This turn-based RPG for my favourite franchise has always interested me, but somehow I never played it until now.

The story timing of the game was confusing. How do you make an RPG out of a saga that consists of one battle, a training period, and then another couple of battles? Well the answer is of course to fill that training period with a lot of filler. But first, the game actually starts at...the beginning of the 23rd Budokai arc? You actually start BEFORE the 3 year time skip too, during which you get to spend some time with Krillin, Yamcha and Tenshinhan on some game-exclusive training missions, both together and alone.

Once into the canon part of the martial arts tournament the game sets a weirdly misleading idea of how the pacing will go. Most of this arc is skipped. Plot points are only briefly brought up in dialogue (my favourite part is when they talk about how Piccolo "ate" Kami after he sealed him, only for Kami to appear in a later cutscene with no explanation), and every fight except Goku vs Piccolo is skipped entirely, shown only as static images.

So after we get 1 fight for this entire ass tournament, we move on to the main event, right? Well actually no, first we get the wedding dress filler arc! Which gets way more attention and time than the actual canon fighting arc. I guess it is more adventure-focused, so whatever.

By the time we get to Z and finally get Gohan as a character, he starts at level 1, while everyone else has the benefits of their training in previous chapters. Accurate to the story? Kinda (not accounting for Gohan's hidden powers). Balanced for gameplay? I mean... also kinda, they don't put Gohan in high level areas. But it's annoying to have done all that training just to start fresh with a new character.

Anywho from here canon plot points are given major focus, unlike the 23rd Budokai. Cutscenes go on for a very long time, pretty much explaining everything in detail. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's just...weird. Why start the game with this kind of rushed storytelling, as if you're acknowledging players should be familiar with the story, then afterwards make sure the player understands every story beat to the letter?

From here we kind of alternate between canon, anime filler and game-exclusive. The biggest chapter of the game, and the one that really tells you "we're a video game, we need more content that our separated cast can't bring!" being when you have to find the dragon balls, at which point Piccolo, with Gohan in tow, teams up with the Earthlings to look for them. Oh and Goku gets brought back by Baba to help them look! Can you imagine how insane that'd be in the real story? Goku being brought back mid-way through their training, to team up with still-evil Piccolo and the good guys? It's funny. And to get a lot of locations for this DB hunt, the game goes back to the original. You visit places like Muscle Tower, the pirate cave and Pilaf Castle.

So that's how you make an RPG about a very simple, small-scoped saga. You essentially shoehorn in everywhere from the series that doesn't appear in this era. And that's not even getting in to the game-exclusive areas.

I do like some of the little stories they added to the game. Plus there's one moment in said chapter where everyone teams up to search for the dragon balls, at the end of it they of course need to go their separate ways so they're in position to be in their canon spots when we get back to that part, well since Gohan is supposed to be kidnapped, but has been hanging out with everyone just fine, the game addresses this by actually having Piccolo offer Gohan to stay behind with the heroes, only for Gohan to say he wants to keep training. A surprisingly great character development moment.

This all gets even weirder when you realise that in Japan this was branded as a "Kai" game (it came out around the same time Kai started airing). But that just raises so many more questions! OK, it does help explain why they picked this specific period since that's where Kai starts, but why would it then add 23rd Budokai stuff that doesn't exist in Kai? Why does it add filler that only exists in Dragon Ball Z, that Kai specifically removed to make a more accurate retelling of the manga? If you were a kid who just started watching Kai, and then picked this game up, you'd be so confused, but even more confused when you learned many parts of this game aren't actually made up for the game, but came from the old anime. Why brand it a damn Kai game when it's clearly based on Z?!

So in summary the way this game handles story is an absolute mess. Oh and I figured the reason they didn't do a sequel is because the Namek saga would be awful for this type of game. You'd only really be able to play as Gohan, Krillin and Vegeta for most of it, and there's hardly any interesting landmarks on Namek to visit. And yet, the game STILL teases that a sequel was being worked on! It ends with them talking about the DB's on Namek (as in the manga) and then says "to be continued" before ending with a post credits screen of a silhouetted Freeza. What the heck was going on with this game? Let's not even get in to what the game would do if it ever got to the Boo arc, now that it used up Baba's 24-hour revival magic here.

I've already typed this much and I haven't even gotten to the gameplay yet. The story is easily the least important part of this whole thing, and yet the way it was done just fascinates the hell out of me.

Gameplay is fine. It's a pretty basic turn-based RPG honestly. There's a few things that stand out, like I don't know how many games have a dedicated "recovery" attribute where you auto-gain a bit of HP every turn. You've got a few special moves per character, but since Dragon Ball isn't known as being a very strategic RPG, you're mostly relying on brute strength with these. There's a few buff or healing movies, but I think only Tenshinhan's solar flare can cause a status effect. For the rest, you rely on items.

I don't think it's a bad battle system. It's simple, but it's flashy and fast enough. Basic attacks are a multi-hit combo rather than just a standard sword slash or something, and you even have the chance to get a lucky combo extender for extra damage. You've got a "sparking" meter which essentially acts as a limit bar. When full you can fire off a super move, or if multiple characters have a full one you can chain specific moves together to form an S-Combo. What is an S-Combo? Well it seems to just be literally watching the characters perform the moves as they would have anyway with zero difference, but now it has a unique name! I guess it might do more damage than using the moves alone? I basically never used these, just preferring to fire off the ultimate attacks.

There's a lack of polish in the translation that can be best seen by how the stats call one stat "Tc" which you'd assume stands for "Technique", especially since it's the stat that buffs your Ki moves. So what does every item that interacts with this stat call it? "Skill". Use an item that raises a characters "skill" stat and watch their "Tc" raise. Weird.

The speed stat also felt horribly broken. It's pretty simple how it's supposed to work - order in battle goes by biggest speed number to smallest. The first turn almost always goes like that, but why then does every turn after seem to shit the bed? Why is my Krillin going first on turn 1, but then 2nd on turn 2? There were no stat changes or status moves between. Why is the enemy attacking before or after me seemingly RNG? Why does the enemy sometimes straight up miss a turn? It's like the speed stat in this game is more a suggestion than hard numbers.

The game doesn't take much advantage of being an RPG by adding side quests. There's only 2 in the whole game, and both are long grindy ones rather than small self-contained stories. The first one has you give one NPC 1000 carrots. To get a carrot you need to equip a specific field item and defeat enemies, turning them into carrots. When using this item you do not get money or any regular item drops. So essentially you need to defeat 1000 enemies while forgoing the ability to gain cash or items, and you need to waste an item slot on it. Not very fun.

The other side-quest is pretty great though. Use Tenshinhan's mafuba to capture all non-boss enemies in the game. Whether the move will work isn't guaranteed, but you can raise the chances by lowering enemy health and giving them status effects, or getting new field-items (each is just an upgraded rice cooker). Sounds familiar right? Catching things by weakening them, into containers that have various tiers? To drive this point home even more, there are exactly 150 enemies in the game to capture. It's a very creative side quest. Albeit a grindy one, and the game lacks any info in-battle to say if you've already successfully used the technique on that specific enemy.

The games movement speed was a bit low, but it annoys me more because it has 2 different levels of unlockable speeds. Both are field items, meaning you have to use your slot on them if you wanna go faster than a snails pace. The first is gotten mid-way through the game (in a missable, albeit not easily, chest) and the second is the final reward for that capturing every enemy in the game mission. So yeah you'll likely have almost finished the game by the time you can get it.

Being slow is one thing, but I hate when a game offers what should be a run button as a damn unlockable.

The game has a secret boss, and it's no secret anymore that it's Broly. I guess fitting for the title, but surely Turles would fit both the title AND era? I'm not surprised at all they went with the more popular of the two though.

One other thing I wanna talk about is how in a couple of the chapters where Goku is in otherworld, Kaio sends him on a quest to a game-specific location (I think so anyway, maybe it was from a filler ep). For some reason in these 2 visits to this location, Goku is joined by a fully AI controlled Bubbles and Gregory. This assist party member thing NEVER happens outside of these chapters! Why are freaking Bubbles and Gregory implemented in this way but actual fighters like Chaozu and Yajirobe never get to see the battle screen? Lmao. It's not like it's a case of wanting to make sure Goku wasn't alone in his fights, because many chapters have characters fighting solo, including other chapters with Goku in Other World (like the Princess Snake segment). They're not even that helpful. They're mildly decent the first time, more as damage sponges than anything. But the second time they don't get any stronger despite the fact the enemies do, so their best use is to take a hit or two before they "run away" for that battle. I'd rather have just played Goku alone than have to sit through their animations every turn.

I feel like I've mostly complained about this game despite giving it 4 stars! But that's because it's only really the more minor complaints that are easy to hone in on. I can only really say that I loved playing the game in so many ways. I loved going through all these Dragon Ball locales with gorgeously designed backgrounds. The graphics truly can't be faulted. I liked the additional story stuff, I liked the music and little easter eggs. It's fun to fight well-known characters in a different way than the usual methods for Dragon Ball (fighting games or beat-em-ups).

It's an RPG for Dragon Ball fans, and the love of the franchise kinda just makes the game work in a way it would probably fail as a unique IP.