Gather the planets energy and unleash your strongest Spirit Bomb, because Dragon Ball Z Kakarot has landed. The latest action/RPG game in the Dragon Ball Z universe tells the story of Kakarot, the Saiyan warrior raised on earth and better known as Goku, the pure of heart, powerful and somewhat dim witted martial artist who along with his friends save the universe from evil aliens such as Frieza and Majin Buu. If you are at all familiar with this old school Japanese anime and manga series, then you know the story already. If your new to Dragon Ball Z, don’t fret, the story is easy enough to understand. But then again, I being a huge fan since I was an itty bitty Saibaman sprout (DBZ reference #2, #1 was Spirit Bomb) may be just a little bias.
Basically, the story centers around Goku and his friends as the earths defenders who fight everything from alien invaders to androids. They fight them not using guns or other weapons, but rather martial arts and focused ki blasts that they release from their bodies. Ki is like life energy and can even be sensed by the Z-Fighters if someone quite powerful or evil is causing mischief. Then theirs the Dragon Balls, magical orbs created by earths guardian Kami who is basically a God. (one of the many in this series) Whoever collects all seven of the Dragon Balls that are scattered across the earth can summon the Eternal Dragon Shenron and make any wish that their little hearts desire come true.
Most Dragon Ball Z games that I have played over the years have been either fighting or role-playing games. Kakarot is an open world action/rpg game that has you doing plenty of fetch quests and beating up baddies in its side quests, along with going through the main campaign to recreate epic battles like Goku vs Vegeta. I like how you can roam and fly around familiar areas that if you ever watched the series, you’ll instantly recognize, such as the wastelands, or planet Namek. You play through the main story not only as Goku, (Kakarot) but as Gohan, Vegeta, Future Trunks, Piccolo, even every ones least favorite Yamcha. To the uninitiated, Yamcha is one of the non-Saiyan human characters that is weaker than the others, thus the butt of many jokes. Yamacha’s irrelevance has been going strong ever since the beginning, and if you don’t believe me, then just watch some of Team Four Star’s DBZ Abridged videos on YouTube and you’ll soon understand.
The game lets you fly around at normal speed which has you run into numerous pirate robots from the dismantled Red Ribbon Army. Seriously, these guys show up on almost every area map and are generally easy to defeat, but quickly get annoying. What’s nice though is if you don’t feel like sending another Red Ribbon robot to the scrap pile, you can turn on the figurative jets, and blast right past them, or if in the right position you can hit one of them head on and score a quick victory, but only if they are a lower level than you, otherwise you have to stand and fight. The normal enemies do change as you progress through the main story from robots to Frieza Force soldiers, to Babidi’s Majin henchmen. All become pretty easy to beat, but necessary for leveling up your large stable of playable characters.
Of course, the boss battles are the meat and potatoes of the gameplay. And this game starts off small with Raditz, and has you using all of your best learned skills against Kid Buu. Anyone who knows Dragon Ball Z knows the villains and theirs move sets well, such as Frieza’s Death beam, or Cell’s Kamehameha that he totally steals from Goku along with many other skills that are preprogrammed into his DNA. I particularly love the Goku vs Frieza fight from the series and even more so playing it. When Frieza is charging up his Death Ball which if it hits Goku can do a lot of damage, you have to keep firing blasts at him in order to stop him from unleashing was a good time. But really, I loved facing all of the other bosses in the game, except for Android 20 and Imperfect Cell who both clamp onto you and suck out your ki energy to refill their health meter, so annoying.
As you progress, you’ll soon unlock training grounds that are available in all area maps in the game. Here, you can fight one on three battles that you need to win in order to unlock new fighting moves for your characters. You can get Vegeta’s Big Bang Attack, Final Flash etc. Probably the most powerful and my favorite is Goku’s Spirit Bomb which can be performed way faster than gathering up energy from the planet and forming a giant energy ball like in the show. It takes all but three seconds and does massive damage to multiple opponents. The more each playable character levels up as well as progresses through the story, the even more powerful attacks that will become available to use on your foes.
You can have up to three characters in your party to fight with, stop by a campfire and restore your health all while signing Kumbaya if you like. You can even fish in the game which I’ll be honest here is painfully easy. If your playing as Goku or Gohan, you fish using a tail like all Saiyan’s are born with. Note: Goku and Gohan’s tails were removed, because they turn into giant apes (Oozaru in the original Japanese version) whenever they stare at the moon, so they use clip on tails to fish instead. Moving on, whenever you catch a fish, you can either cook it on a campfire that are everywhere or eat it raw. The campfire is best, because it restores your party’s full health and ki meters. There are also items like senzu beans that you can use during battle that will restore all or at least a large portion of your health, which becomes essential in big boss fights. Also, you can collect the Dragon Balls that are scattered across the earth and make wishes to resurrect previous bosses to fight again, get more Zeni to buy items, or get rare items.
The fighting mechanics are thus. You fly around the wide world and encounter an enemy which then prompts you to fight. Your character/s gets some distance from the foe and begins the fight in real time. You have melee attacks, ki (energy) blasts for all of you spammers out there, special attacks like the Kamehameha and even transformations. So, for Goku, it’s Super Saiyan forms 1,2 and 3, Piccolo’s fused with Kami clear, glowing form, and Gohan’s (High School age Gohan) power unleashed form, which is just basically a white energy field around him. I’m partial to SS3 for the long haired rockstar look, and significant power up. The combat is a lot of fun even if you’re not playing as a character that can transform. I’m looking at you Krillin and other earthling characters.
The Good Stuff:
–Lots of missions, areas to explore, and NPC’s to chat with.
-Closely follows the Dragon Ball Z series storyline for better or worse.
-All the awesome high-speed martial arts action and characters that fans love and remember that still holds up even after 30+ years.
The Not So Good:
–Awkward timing with characters speech when played in English language.
-Certain things were left out like Trunks avenging his future when returning to his timeline and Uub was completely snubbed.
-Enemies respawn so often, that at times, you don’t have enough time to fly away before another is right there to fight you.
Overall:
As a big Dragon Ball fan, this game is like a dream playing through the series I grew up with, complete with the same music and epic battles. And it is nice that they threw in characters from the original Dragon Ball series like Launch and Eighter, even if those were just side missions. My gripes mentioned above about the characters timing when they spoke, and certain series events being left out can always be fixed with an update or DLC. I have my fingers and toes crossed for online multiplayer being added hopefully sooner rather than later. As far as what the game offers right now, there’s plenty of fighting villainous enemies, fishing, side quests and Dragon Ball hunting to keep you busy long after defeating the final boss. Whether you’re a lifelong fan, or new to the galactic martial arts drama, your gonna have a ki blast of a time playing Dragon Ball Z Kakarot.
Nerdish Rating:
4 out of 5
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