Dragonball Z: Kakarot

[AndyKurosaki]

Ok. So I’m a huge Dragonball Z fan. I first watched the series back in my 20’s, via the heavily edited Toonami dub (people never died, they got sent to ‘Another Dimension’). Years later I rewatched the American dub. And a few years after that, the Japanese original. I still have a lot of love for the series. So I was certainly interested in this.

 

Visually, it absolutely nails it. It looks exactly like an episode of the anime. And it’s certainly a nice touch that you can play either with English or Japanese audio. 
 

It doesn’t get off to a great start gameplay wise though, with a pretty poor ‘training’ mission. I’ve seen a few videos of “stuff the game doesn’t tell you”. And a glaring omission is how to fight. Sure, you get three pages of a control pad, showing you what the buttons are. But there’s no explanation given in how to actually fight an enemy. I know, as a fan, that you have to charge Ki to perform energy attacks. But it doesn’t tell you that, so newcomers may be a bit puzzled why their special moves aren’t working. There’s a couple of prompts at the bottom of the screen (hold these buttons to do this move). But as far as tutorials go, it’s not great.

 

I then experienced a bug which meant I had to reload my game. “Walk with Gohan to the fishing spot” I was told. Great. Except Gohan vanished, and after 5 minutes of searching it was clear he’d fucked off into thin air. 
 

Part of the game is open world, where you can fly around collecting Z orbs of different colours, to level up your abilities. Again, the game doesn’t tell you what these are for.

 

Then there’s the Community Board, which is frankly a mess. You get a board, and when you meet characters and perform certain actions, you gain their icon, and can place them on your board. Putting certain characters next to each other grants you bonuses in combat. Some characters have their own board (Goku’s wife, Chi Chi, and his trainer Master Roshi). How do you add icons onto their board? I don’t have a fucking clue. It speaks volumes that the first time you access this part of the game, you’re barraged with about 6 pages of information. And I’m still none the wiser on what the fuck to do with it.

 

Anyway, only a couple of hours in. Maybe things will make more sense as I go along. Or it won’t, and I’ll just mash buttons and hope for the best.

[AndyKurosaki]

Well, this game can fuck right off. I got to the Raditz boss fight, and have died 5 times in a row. I’m only one level below him, but I feel far too underpowered. No matter what I do, I get bombarded with a barrage of attacks. And despite my best efforts, I just can’t beat him. Soon as I get him down to his last energy bar, he goes into overdrive, and absolutely destroys me.

 

There’s no possibility of lowering the difficulty. And as the game does a spectacularly piss-poor job of explaining its combat, I have no idea what the fuck I’m meant to do.

 

So fuck it. I’m done.

[Maf]

I started this today. It’s a middle of the road game but I like it a lot so far. The fighting is cool and the game looks pretty good. The characters translate into 3D well enough but I think there are certain angles they were clearly never to be seen at. Goku’s hair looks real wonky sometimes. It doesn’t look nowhere near on the same level as Dragon Ball FighterZ which yeah, makes sense. Is a shame, though.

 

 The voice work is good, as far as I can tell it’s all the original actors. They try to break the game up like the TV show which I really appreciate. I don’t think they do it particularly well but it’s a novel way of framing the game’s missions. 

 

Blasting Kamehameha’s is just a fun thing to do. 

 

Everything around the edges has the air of cheap license product, though. The in game cutscenes are very stilted, a lot of them aren’t voice acted just dialogue boxes and grunt sounds. A lot of the music jingles at the end of mission screens are very generic. The side missions have all been extremely brain dead fetch quests so far. The “open world” bits of the game are very barren and full of throw away repetitive stuff. Never ending fighting canon fodder and being populated with hundreds of orbs to pick up which are then spent on upgrading a character. 
 

The game has a tonne of extra systems around it that I already don’t want to do. There’s the now Monster Hunter style prerequisite of eat dinners for buffs, craft and cook stuff. There’s a ‘community board’, which if you imagine a kids sticker book it’s not too dissimilar to that. You stick the right faces on the right pages and are then rewarded with buffs from that, too.

 

I’ve just got up to the bit where Vegeta is headed for the planet and I’m now controlling Gohan. I really like this game so far. I don’t think it’s a great game by any means. It is fun, though. I beat Raditz by blasting him in to the ground with a Kamehameha and it’s just satisfying. Again going back to the cheap license product thing. It’s almost entirely not recommendable unless you like the shit it’s based on, but if you do then the game’s cheap thrills might go along way. At least they do for me.  

 

I don’t understand how to do counters yet. Apparently you block and press A when an enemy is just about to hit you but it doesn’t work reliably and I can’t tell why. Seems like it would be a really powerful mechanic to master if I could get it down, though. 

[Maf]

Around 6-7 hours in and completed the Saiyan Saga. That was really fun. There’s a mechanic in this game that I’ve only just worked out how to use called the Tension Gauge. Essentially it’s God of War rage mode which can be used once per battle when it’s filled up and then your character goes berserk. Also just because of the story I got the Kaio-ken technique which quickly kills the HP and stamina bar in exchange for boosting attack power.

 

I got to the bit where I had to fight Ape Vegeta and after getting my ass kicked a bit and not being able to get close I happened to use both the Kaio-ken and the Tension Gauge together at the right time when he had a moment of vulnerability and zoomed right up and punched the living shit out of him. That was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that and overall am really enjoying this game.

 

Got a good handle on the combat now as well. I worked out how to counter. It only works when guarding against an enemy attack and only when they have fully finished their attack then press A and vanish behind them and give them a good kick. However if A is pressed anytime before their attack is finished it doesn’t happen. It really sends the bad guy flying and gives a chance to recharge energy as counters take a lot of stamina, or follow up with a really powerful beam if possible. 
 

Also there’s a mechanic where while guarding press X to do a massive AoE shockwave to blow back the enemy attacking you, it doesn’t make sense until reaching bosses that don’t stop attacking until they break your guard and then it becomes handy.

 

The fighting in this game is really good. It’s not like a DMC type fighting game, it’s way more rock, paper scissors than actual free flow. But because it’s so fast it’s fun trying to keep up and do the right options at the right time, and there are a lot of options I’m still trying to figure out. I had my first beam struggle when fighting Vegeta but I only got it when the game told me to do it. Any time after I whiffed and got punished. It’s hard, though I think once learned this game will be really, really fun to play. I still feel like I’m at the start of the game really and already there are about a dozen combat mechanics going on. 
 

Not that I think this will ever be a ‘deep’ action game. These mechanics don’t seem to have depth. It’s just a lot of simple ones but working out how and when to use them. 

 

In every other department which isn’t fighting the game needs so much more money and work. It’s hard to describe why but it all comes off a bit PS2. The game feels really old in a lot of ways, especially around production and pacing. Lots of stopping for loading, lots of stilted cutscenes, lots of truly empty spaces, lots of boring sub systems. I don’t know. I this game is an excellent idea, it’s surprising to me just how well Dragon Ball lends itself to an action RPG style game. But it could still do with a rethink in a lot of areas.

[Maf]

Jesus, so I got to a bit in the game they call a “Intermission”. Basically I’m guessing the actual storylines they adapt from the show are going to be relatively short so to pad it out they have these chunks of the game where you just fly back and forth doing fetch quests for characters. God damn this fucking boring. This part is the most soulless, vacuous licensed game set of shit I have done in a long while. 
 

This is going to be tough to get through. Hopefully it’s not too long because even after 45 mins to an hour it’s becoming interminable. 

[Maf]

Finished the Frieza saga. When this game is fun it’s really quite fun. Going Super Saiyan for the first time was a real blast. Despite how extremely truncated this version of the story is they still manage to evoke a sense of excitement and danger in the story. 
 

The weird thing I’ve noticed about this game is despite being called Kakarot the character I spend the least time playing is Goku. Easily the “main” character at this point would be Gohan who I think I must have spent maybe 75% of the game as? Because most of the time in this game I’m waiting for Goku to show up or heal from getting his ass kicked it means I’m waiting long stretches to play as Goku again.

 

Not that it’s a huge deal. Most of the characters control roughly the same and even a lot of their special moves are similar so gameplay wise it’s not like I’m missing out. It just struck me that I waited this whole time for SSJ and now Goku isn’t around anymore so I’ll be waiting again to do it!

 

The other thing which is a small detail but I think is funny is how well DBZ lends itself to RPG level up mechanics. All of the characters just talk about power levels all the time, every time a major fight is won someone literally gets stronger, learning new moves or more powerful versions of moves fits the story, because it’s Dragon Ball when levelling up once I don’t get 100 extra HP I get 13,000 extra HP so all the numbers are ridiculous. Before Piccolo hit level 30 he had over 300,000 hp. It is silly but DBZ is silly so it all fits really well. 
 

Lastly I found something that was really annoying and that’s there are certain boss fights where it’s a 2v2 or 3v2 scenario. The support characters on my side are generally kind of useless, though. Krillin can Solar Flare which is amazingly helpful but the cool down is long. On the opposing side it is literally two bosses at once. Which is really annoying because 1v1 there is a sense of flow, pace and proceedings to the fighting but in these 2v2 fights all that goes out the window. It becomes a cheap ass mash fest and there is never anytime to do anything. Particularly charging energy where in one fight every time I tried to charge I got punched into the ground, so in the end it was mash the punch and block buttons and at one point desperately mash the health potion button. Kinda just felt like the game fell apart. 
 

Aside from that, though. Really enjoyed playing the Namek stuff today. When this game is good it’s really enjoyable, but also yes when it’s lame it’s super lame. 

[AndyKurosaki]

I really wanted to enjoy this game, being a huge DBZ fan. But that fight against Raditz seriously pissed me off. No matter what I tried, I failed time after time. And the game didn’t really tell me what I was supposed to be doing. 

[Maf]

I can give some advice if you want it. I think if you cleared that fight the game would start to make sense. I agree it’s bad at explaining itself. 

[AndyKurosaki]

Thanks for the offer, I only rented the game, and soon sent it back after I got stuck on that fight.

[Maf]

I just done a fight where I got 1,600,000 Exp ?

 

Spoilers, I guess

 

Spoiler

 

This game is bad and stupid and fun 

[Maf]

1) At the end of a DBZ game specifically called Kakarot it ends with Goku being level 71 Vegeta being level 75 and Gohan being level 87. Stuff like this is one of my most pet hates in video games/RPG mechanics when levels tell a different story to the actual story being told

 

2) Super Saiyan 3 sucks in the show and it’s sucks here too because it kills the stamina bar in about 45 seconds making it pretty unusable. So, accurate, I guess?

 

3) Mr Satan is the one of the worst characters in anything. Anywhere. 
 

4) You can always tell a bad game because of how the mechanics fall apart under pressure. Not that this game is ever difficult but when you need the systems to be sharp you find how dull and unreliable they are. This game is a prime example of this. 
 

5) I still enjoyed a lot about this game ?

[Maf]

And got all the points. Super, super easy it’s just a time commitment. Took just less than 45 hours in total although I did go the extra step and complete all of the side quests as well which I didn’t have to do but why not. I might buy the DLC at some point if I see it on sale but I could do with the break. 

I really wish either a better developer or this developer had more money to make a great version of this because I really like it but it’s also complete, brain dead trash. It really is basically 45 hours of spamming beams and mashing the A button. But I also had a lot of fun with it and even though the story is really short changed a lot of those big moments really hit for me. I had a huge smile on my face as the credits rolled and at the end of the day, that is the main job of a video game. 
 

KAMEHAMEHA!!!

 

 

 

[Maf]

I bought the DLC for this about a year ago and ended up playing it tonight. It's probably about 2-3 hours worth of game and I made it in to 6-7 because I wanted to grind and power my characters up. 

 

Here are some cool screen shots I got 

 

Spoiler

 

This game is super fun. There is a bit in the second DLC pack where you get to make 2 teams of 3 for a very brief section. I put Gohan, Goten, and Trunks together. I was using Goten and Trunk's assists of rapid fire blasts to stun enemies in place and then blowing them up with a super Kamehameha from Gohan and it's so fucking good. A cheap thrill in the way Musou games are cheap fun, just doing the same shit over and over to enemies that barely fight back (Except for when they decide too and you actually have to play the game) but instead of feudal Japan stuff it's fucking Dragon Ball and it's so fun. 

 

The only downside to this DLC is you probably have to grind, which is easy enough, but it is just doing the same fight over and over to get drinks that give 1.5mil XP (lol). It takes 2 and a bit too level up once at around level 150. It probably took 2 hours or so to get Goku and Vegeta to level 200, but you know as simple as it is, blasting around the screen and shooting lasers is just fun. This game would be my guilty pleasure if I felt any guilt about it. I couldn't recommend it to anyone, but I really like this game. 

 

The final boss fight of the 2 packs was actually really hard and I died against him once and almost died at the end, too. 

 

You get to fight Whis in the game and if you beat him within a 1 minute you get extra XP drinks, so to save time grinding you really going to want to figure out how to break down the fight and do that. However he has this annoying bit where he glows and dodges everything you try to do for like 10 seconds and it's really annoying. Until after seeing it a few times and I was like oh my god that's Ultra Instinct gimme that!!

 

Well done for getting in the game in such a cool way

 

Oh, one more thing they give the god forms in this game a really good feel. In the main game as your characters learn to transform to SS 1, 2, 3, etc. It never felt particularly rewarding because the game was scaling with you and the drain on energy was more severe with each level up. They fix it here where not only are the god forms much faster moving than the SS forms, but they double the energy meter, and they get their own combos (I mean it's just mashing B no matter what form the character is in but still they get their own combos). You can also equip up to 4 transformations so of course for the final fights I went base, SS1, SS2, SSG, Blue. Because this game is fucking cool and lets you do it so why would you not. 

[regemond]

On 23/04/2022 at 04:18, Maf said:

I couldn't recommend it to anyone, but I really like this game. 

 

You could have broken down that entire post to this and I wouldn't be able to agree harder.

 

Everything you've said is on the money for this one, and I'm slightly gutted that there's no room for a sequel because all of Z is covered (unless they do GT, obviously. But GT sucks)