Dragonball. It was a cultural phenomenon upon children in its day, and a ship that still floats even today. Airing originally in February 1986, it was such a huge success that the show lasted over 150 episodes. The idea was simple, the pursuit of Dragonballs that gave the collector one single wish, before they were scattered on the world again. The main hero was not even a human, rather a monkey man, also known as a Saiyan. This being that yielded great power but it was not limited to being physical. The true power he had... was of the power of heart. With his as the show’s hook, it took them on many adventures, and introduced many more colourful characters.
While Goku (the Saiyan) and Bulma’s (a human) adventures (of collecting all of the Dragonballs) had all ready been ended in Japan it was introduced in North America in 1996. In fact nearing the end of the second Dragonball series (Dragonball Z), North America had their very own translated version of Dragonball. Originally it took the series quite a bit to get its footing, but once it was able to it had a fantastic affect on North America. This is even shown now as the show still being repeated today. The show spans almost 300 episodes, and even spawned another show after it -- Dragonball GT -- that lasted over 50 episodes before it was ended. The show continues to be so popular that there is a live action movie planned in the future, which may even ignite another show.
With all the weight the franchise has, including the longevity, this is also not the first Dragonball game. In fact there have almost been 15 of them, and to be quite honest, not a lot of them have been good. Most, in fact, of them have been pretty crappy, which appears to be the theme of most of the anime/movie games that have been released. Generally they have all been rushed out before perfecting, but could this be true for Dragonball: Super Sonic Warriors 2, the follow up to a GBA game? Stay tuned, and you will find out.
I think I can honestly say that they have gotten this game right. This game sports a 2D fighting style, with 3D backgrounds, which does look very nice. Most of the backgrounds are rather lengthy, including the fact that you can fly up into the sky a grand distance. It does not make you feel like you are boxed into a small screen either. The battlegrounds are not interactive though, so missing your attacks will not create craters in the ground, which was something featured very prominently show in the cartoon. In future games it would be pretty interesting for them to do that, considering games like Future Tactics have incorporated that into their design.
The fighting style is very simple as well. Each character has a different level assigned to them, ranging from 1 to 7. Based upon your dragon power you can choose a team of these characters in free battle mode to go up against another team. In addition to these battling characters, you also have special characters that do an action on the battleground. These actions range from doing special attacks, to affecting the way your opponent moves. With the battles taking place on the top screen, you will use the bottom screen to trade up the battling characters, as well as activating some of their special attacks.
Each character starts off with 100 power points. This is specifically for when using your energy, dash, or special attacks. You may increase your power reserve to a total of 200 points either by doing regular attacks, like a normal punch to get 10 points, or a strong attack for 20. I found something a special touch though, if you backed off your opponent, by pressing the R button you could charge your power points quickly, though you were left vulnerable for attack. Another thing you can do with the R button is if you motion the d-pad towards the enemy and hit it, you will use up 10 power points, and dash/rush them. This will allow you to close large gaps in moments to keep the battle fast and furious.
The fighters also activate most of their moves the same way with hitting the same buttons in the same order prompts each of them. Activating their special abilities are done this way too, which does make it easy to switch up the characters without missing a step. Each of their attacks is drastically different from the last, which will also deal different levels of damage. Including the levels of damage the extent of their attack is quite different making each character a new experience. Each of the characters also moves at a different speed, which keeps things nice and fresh, so while characters are similar their resulting attacks are not. You may have a total of three different characters per battle and it ranges over 30 in diversity.
The battles with any of the characters are very fun to do. In no time you will find yourself in some nice battles with strong enemies. You are really only limited by what level of difficulty you are playing on, as for the hard levels it can be fairly challenging, but on the easy mode you can just approach your enemy and hit them with the same attack over and over with no issue of a strong retort. Either way it does end up being really fun, and very entertaining, unlike a lot of the other Dragonball games out there.
Each character unlocks special moves as well, which may only become activated in special situations. This will range from your teammates, to specific characters -- that you must battle against -- to have them activated which is a great touch. Some characters will also vary greatly in their powers, due to the level system, so they may breeze through several characters before being taken down. As such you may find yourself witling away at your opponent trying to set up your ultimate attack to finish them off. I had found though that some of their ultimate movies did not inflict ultimate damage. Rather it was best to use the regular special attacks, rather than the ultimate one. The ultimate also used up substantially (150 power points) more power than the regular ones (50 power points).
What I strongly praise this game for is the story mode. After choosing a character, you get to go through many “What if” situations/battles. These will compose some previous endings from the show, and a few new ones. The main storyline spreads out on a path, with other separate paths in the storyline branching out if specific conditions are met. They do not always tell you how to accomplish these tasks all of the time, but most of the time they give you a good hint. Most of the storylines also intersect with different ones from other characters. This was quite refreshing, as you battle through 15 different characters total in this mode. Going through this section will unlock even more characters for you to play with, and unlock special moves for battle. You also get to play both sides of the fence, playing not only as the good guys, but also the most evil ones.
