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Dragon Ball Z:  Legacy of Goku 2

Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku 2

Written by Matt Mirkovich on 8/15/2003 for GBA  
More On: Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku 2
I’m not the biggest Dragon Ball Z fan; in fact I at times loathe the show. Although I do remember seeing the opening for the U.S. version of Dragon Ball GT Final Bout and being highly excited, unfortunately the end release was utter garbage. Much could be said for the rest of the Dragon Ball Z games released after that. Budokai only appealed to the hardest of the hardcore fans thanks to its dismal fighting engine. Why Ultimate Battle 22 was even brought to the U.S. is beyond me. But it’s good to see that Dragon Ball Z Legacy of Goku 2 is finally a decent use of the famed anime license.

To quickly sum it up DBZ:LoG2 (I think we can all guess what that means) follows the story arc of the Android and Cell sagas respectively. So if you’ve seen up through the Freiza series then you’ll pick up this game right where the story leaves off, no expensive DVD purchases required here. This game packs what is normally a good 20+ hours of anime watching into 4-5 solid hours of gameplay. The simplistic fighting mechanics makes this game easy to jump right in and get going and the best part of all… it doesn’t suck!
After the initial story introduction you are placed in the shoes of one of the five major DBZ characters. Gohan starts out as your initial playable character with Trunks, Piccolo, Vegeta, and the legendary Goku becoming playable later on in the game. The character models are pretty good for pixel renditions. Web Foot was also kind enough to through in short snippets of the star characters in motion during the opening video.

Gameplay is comparable to that of most action RPG games like Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, you have two attacks, a melee attacking which once leveled up high enough can be charged to do extra damage, and there is the projectile attack that drains some of your power meter. There is a third meter that keeps tabs on how much experience you’ve accumulated and how much you need to reach the next level. You’ll find yourself leveling up very quickly in this game. Although that at times kills the difficulty because when you level up all of your health and your power are restored. Another thing that makes this game easy is the boss battles. If you can attack on a consistent rhythm then the boss won’t even be able to touch you. Although I wish that if you have an opponent with their back against the wall that they don’t bounce off the wall when they hit it. There are also barriers that require you to be a certain level in order to destroy, so there is always a need to level up.

Dragon Ball Z Legacy of Goku 2 is a surprisingly good game considering all the awful titles this license has produced. If you’re a fan of the series and would like a good game to kill a few hours then this is a game that should definitely be picked up. I must say that after playing this game, the DBZ games are starting to show a little promise. But I still won’t be sitting through 10 episodes just to see one fight.
Atari, Infogrames and Webfoot studios finally put their best foot forward with what has to be the best Dragon Ball Z game to date. All I can say is that it’s about damn time.

Rating: 7.4 Above Average

* The product in this article was sent to us by the developer/company.


About Author

In a past life I worked with Interplay, EA, Harmonix, Konami, and a number of other developers. Now I'm working for a record label, a small arm of casual games in a media company along with Gaming Nexus, and anywhere else that sees fit to employ me.

 

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