Dragon Ball has a long history in video games. From 3D fighting games like the Budokai Tenkaichi series, to RPG games like Attack of The Saiyans, to traditional fighting games like the great FighterZ, there is always an abundance of Dragon Ball games on the market. But there is a certain type that fans of the series have always wanted and did not get, namely the open world. An open world game where you fly through the worlds of Dragon Ball has always been a dream for many players, especially the younger ones. In Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Namco Bandai collaborates with Cyberconnect2, the developer behind Hack and Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, to make this dream a reality.
The game covers the events of the second half of the manga adapted for Dragon Ball Z, from Raditz's arrival on Earth to the defeat of Majin Buu. This era in Dragon Ball's history has been covered by more video games than any other era, but Kakarot may be better than it has covered. As an open-world RPG over forty hours in length, Kakarot tells the events of Z in detail that no game has ever done before, and sometimes even adds to them. You find, through side quests and sometimes the main story, the appearance of characters from the first half of the manga that did not appear in Z like Launch, and details of things that have not been explained, such as why Johan and Vegeta's tails did not grow after cutting them, and side stories that focus on the daily lives of the characters, most of which are during breaks. Between the main manga chapters, the game offers most of its original content.
In Kakarot, you play the characters of the Saiyans, Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Trinx, and Gotenks, as well as Piccolo, and the game switches between them during the story parts, while you can choose who to play with the free parts. Each of the characters has its own fighting style, movements, and separate development tree, so you can focus on developing your favorite character faster than others, and we recommend focusing on Johan being, surprisingly given the name of the game, he is the character you will play with most of the time. Other characters, such as Krillin, Tenshinhan, and Yamacha, have limited role as auxiliary characters during combat, but are not playable.
Gameplay in Kakarot is divided into two parts. The first section is Exploration and the Open World. The world of Kakarot is not Seamless but rather divided into several regions to choose from on a map, and it covers all the areas you can remember from the manga and the original series. From the mountains in which Goku fought the Saiyans, to the planet Namik, to the western city and the snowy region where Dr. Jiro's laboratory and the Red League army were. The open world activities include simple but entertaining side missions full of fun details for fans of the series, fishing, cooking, playing baseball, learning new moves, and most importantly, collecting Z Orbs.
Z Orbs are balls in which the world of Kakarot floats, you find them everywhere, and use them as currency to develop your character and unlock new moves in the development tree. I found the Z Orbs as a nice system that gives you something to do while flying through the iconic Dragon Ball regions, and speaking of that, what a cool feeling. Flying freely and exploring classic regions are some of Kakarot's best moments, and every Dragon Ball fan's dreams come true. Unfortunately, when the magic of feeling is gone, you will find Kakarot's world a little empty suffering from repetition, yet he is still achieving his most important goal, which is to translate the iconic Dragon Ball world of a video game.
The second part of playing in Kakarot is fighting, and here you find a style similar to that found in Budokai Tenkaichi and Xenoverse, and the game becomes more like Arena Fighting than RPG, but I found Kakarot's version of this combat system the best among its similarities, and for this for several reasons.
The first is that Kakarot is not a fighting game, and it does not contain a competitive phase between players, which allowed it to ignore the weight and present boss battles at a reasonable level of difficulty, which requires you to understand the leader's fighting style and movements and know when to avoid, block and attack, in a manner similar to what you might find in Boss Games like Ys and Kingdom Hearts, and with this I think that Kakarot is better than translating the series's fights and feeling Goku against enemies that are tens of times more powerful than his similarities.
Another point where Kakarot excels is the sense of sophistication. Training and development is one of the pillars of Dragon Ball and perhaps its most famous element, and as Kakarot is an RPG game, I was able to capture this feeling really well, as you see Goku's Kamehameha getting more and more growing until you find it at the end of the game times the size of the one with which the game started. The game deals with transformations well as well, as while the Kaioken consumes life points, the Super Saiyan consumes the Ki, and the words increase the degree of Super Saiyan the more Ki consumes, making each transformation its strengths and weaknesses, as is the case in the original manga, and switch between them during the fight Smooth, fun, and aesthetically pleasing.
Unfortunately, fighting has its core problems as well. The playable characters are unacceptably similar in their tools, though they are very few compared to other Dragon Ball games, if you develop them all in parallel, you will not feel much difference when moving from Gohan to Vegeta, and your playing strategy will not change. This talk also applies to the bosses, where, with the exception of a scarcity of moves, you find them very similar, and you will find strategies that work against most of them once you have enough of the game, adding to the feeling of repetition in the game.
Technically, the game is beautiful and translates the iconic Dragon Ball look of the 3D game in a way that ranges from good to dazzling, and some of the cinematic scenes are truly exceptional in appearance. Unfortunately, long loading times are a problem, and some side missions contain up to seven loading screens of up to 40 seconds each, making some game moments unbearable. Acoustically, this could be the first Dragon Ball game to use original music composed by Shunsuke Kikuchi, adding a sense of authenticity to the game's quote, not found in most of its predecessors.
Aside from FighterZ, I have no doubts that Kakarot is the best Dragon Ball game ever. There is a lot of love for the series in this game, and a lot of fun and entertainment for any fan of it. As a video game, Kakarot is closer to a good foundation and needs a second attempt to hone it up to the franchise, but as a Dragon Ball producer, I would highly recommend it to every fan of the series who wants to relive the Z events in a new way.
Positives
- A quote is the best among Z story video games, a lot of love for the original story and details for its fans, an entertaining exploration, a very good combat system.
Negatives
- Redundancy and limited exploration, exaggerated resemblance between playable characters and even bosses, long loading screens and technical issues.