With the announcement of Budokai Tenkaichi 4, I figured now would be the best time to go back and play the original three Tenkaichi games. I planned on doing this anyway because I have a ton of nostalgia for the PS2 era Dragon Ball games, having made a lot of friends over them while attending vocational school. I didn't come from the same background as many of my dorm mates, but if there was one thing we all had in common, it was smoking brown-ass weed that smelled like arsenic. Also, Dragon Ball. Everyone really liked Dragon Ball. Fond memories of "movie nights," watching Big Money Hustlas and Bojack Unbound while eating cheap Chinese food.

Naturally, anyone with a PS2 on campus probably had some combination of the Budokai and Tenkaichi games. I remember putting a lot of time into this and Tenkaichi 3 in particular. Boy... Tenkaichi 3. Now that's a game. I mean, it's also bad, I assume, but bad in a way that's still entertaining. At least I hope it is, because I was startled to find out just how rancid the first Tenkaichi was. It is so bad that if I had all seven dragon balls and wished for it to be a better game, Shenron would say it's not within his power.

If the Tenkaichi games are known for anything, it's their free-roaming 3D combat and absurdly large rosters. 64 characters! Granted, different forms and transformations are treated as their own roster entries, which means you have a lot of Gokus, but that's still impressive. You start to make sense of how they were able to get away with that, though, when you realize every character plays virtually the same. You have two specials, an ultimate, and a "favorite attack." Specials break down into one of four types: energy beams, physical rushes, self-destructions, and AOEs. So, while some characters have signature moves - like Goku's Kamehameha or Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon - in terms of function, they're pretty much all the same. This results in a lack of distinction, and as such, the roster really only amounts to a toybox full of action figures that you can smack against each other and not much else.

This also has the consequence of making battles incredibly samey. Your normal kicks and punches do an almost imperceptible amount of damage, requiring you to use your special attacks to make any real progress against your opponent's health bar. The easiest way to do that? Charge up and tap the triangle button, of course. The most efficient way to win any match is to just charge and pop off your special, then charge up again immediately after so you can fire off another as soon as they're up. There's nothing to encourage you to play the game differently other than your own personal desire to make it less rote, because it does nothing to reward you for engaging with it more than that. Run through each character's remarkably small list of moves and move on to the next one, because you've seen everything they can do. Ah, Majin Buu's Kamehameha is pink instead of blue. Mm. Fascinating. I wonder what would happen if I stripped the power cord of my PS2 and touched my tongue against the bare wire.

The story mode takes you through almost every battle featured in Dragon Ball Z, with a few What If modes and truncated runs through GT and some of the films (Tree of Might, World's Strongest, Lord Slug, and Dead Zone are notably absent.) There's a lot here, and since the core combat of Tenkaichi is so patently dull, completing each fight provides relief only in the same way crossing chores off a list does. Yes, I scrubbed the toilet and I beat Cell Jr. as Yamcha. To jazz things up, each battle will provide you with a single mission task necessary for clearing the stage. While most are simply "beat your opponent," you'll sometimes be hit with ones that require you to defeat them with a particular move, or to run the timer out. These suck. You have no clear indication of how much damage a particular move will do, so god help you if you need to use your ultimate but screw up and leave your opponent with a sliver of health. Guess you get to surrender and try again.

The absolute worst is having to time out your opponent, though. See, there's a lot of fights in Dragon Ball where the bad guy gets a huge power up and runs a clinic on whoever they're fighting, and since this game respects the canon, that means you're going to be going up against a lot of enemies you just cannot beat. Enjoy running away from them for about a minute to a minute-and-a-half! Or you could just keep them in an infinite combo, punching them a bunch then hitting them with a stunner before punching them again. Since you do basically no damage during this, you'll prevent them from dying (this results in you failing the mission) and keep them stunned long enough for you to survive. That might sound really tedious and, yes, you're right, it is.

I'll admit that all this pissing and moaning is a bit ridiculous. The only value in replaying the first two Tenkaichi games is in seeing how the series core mechanics were iterated on. I don't think anyone would tell you to play this and not just skip right to Tenkaichi 3. Hell, just play either of the Raging Blast games or the Xenoverses... Which, when I put it like that sure makes it seem like Tenkaichi never really went away to begin with. Weird. Probably best to not think about that too much.

Regardless, it's a shame that fighting operates on such a rudimentary level in Tenkaichi, because there's some potential in the way the game forces you to be considerate of and interact with its terrain that could allow for some more strategic fights, and there's something to be said for how the free-roaming control scheme immerses the player even further in the world of Dragon Ball, too. But uh, I'm afraid it's crap. Sorry, Goku!

I commend this game for giving the fans tons of content to play around with, with a ridiculous number of characters, stages, and customization options available. The drawback is that the gameplay is so radically different from the Budokai games that it is a completely different game.

That by itself isn't a bad thing, however, this game plays worse than Budokai 3 and for that, it makes it a lesser experience for me. I liked having to transform my character, having them slowly get stronger throughout the fight was fun. This game removes that and has them listed as separate characters in a menu. I can see why this is done, for balance, however, they then throw that balance out the window with character-specific quirks. Like androids being untrackable or the Majin Buu's slowly healing throughout the fight. These are just small changes that lessen the experience.

The big control changes are making this one of the first true "arena fighting" games, which pits you and your opponent in an open area to fight, using any and every direction imaginable. The camera for this game was way too close to your character's back and it made fighting extremely annoying and not very fun.

The game also doesn't look great, and the animation feels sluggish. To be fair, with the amount of content here I can understand why it's like this but it's not great. I think this game is not very good. There is something here, but as it is now I wouldn't bother playing it at all. There are sequels and successors out that are more worth your time, play those instead.

O fato de você não conseguir se transformar no meio da luta me pegou de leves

Mas a gameplay é idêntica aos outros 2 talvez um pouco mais lento

E po cheio de personagem logo no primeiro viu.

At attempt at bringing Dragon Ball Z's fights to life in a different way, Budokai Tenkaichi is unlike contemporary fighting games in that it uses an over-the-shoulder camera, placing fighters in a wide arena that they can fly freely around. It's an ambitious concept, but unfortunately it's not well executed here. Many of Dragon Ball's imagery and ideas are recreated, such as powering up, rapid-fire melee, and a bevy of signature attacks, but it's odd that not everything is right - after all, these kind of games live or die on their accuracy. There aren't quite enough ideas to make each fighter distinct, many of them blurring together, especially with many sharing special moves. Budokai Tenkaichi is a classic example of a great idea hampered by a poor execution.