The biggest selling point of this game is the gameplay, it plays like a traditional 2D arcade fighter, which in my opinion is everything a Dragon Ball Z game should be. (When you first play through the Story mode it is a bit of a mixture of different Z fighters). There are a few different takes on the original Z Story mode, once you finish the original story you unlock the option to play through storymode from the perspective of other characters which include Goku, Krillin, Gohan, Piccolo and Vegeta. This is probably the main mode for Extreme Butoden as the other modes are pretty short and complimentary.
Extreme Butoden in general feels a bit easy and babyish until you start to get into the deep end of the Adventure Mode which is pretty enjoyable and challenging as the difficulty is increased as you get further into the adventure and unlock new areas and battles. (Ultimate moves still have small cut scene though). The game doesn't often stop to watch a cut scene for a single move, so it is fast and exciting especially if you're trying to make a huge comeback with only 5% or 10% HP. You can have a team of multiple Characters which can be tagged in if you're running low on health by tapping the desired character on the touch screen. (The game feels a little babyish in that sense, probably the biggest con for this title.) You can easily switch to another character and be able to perform all super and ultimate moves. For example the same button combination is used to do a Kamehameha with Goku as it is to do a Masenko with Gohan. Character super moves and ultimate combinations are exactly the same for every character. (Thankfully, all text has been translated to English.) Unfortunately all voices in the game are in Japanese which is a bit of a let down compared to Sean Schemmel and Christopher Sabat's Goku and Vegeta portrayal respectively. For example, Vegeta will do different moves compared to Super Saiyan Vegeta.) (having said that, each character and their different transformations are playable as separate characters and have COMPLETELY different fighting animations. You can't do character transformations during gameplay However there is an extremely large variety of assist characters that can be unlocked as only assist characters)
(So a lot of the favorites are playable, but it is disappointing not being able to play as other characters that you might have a soft spot for such as Nail or Android 16. Playable characters are limited compared to past DBZ games.
I want to get the bad news out of the way before I continue with the good stuff, might save a few people time and money.
The character sprites are of the highest quality and stay true to the anime, which will have Mugen fan boys jumping for joy. I like to compare it to these titles because it is in a very similar fashion fast-paced, action packed with chain combos and ultimate finishing moves. It can very well be compared to titles such as Street Fighter vs X-Men or other similar titles of that era (Marvel vs Capcom/Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter). However there is something in particular that is very satisfying about DBZ Extreme Butoden. More recent 3D releases such as Xenoverse play in a uniquely 3rd person perspective which at times can feel a little bit alien to us traditional seasoned gamers that grew up on old fashioned Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. When compared to other releases in the franchise, it can't really be compared as it is very unique in game style (for a DBZ game to say the least).
By harp00n | Review Date: October 25, 2015ĭragon Ball Z Extreme Butoden is a great addition to the Nintendo 3DS scene.