the special attacks, and you can also do the classic “teleporting after blowing the enemy away and attacking him again to smash him to the ground” you see sometimes in the anime is here as well. The good thing here though is that battles don’t last 10 episodes.