I am the Eternal Dragon, State your wish and I shall grant anything within my power
All mighty Shenron, please make this game not suck!
HA, haha, hahahahahahaha
Ah, crap baskets...
Intro video
I am sad. Dragon Ball Z Kakarot is the latest telling of our beloved DBZ story, released on January 16th, 2020. Promising to be the most faithful and full Dragon Ball experience to date. Now, it goes without saying, I live and Breath DBZ. I’d show you around my room but, nah not right now. So to my understanding I am the target audience for this game. On top of my love of DBZ, I also like RPGs. Along with the Ultimate DBZ experience, they promised this is a deep, fully fledged out RPG experience (Stares at the camera). So did this game deliver on its promises. Well, if my wish to Shenron gave us any clues, we will find out shortly
Story
We once again play a game going through the motions of the anime. To the games credit, it has much more of the story than most if not all of the past games. Praises end there. This game actively seeks to piss you off it seems. This game to me will always be viewed as story of promises ending with the worst case of blue —-. Promising to fill in gaps in the story answering year old questions. Instead of answering one of the many historically thought of as plot holes, they answer the most pressing one. Why are there animal People? What did Gohan do between the Cell games and World Tournament. And how much did all of that mean nothing?! I know, that putting together a video game or other forms of media take extreme amounts of work. But you know what the enemy of that is? Hard Deadlines. Thanks to that, this game comes off as lazy, and unfulfilling. That’s, where the story telling in this game becomes disappointing. What’s here, and what’s not.
There are 4 types of cut scenes in this game. The full budget, absolutely gorgeous cut scenes that cause you’re jaw to drop, which there is hardly any of. Then, there’s the slightly lower high quality cut scenes that are perfectly fine, fully voiced, light animation that is passable. Then, there’s the stagnant boring cutscenes with terrible animation, lackluster voice acting, save a few funny or charming moments that are few and far between. Last but definitely the least, is the ultra cheap dialogue cutscenes that instead of voiced, are told with Grunts, Yeahs, Okays, or the most annoying Emperor Pilafs Daaaamn iiiiits.
These are the most common of the cutscenes, and these repeating phrases never change throughout the game except for Gohan and that’s because he grows up. Which creates a somewhat *Perfect segue to my next point. My favorite arc is the Cell arc. It’s by far and away the worst in this game. I’ll get more into that in a bit. But this game questionably includes scenes that really aren’t that important, or never happened in the first place, but cut out iconic and potentially gorgeous scenes. I get its a meme, but they cut the over 9000 scene, or if they wanted to be manga accurate instead over 8000. But if they were trying to avoid memes they kept the Super Saiyan Bargain Sale, and an extra Yamaha death pose. It’s just so damn frustrating. The worst offense of this is the omission of the Vegeta Final flash scene, completely, and the omission of super Trunks, completely. Yet, they put in a fight that never happened, Goku vs Semi-perfect cell. And worse yet, you know what the most gorgeous scene is? Racoome vs Goku. What the actual hell!? If is still had hair before this game I’d look like I do now anyway! I think you get the point now, I can rant about this for a lot longer but this video would last all day in that case
Gameplay
How do they manage to make the Raditz boss fight the best fight in the game? Ok maybe not but its damn close. Let’s start off with the combat. If you played Xenoverse, this is a dumbed down version of that, which it was already pretty dumbed down. Unlike Xenoverse, where it had a deeper underbelly to it this does not. Now, I get these are supposed to be 2 different game categories, but it doesn’t feel like the developers were told that. The combat is, just boring, easy, and extremely repetitive. I hope you like the Red Ribbon Skull bots, cus your going to fight a lot of them.
The random encounters are completely pointless and pure fodder, that don’t even add up to anything worthwhile as a grinding point, which btw, you don’t have to do at all. The only way to be somewhat challenged in this game, is to just blitz through the main story and just ignore all the side mission, activities, community board. It is easy to become completely overpowered if you do even a minimal amount of side activity. Are those fun at least? NO. They are trash. The Side missions, save a few that are side character building, which there is a criminally small amount of, boil down to a mix of fetch quests, or fighting more Skull bots. That’s it. The car driving, time trials, mini games, fishing? TRASH! I avoided them like the plague except when required by mission. There’s even one you have to go out and just slaughter a herd of Deer. Why? Because Why Not?!
Is there fun to have? Yes, there is. The only real fun parts of the combat is when you’re either fighting the bosses (When they get serious) or when you have to fight one of the side characters. They aren’t challenging at all, but compared to the skull bots and saibaman its like Dark souls compared to Mario. You also get to use side characters in your party, sometimes. But really the only one that’s any worth while is Krillin with Solar Flare, because that’s broken
Graphics
Now, if you know me, I do not decided a game is good based on graphics. That being said, we are in 2020. Other than greatly realized main character models, minus tien, something about his face just seems off for whatever reason, this game is uuuuuugly. Sure, when your up flying around it doesn’t look all that bad, but when you’re on the ground, you see its true colors. Then again, you’re never actually on the ground because your feet don’t make contact with the ground, every person in the game is always hovering. They show what this game is capable of in the select cut scenes where they go all out as I outlined in the Story Section. If they had just delayed the game and given this game the time it deserved and polished even just these, it would have made some of the other things more tolerable, because you were then playing to see the next pretty cut scene, but that’s not the case here, you’re playing hoping that they didn’t screw them up.
Closing
I know that I trashed this game pretty hard, but I did not hate it. Again, I am a massive DBZ fan, and the promises of this game got me excited. And I’m not alone there. Now, is it all our faults for getting our hopes up? Yes, but the marketing for this game was so strong and we were thirsty for a faithful representation of our beloved story. We got some of that, moments where you’re in awe of what you are seeing, moments you yourself are now partaking in. Part of that DBZ charm is there, what you love. But the negatives far out way them. And that makes me sad. Maybe if there is a sequel they can fix those issues and give us a more complete game. This game is getting DLC, but if I have to be honest, I’m not sure I’m willing to pay for that. I got the collectors edition that was already expensive enough. Shelling out more for it will be difficult. But then again, it’s Still DBZ and its hard to resist. I’m usually able to push through a game that’s sub par or seen as boring, but I really did not want to keep playing this, and that sucks. I can not recommend this game to someone that is anything less than a die hard DBZ fan, as I feel you need to be one to push yourself through this. Because if anyone were to ask me if they should play it, all I would be able to say is, “Ah Crap Baskets”
Thank you for checking out my Review/Rant about DBZ Kakarot. I need to go lay down now. Check out this video to watch my review of Ordinary Man by Ozzy Osbourne. Check out this one for a blast from the past. Click here to subscribe, and ring that bell. Comment bellow any games or Albums you’d like me to check out. Till then, names David, but you can call me Fenrirock.
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