I'll say first of all, I'll say I was really looking forward to this game. A mate and I have had tons of fun fighting epic battles in all of the DBZ games released since the first ones on PS2. You can imagine my disappointment then, when I found out how horrible a game this one is.
Gameplay: The Tenkaichi series, beginning with Budokai Tenkaichi 1 on PS2, has been a bit different to your more popular fighting games. Rather than the entire focus being on executing complex button combos, characters can fight with a combination of long range energy blasts, a variety of melee attack combos and techniques, and special moves such as the kamehameha which are done by the press of a button/tap of an analogue stick. I found that this shifted the gameplay away from memorizing hard to pull off combos and more toward the tactics you would use to beat your opponent. With the addition of being able to 'teleport’ DBZ-style out of the way of special moves with a perfectly timed press of the block button, you could have some frantic, entertaining fights.
Ultimate Tenkaichi is similar, but at the same time totally different. There is much less individuality between characters, or player styles. Basically, when you fight someone at melee range, after hitting them 3 times, both fighters have to choose either the X or Y button. If the attacker picks a different button to the defender, they can launch into a chain of attacks which are done by pressing the same button they picked originally and any direction on the left stick. If the player has activated 'burst mode’, which can be done with a full energy bar, the attack is stronger with a longer animation. Double-tapping the A button makes your fighter retreat to long range, but you get a similar situation where you have to choose either right or left (if your opponent picks the same one, you take damage). When in long range, the game is exactly the same, except instead of punching to launch the X/Y challenge, you’re firing energy blasts. Another double-tap of the A button brings you back to melee range. Special moves are still pulled off by tilting the right stick (there’s only 2 per character now – up or down, instead of 4), but how they work has changed entirely. As soon as you fire your kamehameha or whatever, it starts a sort of cutscene where the other player can’t move. They then get 3 options, depending on how much energy they have: Block, Evade, or a counter-attack. If you evade, you have to time several presses of the X button against some lines moving across the screen (think guitar hero, if the song was only 3 notes :P). If you counter-attack, it’s a button mash power struggle between the two players. There’s no way to manually get out of the way – if someone fires a beam at you, you have to do one of these things. In fact, apart from the combo attack chain mentioned above, I couldn’t think of any reason at all you would need to move your character. Just punch them, launch the combo, and repeat.
Graphics: You can see where the budget for this game went. The graphics are the best of any DBZ game yet. They’ve even gone so far as to redraw certain parts of the anime to include in the story mode. All manner of attacks look very pretty. Energy beams grind over the surface of the ground and make little chunks of rock fly up. If you finish a chain of attacks, the final one is more dramatic, leaving the environment scarred (even more so in burst mode). Sadly, there’s only so many times an easily executed, drawn out attack looks nice and before long you’ll just want it to hurry up and get it over with. Something new to the Tenkaichi series was the introduction of a custom character creator. You can choose how the character looks and can learn new skills. However, there are not many options for your appearance (unless more can be unlocked, but I doubt it). I haven’t tried playing this mode yet – I didn’t go any further after creating a character.
Summing up: I really felt like they dropped the ball with this game. It seems as though they have taken every gameplay mechanism and turned it into a mini-game instead. Every character feels the same and they’ve made it awfully simplistic. I would recommend this game only to young children or those with a very short attention span (or both). The developers were obviously trying to make a more immersive DBZ game that made you feel like you were watching the anime. Unfortunately, you cannot “play” an anime and as such you shouldn’t “watch” a game. Noble intentions – but I can’t help but feel that the project manager for this game doesn’t actually seem to know anything about games, let alone play one. In other words, if you liked any of the previous games, don’t buy this. If you like to look at pretty pictures and press a button every now and then, this is right up your alley.