My parents shipped me off to a vocational school when I was 16, at their wits end with my hooliganism. I suppose they thought learning how to weld would sort me out or something. This school was a "last stop" for a lot of kids whose parents ran out of rope to give, or who were otherwise court ordered to attend short of ending up in juvie. A considerable amount of the student body had a rougher background than mine and came from homes more fractured or communities that were deeply disenfranchised.

And everyone there loved Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 (also, Gauntlet Legends, but we're not talking about that today.)

Actually, it may be more accurate to say they just loved Dragon Ball. Budokai 3 was the newest game at the time and so it got the most play, but it was just as common to find kids huddled around a CRT watching Dragon Ball GT. The guy who had that GT set was also had a copy of Big Money Rustlas and I'm sorry to report that I've been conditioned through overexposure to adore both. Many flavors of Faygo touched my lips during this era.

The thing about Dragon Ball is that it had penetrated so many social barriers by 2004 that it had attained total cultural saturation. Playing these games, Budokai 3 in particular, and simply sharing a love for the series helped me expand my social bubble and connect with others during a particularly low point in my life. I also mained Kid Buu, so everyone knew I was a motherfucker. My Dragon Ball GT loving, Juggalo, furry friend taught me to never hide who you are, and who I am is a little pink goblin that can't be touched and will send his fist through the ground to punch you in the groin.

Though I'm typically bad at fighting games, there was a period where I was so practiced at Budokai 3 that nailing precision dodges and teleport chains was purely reflexive. Sure, this is partly due to being confined to a facility where the only other things to do was play billiards or hang out at a rundown single-screen theater that mostly ran crap like The Ladykillers, but you know, some of that was pure talent! Revisiting it now for the first time since leaving that school felt like slipping into a warm bath. Familiar, cozy, and-- whoa wait shit why is Cell spamming his ultimate like that HELP!!

Budokai 3 plays a lot better than the previous two games but is still compromised in several areas. Characters control largely the same as each other with little in the way of unique playstyles, but the capsule system feels more robust and better allows you to create a build unique to you, for example. Techniques look flashy and do well to capture key moments from the show and manga, but the rush attack and accompanying button guessing minigame wears thin and becomes a pace breaker fast. There's a lot of give and take here, but you can unlock Kid Goku so I'm afraid it's just the best Budokai game there is. I'm sorry. I don't make the rules.

The story mode is limited to 11 of the roster's 32 characters, and most of its replayability comes in the form of alternate routes, hidden fights, and secrets. There's a good amount to do, but the jog through DBZ's main four arcs is severely truncated and at times plays fast and loose with its canon (Goku survives the Raditz fight in Piccolo's story, for example, but the game doesn't explore this fully.) Dialog is rife with spelling errors, kerning issues, and there's a number of portraits that are off-model. Characters who existed mostly on the periphery like Tien or Yamcha or even those who were present in the story but largely inactive during long stretches are represented here, but much of their story modes involve bouncing between disperate points on a map to get maybe two or three lines of dialog... Many of the Dragon Ball games of this era just assume you're deeply familiar with the story and don't make much of an effort, so it's not surprising that Budokai 3 offloads a considerable amount of its narrative to your imagination.

And I'm fine with that. Budokai 3 isn't perfect by any means, but like the very boring man that I am, I'm perfectly capable of recognizing its faults and enjoying it regardless. That's only possible with the maturity laying bricks for two years builds... I think, I don't know.

I had planned on replaying this much further down the road (maybe around September), but as Akira Toriyama's untimely passing affected fans all over the world, it made me reflect on my time with Budokai 3 and appreciate something I understood back in 2004: Dragon Ball suffers no barriers.