#DRAGON BALL Z EXTREME BUTODEN SPARKING SERIES#

Finally, you can unlock the Extreme World Tournament mode, which consists of a difficult arcade ladder that you have to beat in one go. After that, you have Adventure Mode, which takes place in a time after the anime and has you on a map going from fight to fight competing against characters and following along a strung together time travel storyline. You first play through Z Story, which is ten fights that rushes through the four main sagas of the anime. Again, it's a simplistic way of doing things, but it gives the title a much more dynamic look.The game's main campaign is divided into three distinct modes, each requiring completion before the next in line is unlocked. With 3D turned on, health and ki bars jump to the foreground, with the action happening in the middle distance. That said, it's the 3D capability that really sets things off, despite its rather basic implementation. Some nice sprite work breathes life into the colourful cast, and although the animation isn't the smoothest that you'll find in the genre, iconic moves from the source material are recreated well. Meanwhile, in terms of presentation, Extreme Butoden is reasonably slick. As such its omission is puzzling, especially for a fighting game in this day and age. In fact, given that the release encourages you to form your own dream team of Dragon Ball personalities, an online versus mode would have at least allowed friends to live out crazy battles that they had previously only imagined. However, since there's no online functionality you'll have to make do with challenging local players and the artificial intelligence, which isn't ideal when you're eager to test the true extent of your skills. Add in the fact that the title is primarily a team based brawler that allows you to switch between combatants on the fly, and you've got a combat system that's worth experimenting with when it comes to building your perfect band of warriors. Although command inputs generally stay the same for each character, there are several different combo types to master, and the inclusion of unique special moves is just enough to keep fighters feeling sufficiently different from one another. Indeed, on the surface, Extreme Butoden may look a bit like a 2D button masher, but it actually houses a decent amount of depth. Needless to say you'll need to get to grips with many of the game's intricacies before you're able to meet the likes of Broly on equal footing. This can be a tall order, as the further that you progress through Goku's journey the tougher your opponents become, with later stages really ramping up the difficulty. It takes a heck of a long time to unlock all of these assist fighters, too, as you'll need to earn high ranking scores throughout adventure mode.

Sure, it's satisfying to be able to summon Dabura and watch him unleash a powerful move, or chuckle when Bulma runs your opponent over with a capsule bike, but with so many fantastic characters relegated to what are essentially cameo appearances it's hard not to feel disappointed. Instead, the vast majority of fighters have been pushed to one side and only appear as assist characters who can be called upon in the heat of battle. The mainstays are all here вЂ“ Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Cell, Majin Buu вЂ“ but there's a distinct lack of secondary personalities, which, let's face it, isn't what you expect from a Dragon Ball title. It's a shame, then, that the playable character roster is actually quite stunted.

#DRAGON BALL Z EXTREME BUTODEN SPARKING SERIES#

Fans of the original series will appreciate the attention to detail in a lot of the dialogue, and a healthy dose of cameos from less popular characters seem like thoughtful additions, too. Goku will often reminisce with various characters about times past, and many conversations even hark back to the days of the lesser known Dragon Ball in which Goku was just a child. The plot of adventure mode, which is exclusive to the game, is little more than an excuse to have all of the vanquished villains return for one big world-ending series of battles, but it's the finer points of the narrative that make it worthwhile.

Dragon ball z extreme butoden sparking