Customer Reviews

Dragonball Z Shin Budokai

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai is a port of the incredibly popular Dragon Ball Z: Budokai line. Shin means new or better, so get ready for a new clean game.

Story
5/10

The story of Shin Budokai roughly follows Dragon Ball Z Movie 12: Fusion Reborn. A few plotholes here in there, kind of an unoriginal story A.K.A., Son Goku finds a new enemy, enemy gets followers, Son Goku and friends eventually kill the enemy. The Shin Budokai story is FULL of grammatical errors. It's kind on annoying, but it's also common in most portable Dragon Ball Z games.

Graphics
9/10
AMAZING graphics. The menus aren't too special, words, nice looking letters, colorful, yea. The battlefield is pretty darn amazing though. The stages are the same as the ones from Dragon Ball Z 3, with the exception of Hell of course. The 3D backgrounds are nicely done. The characters are nicely done, not just clothing, but like all of the little details from the anime are right there. The only flaw is a slight freeze in between frames and the lack of changing facial expressions (e.g. Broly is always grinning).

Gameplay
7/10
so if Shin means new, does the mean it is a new battle system? Pretty much. This battle system is supposed to be an amped version of the DBZ3 battle system. The gameplay flows perfectly. It is very fast paced. The brand new Aura Burst lets your character fly around freely and quickly. It is like taking the good parts of Dragon Ball Z 3 and Dragon Ball Z: Sparking! and throwing them into one battle system. Combos are still available, and can go on just as long as the PS2 combos. It sounds like I'm pretty happy with the gameplay, so why did I give it a 7? Well, after Dragon Road is complete, there is absolutly nothing to do. Afterwards, you only have your Survival, Free Battle, and Time Attack Modes. And the Profile Cards are REALLY boring. It's like customizing a school ID with Dragon Ball stickers. Also, the lack of multiple In-Game Transformations makes combos a lot harded to think up. And every character is pre-equipped with techniques, unlike in Dragon Ball Z 1, 2 , and 3 where you get to choose what techniques your character gets. Making every character the same.

Sound
6/10
I hate the new theme song. Also, the music is the same recycled music that we've been hearing sicne 2001. While many of the good tracks are still in Shin Budokai, I want some new music. I mean, Atari and Bandai have legends of American and Japanese music. They can totally do better than what they've been using for the past 5 years. What I love about the sound, Japanese voice actors. Plain and simple. The English voice actors are great too, but the original is just where it's at.

Overall
7.5/10
Dragon Ball Z: shin Budokai puts tons of new mechanics on the table, but doesn't give you too much new stuff that's good. The game gets REALLY boring after you beat Dragon Road and you may feel like you wasted your money after about a week. The game still delivers what a Dragon ball Z fan wants though, fast paced action. The game could do with better mini-games other than Dragon Pace and Profile Cards. Also, I feel kind of annoyed that Atari would advertise Wireless online Play when you can only play using Ad Hoc WiFi.

Rent or Buy?
A rent for sure, if you like games that last 3-5 hours after spending $40, then go ahead, buy it.

Looking through my collection of Playstation Portable games, I realized that the only genre of game that I didn't have for the system was a fighting game. So, I set out to find me one. Thankfully, the only one I found was Dragonball Z Shin Budokai. Being a longtime fan of the Dragonball series and of the Budokai games, I thought I'd give Shin Budokai a chance although I'll admit I was a little hesitant at first. Well, Dragonball Z fans, you can rejoice. Shin Budokai takes everything you like about the series and gives you a portable experience that is positively worth spending your hard-earned money on. It's a solid effort by its' developers and it shows. I'm especially impressed by the cel-shaded graphics and the gameplay that I actually felt like I was living out the storyline of "Fusion Reborn". There's alot to like about Shin Budokai, like the fact that players can play one another via wireless combat, unlock unlockable material and more.

I'll have to agree with other reviewers on this site that most fighters on the PSP are mediocre at best. Until properties like Tekken, Soul Calibur or Mortal Kombat grace the system; we'll have to do with the best 3-D game on the system now and that, my friends, is Dragonball Z Shin Budokai.

I hope we see another Shin Budokai grace the Playstation Portable. That would, definitely, be nice.

Overall I like the concept of DBZ though I've never had the patience to watch an entire episode.

As far as the game is concerned:

Pros:
- Game is responsive and fight mechanics are well implemented.
- Visuals are as good as I've seen them on Budokai 3 on the PS2.

Cons:
- In the "quest" mode- which is essentially a string of fights punctuated by chatter between characters, unless you are a DBZ fan, it makes no sense whatsoever. So I ended up just clicking X until the lengthy dialog was over so I can resume fighting.

If you're a fan of the show then this game's great.

As soon as i picked this title up i hadn't put it down. This game is by far the best Budokai to ever grace systems dus far. It combines the action and speed of Budokai 3 but the controls of Tenkaichi. An overall okay storyine built upon the movie Fusion Reborn and a healthy dose of multiplayer (if you can find someone else to fight that is). If you're looking to enhance your psp gaming experience and library, this is a must buy.

the batch of fighting games thus far for the PSP have been mediocre at best. Shin Budokai is in a league of its own because it is entirely fun and totally blew me away with its graphics and looks (i love how it is rendered to look like the movies/cartoons and not like a video game). the fighting is great and has already consumed so much of my time simply because this game gets highly addictive. if you're itching to buy a 2D-ish fighting game for the PSP, i totally would go ahead and purchase this because so far, in my opinion at least, nothing compares quite to Budokai's gameplay, graphics, and appeal.

this game has the same engine as budokai 3 for ps2 and that was my favorite dbz game the only thing i didnt like is that you cant just transform whenever you want you have to pick the transformed version of the character

this game is fun just like shin budokai another road but another road is better but this game is fun to i still play this even though i have dbz another road i can still play this one. The story mode in here was good but it was really a movie and a little short but it was great. Nice grapic to in both of the shin buodaki's.

It provided me countless hours/days of fun. I first went through dragon road mostly getting by the battles by sheer luck, but after the first few I actually had to know what I was doing. It was a bit harder with the switching of characters, but specials did it for me. After I finished it, I decided to get Zs on the battles which gave me more countless hours of fun.

I tried out survival and the time one as well. Survival is easy, but gets harder torward the 20/30s. I had to be cheap and use insane specials to get past most of them. Time attack is more fun and less worrying...in a way. Almost the same as survival, but I find it to be more fun.

There's training which is definitely useful for trying out those new moves you learned off the internet and friends.

The shop is cool, but not really that interesting. It has wallpapers and these icons. There's quite a few of them, but useless for me.

I think that's about it. Dragon road, survival, time attack, and this mission thing. This is a game you'll come back to for fun, but after you basically master the game, you won't be spending days in your room playing it. You'll pick it up every now and then when your bored and beat some guys up. It has amazing graphics and the combat system is interesting.

Overall, this is truly a great fighting game. Tons of hours will be spent into this game unless you have played some other DBZ games. Beating up people is just too addicting in this game.

If you have played a Dragonball Z Budokai game before, then you know what to expect- it's very similiar to the ones on PS2. Like all DBZ games, there is no tutorial mode, so get ready for a few frustrating battles with the computer trying to figure out combos and such. Unfortunately, playing for a while can induce some serious hand cramps, because of the size and layout of the PSP. On a positive note, it's very fast paced, and the graphics are gorgeous. There are plenty of characters to play as, with some unusual ones (like Janemba and Broly) in addition to the normal set (Vegeta, Goku etc...). I would not recommend this game for anyone who isn't a fan of DBZ already. If you love DBZ like I do, then you should enjoy this game.

This is indeed a great game. Same graphics as Budokai pt 3. Game is based on the FUSION REBORN movie. With loads of characters, Missions, survival modes, etc. Only downside to the game its that is too easy. But the game is indeed fun