The ability to port Tenkaichi onto PSP in such a smooth, playable way with little compensation in gameplay beyond the loss of a few buttons is amazing. Making the gimmick being having 4 fighters on screen at once was just them being cocky at that point lol.
You do feel the cut of characters and stages though. Having said that, the character roster is still solid with many inclusions you'd assume they'd cut like Chaozu or Cui. Stages are hit a lot harder, missing many staples like the Room of Spirit and Time.
Story mode, despite the bland presentation, is really comprehensive. It tackles almost every fight from the original manga from the Saiyan Saga to the Boo saga, something even many older console games didn't (I remember Budokai 3 cut all of the Ginyu Force but Recoome and Ginyu, and skipped Dr Gero and Android 19).
It makes a lot of weird decisions though starting in the Cell saga. While some fights are kind of combined before then to make use of the tag team gimmick (which isn't locked in as the game does allow 1v1 or even 2v1), like you'll fight Nappa and Saibamen together with Piccolo and any other fighter of your choice from that section, including Yamcha who died before Nappa entered the battle. But once you enter the Cell saga you get stuff like fighting Dr Gero and Android 19 together...in the city where they appeared instead of the random wasteland where the fight took place. And then after Goku fights both the androids, Vegeta comes in to fight 19 as he does in the original...but instead of Dr Gero, 19 is now teamed up with a Cell Jr? What the fuck? Piccolo gets a teammate to fight Android 17 (any of the 3 humans who were explicitly told to NOT join the fight), and yet 17 doesn't get 18 to help him. Buff Trunks is just a straight up missing character, so his fight with Perfect Cell is regular Super Saiyan Trunks, despite all the dialogue still making references to his slow speed from his power form. And Gohan fights the Cell Jrs with Android 16 - the one character there who NEVER fought a Cell Jr lol.
The Boo saga suffers the most from character and stage losses. There's no world tournament stage, so right off the bat Goten vs Trunks takes place on a random island. No Room of Spirit and Time so Gotenks vs Boo is also down on Earth. Gohan vs Dabura takes place on the Supreme Kai planet for some reason (the location they actually fight is rarely ever in games, but they tend to use the rocky areas to best match it. This game seems to use the Kaioshin planet for any "alien" world that isn't Namek). Base Gotenks and Bootenks are straight up missing. It's weird that they made sure every fight in the first 2 arcs could be replicated faithfully, but then just kind of gave up near the end. Then they go overboard and make 3 separate Goku and Vegeta vs Kid Boo fights in a row (broken up by a single Fat Boo vs Kid Boo fight), including turning the freaking Spirit Bomb moment into a full fight.
Story mode itself has you flying around a map like Tenkaichi 2, with a bunch of weak enemies scattered about (Saibamen, Cell Jrs, Freeza Soldiers). You occasionally get a mission if you visit the 3 towns you can interact with. These are all picked from the same pool of about 5, so be prepared to have to do shit like "clear every enemy on the map" over and over - and the game will not tell you how many are left or where they are, so you'll be looking for that last one for 10+ minutes. The game is spread into levels that tackle about 1-4 fights each, and each level has its own missions that are basically just doing the little side missions in the level itself. However for stages where you can pick between multiple characters (such as the Nappa fight) there are missions to do this level with ALL the choices. This can lead you to doing the same level 5 times, and it's not even just the relevant fight you need to do. Every time you beat Nappa with Yamcha, then Tien, then Chaozu, you also have to do the follow up Goku vs Nappa fight. These missions are optional of course, but it's annoying that they made this "content" at all (and there are unlocks between competing X amount of missions).
What-ifs return here, but instead of their own dedicated levels they add a new character option in the old ones. For example, select the first level after beating the story and you get the choice to play as Bardock instead of Goku, providing a little story where Bardock arrives before Raditz and bonds with Gohan, and then fights Raditz himself. Most of these are generally just going through the same fights as the level normally would, but with a new character.
Outside of story mode we don't have the series staple Tournament mode. We do get the Battle 100 mode from Tenkaichi 3 at least - 100 fights against themed teams. Of course Tenkaichi 3 had way more characters and could make teams of 5, while this game is limited to teams of 2, so as you can imagine there's a lot of forced pair-ups ("Long white hair" for Jeice and Dr Gero). They do at least add little challenges to each fight to earn extra points. Since any character can be used it does limit the kinds of tasks they can give the player, but it's still a way to try and change up your play style a bit for each fight and make it less monotonous.
This mode also highlights the issue with the tag team format. The best case scenario in this game is when you fight one AI and your partner fights the other, essentially turning the game into two 1v1's, with only the occasional crossing paths. A 2v1 in your favour is a stomp, and a 2v1 in your opponents favour is annoying at lower levels, and downright impossible at higher levels. The harder challenges in Battle 100 will have both opponents purposefully target you over your partner, and there are NO good options for fighting 2 opponents at once. The game flat-out failed to actually make mechanics to support its main gimmick. And your partner won't help you while you're being ganged up on - I genuinely have no idea what they're doing as the information given to you is so limited, just a little radar with dots representing the characters. I occasionally saw my partner just kind of flying around in the background. Sometimes he'd just be standing still mere feet away while both opponents abused me from all sides. Literally all they're good for in the high level fights is hoping one of the enemies will use them as a punching bag so you can focus on your own opponent. That will mean your punching bag partner will use up your senzu bean though, preventing you from getting your free revive.
You and your special needs partner also share a union stock (I can't remember what it was called in older games, but it's the stuff you spend to use buffs, or things like Solar Flare). So maybe you want to use a technique, or go into burst mode, but nope, your teammate keeps eating the stock points.
Survival mode is another mode, which is what it sounds like. Weirdly, I noticed that at the start of this mode when enemies are dumb and weak, my teammate was actually...good? They were very aggressive and able to dodge ultimates. Then as the enemies got harder, he got more sluggish and dumber. The game literally makes your teammate stupid to increase difficulty. That's pretty much the opposite of how it should work. When enemies are simple I can take on 2 of them at once and don't need a teammate. When they're challenging it becomes impossible to fight them alone, so I need at least a semi-competent teammate who can keep one of them away from me for a bit.
Going back to the limited information on screen thing, there's not much you get to see about your enemies in the game. Their health bars only appear over their heads rather than permanently on screen (which makes it impossible to know how your partner is doing vs their opponent), and you can't even see their ki or union stock.
As impressive as this game is to run on the PSP, it is basically just a watered down version of the console games, with a new gimmick that straight up wouldn't work on those better games without huge tweaks, let alone a more limited version. There's no shortage of content, even if a lot of 100%'ing the story mode is straight up padding. Extra modes provide the challenge, but for the wrong reasons. I know it's supposed to be "Tenkaichi on the go", but I didn't play it like that, so I guess I'm missing the point.
You do feel the cut of characters and stages though. Having said that, the character roster is still solid with many inclusions you'd assume they'd cut like Chaozu or Cui. Stages are hit a lot harder, missing many staples like the Room of Spirit and Time.
Story mode, despite the bland presentation, is really comprehensive. It tackles almost every fight from the original manga from the Saiyan Saga to the Boo saga, something even many older console games didn't (I remember Budokai 3 cut all of the Ginyu Force but Recoome and Ginyu, and skipped Dr Gero and Android 19).
It makes a lot of weird decisions though starting in the Cell saga. While some fights are kind of combined before then to make use of the tag team gimmick (which isn't locked in as the game does allow 1v1 or even 2v1), like you'll fight Nappa and Saibamen together with Piccolo and any other fighter of your choice from that section, including Yamcha who died before Nappa entered the battle. But once you enter the Cell saga you get stuff like fighting Dr Gero and Android 19 together...in the city where they appeared instead of the random wasteland where the fight took place. And then after Goku fights both the androids, Vegeta comes in to fight 19 as he does in the original...but instead of Dr Gero, 19 is now teamed up with a Cell Jr? What the fuck? Piccolo gets a teammate to fight Android 17 (any of the 3 humans who were explicitly told to NOT join the fight), and yet 17 doesn't get 18 to help him. Buff Trunks is just a straight up missing character, so his fight with Perfect Cell is regular Super Saiyan Trunks, despite all the dialogue still making references to his slow speed from his power form. And Gohan fights the Cell Jrs with Android 16 - the one character there who NEVER fought a Cell Jr lol.
The Boo saga suffers the most from character and stage losses. There's no world tournament stage, so right off the bat Goten vs Trunks takes place on a random island. No Room of Spirit and Time so Gotenks vs Boo is also down on Earth. Gohan vs Dabura takes place on the Supreme Kai planet for some reason (the location they actually fight is rarely ever in games, but they tend to use the rocky areas to best match it. This game seems to use the Kaioshin planet for any "alien" world that isn't Namek). Base Gotenks and Bootenks are straight up missing. It's weird that they made sure every fight in the first 2 arcs could be replicated faithfully, but then just kind of gave up near the end. Then they go overboard and make 3 separate Goku and Vegeta vs Kid Boo fights in a row (broken up by a single Fat Boo vs Kid Boo fight), including turning the freaking Spirit Bomb moment into a full fight.
Story mode itself has you flying around a map like Tenkaichi 2, with a bunch of weak enemies scattered about (Saibamen, Cell Jrs, Freeza Soldiers). You occasionally get a mission if you visit the 3 towns you can interact with. These are all picked from the same pool of about 5, so be prepared to have to do shit like "clear every enemy on the map" over and over - and the game will not tell you how many are left or where they are, so you'll be looking for that last one for 10+ minutes. The game is spread into levels that tackle about 1-4 fights each, and each level has its own missions that are basically just doing the little side missions in the level itself. However for stages where you can pick between multiple characters (such as the Nappa fight) there are missions to do this level with ALL the choices. This can lead you to doing the same level 5 times, and it's not even just the relevant fight you need to do. Every time you beat Nappa with Yamcha, then Tien, then Chaozu, you also have to do the follow up Goku vs Nappa fight. These missions are optional of course, but it's annoying that they made this "content" at all (and there are unlocks between competing X amount of missions).
What-ifs return here, but instead of their own dedicated levels they add a new character option in the old ones. For example, select the first level after beating the story and you get the choice to play as Bardock instead of Goku, providing a little story where Bardock arrives before Raditz and bonds with Gohan, and then fights Raditz himself. Most of these are generally just going through the same fights as the level normally would, but with a new character.
Outside of story mode we don't have the series staple Tournament mode. We do get the Battle 100 mode from Tenkaichi 3 at least - 100 fights against themed teams. Of course Tenkaichi 3 had way more characters and could make teams of 5, while this game is limited to teams of 2, so as you can imagine there's a lot of forced pair-ups ("Long white hair" for Jeice and Dr Gero). They do at least add little challenges to each fight to earn extra points. Since any character can be used it does limit the kinds of tasks they can give the player, but it's still a way to try and change up your play style a bit for each fight and make it less monotonous.
This mode also highlights the issue with the tag team format. The best case scenario in this game is when you fight one AI and your partner fights the other, essentially turning the game into two 1v1's, with only the occasional crossing paths. A 2v1 in your favour is a stomp, and a 2v1 in your opponents favour is annoying at lower levels, and downright impossible at higher levels. The harder challenges in Battle 100 will have both opponents purposefully target you over your partner, and there are NO good options for fighting 2 opponents at once. The game flat-out failed to actually make mechanics to support its main gimmick. And your partner won't help you while you're being ganged up on - I genuinely have no idea what they're doing as the information given to you is so limited, just a little radar with dots representing the characters. I occasionally saw my partner just kind of flying around in the background. Sometimes he'd just be standing still mere feet away while both opponents abused me from all sides. Literally all they're good for in the high level fights is hoping one of the enemies will use them as a punching bag so you can focus on your own opponent. That will mean your punching bag partner will use up your senzu bean though, preventing you from getting your free revive.
You and your special needs partner also share a union stock (I can't remember what it was called in older games, but it's the stuff you spend to use buffs, or things like Solar Flare). So maybe you want to use a technique, or go into burst mode, but nope, your teammate keeps eating the stock points.
Survival mode is another mode, which is what it sounds like. Weirdly, I noticed that at the start of this mode when enemies are dumb and weak, my teammate was actually...good? They were very aggressive and able to dodge ultimates. Then as the enemies got harder, he got more sluggish and dumber. The game literally makes your teammate stupid to increase difficulty. That's pretty much the opposite of how it should work. When enemies are simple I can take on 2 of them at once and don't need a teammate. When they're challenging it becomes impossible to fight them alone, so I need at least a semi-competent teammate who can keep one of them away from me for a bit.
Going back to the limited information on screen thing, there's not much you get to see about your enemies in the game. Their health bars only appear over their heads rather than permanently on screen (which makes it impossible to know how your partner is doing vs their opponent), and you can't even see their ki or union stock.
As impressive as this game is to run on the PSP, it is basically just a watered down version of the console games, with a new gimmick that straight up wouldn't work on those better games without huge tweaks, let alone a more limited version. There's no shortage of content, even if a lot of 100%'ing the story mode is straight up padding. Extra modes provide the challenge, but for the wrong reasons. I know it's supposed to be "Tenkaichi on the go", but I didn't play it like that, so I guess I'm missing the point.
2 Comments
@stale_cheeto
Oopsie. It's been a very long time lol. The weird thing is I know #19 WAS in Budokai 1.
Oopsie. It's been a very long time lol. The weird thing is I know #19 WAS in Budokai 1.
stale_cheeto
2 months ago