I was afraid that coming back to this game would be a little disappointing, but damn did it prove me wrong. What I truly appreciate about this game is that it's uniquely a Dragon Ball game, not Street Fighter, not Tekken, not Guilty Gear, not Marvel vs. Capcom, not Power Stone, Dragon Ball. Dimps perfects Budokai from this point, the gameplay's snappy and I think this aspect might be contentious the Dragon Rush where your character performs this sequence of barrage attacks that turns into a rock-paper-scissors mini-game, along with the beam struggles and Burst Mode clashes are only enhanced by the game's cel-shaded visuals and animation work. It's a PS2 game with 3D models that replicate Dragon Ball so well for the time and the animations are so expressive and cool as hell, it brings that cocky Toriyama attitude to life with ease.

Kenji Yamamoto might have plagiarized a lot of music throughout his career, but his work screams Dragon Ball Z to me and Budokai 3's original tracks are excellent. It's hilarious that the last time I actually got into this game was when I was in my teens, I did come back to it briefly years ago, but even now the controls and tech are engrained in me from the countless hours playing it. Bulma being cut as a playable character is probably the only genuine complaint I have with this game, despite that it's still one of the best Dragon Ball games ever and arguably the best there is.