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»Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku
"It sucks, stay away."
It’s a Game Boy Advance game. Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku is based on
the highly popular Dragon Ball franchise created by Akira Toriyama (and
others at Bird Studio). It is a rare find in the catalog of Dragon Ball
games - an adventure game. Throughout the franchise’s life, most of the
games that are based on it are fighting games. In Legacy of Goku, you
play as Goku exclusively, and only see what is happening from Goku’s
point of view. Unfortunately, only the most desperate fan will find
this game enjoyable.
Legacy of Goku follows the events of the first two sagas of the Dragon
Ball Z anime - from the beginning of the Saiyan saga to the final
battle in the Freeza saga. The game plays with an overhead view, ala
The Legend of Zelda, and the fighting mechanics involve punching and ki
attacks, such as the Kamehameha technique, a long-ranged ki attack.
These ki attacks can only be used when you have enough ki to enable
them. Despite the gameplay seeming to be decent at first glance, it
just gets shot down by stupid concepts, slow gameplay and a sloppy
developer.
Until you reach Namek, you rarely fight an enemy that isn't a squirrel,
snake, wild boar, or some other type of woodland animal. Another stupid
move by Infogrames is their emphasis pointless and inane sidequests,
none of them ever having appeared in any iteration of the series (such
as finding all of Master Roshi’s dirty magazines on your way to the
battle between Radditz). The gameplay is slow, buggy and clumsy; often,
a clear hit will go undetected by the game, and vice versa with a clear
miss. The gameplay is so boring - you are always moving at a slow
speed, there are no fast combos, and the ki techniques are minor and
uneventful, unlike those found in the source material.
The flight system is terrible. At any given time, Goku can begin to fly
in the air (using ki). However, this was an idea that felt as if they
put it in at the very last minute. Instead of typical DBZ super sonic
flying, Goku moves at an incredibly slow speed. Not only that, but he
does not have the capability to fly up or down, say, a cliff - Goku's
movement is pretty two-dimensional. He is only capable of flying at one
height or walking on the ground.
As stated earlier, the game focuses only on what Goku sees. This leads
to one big problem - he's dead for most of the game. Not dead as in
rotting in his grave, but dead as in being in Heaven and such. However,
his adventures in Heaven are unbelievably boring and repetitive. The
events in Heaven are more or less running along Snake Way. Along the
way, you defeat the Snake Queen, get out of Hell and complete the North
Kaio's tasks. After Goku is revived by the Dragon Balls, instead of
going to the battle and saving Gohan and Krillin, he does several
trivial tasks beforehand. Thanks to Infogrames' decision to not tell
the events of anyone other than Goku, gamers miss out on tons of
potentially interesting battles and events.
The visuals are dull and unimpressive. The character designs are kind
of weak and don’t do a very good job of representing the series, while
the backgrounds are pretty average for a GBA game. The special attacks
are the biggest disappointment. A Kamehameha isn't the gigantic blue
beam that goes hundreds of feet forward as it does in the anime;
instead, it is a tiny orange beam that only reaches about ten feet
(game distance), and has no special effects whatsoever. Infogrames took
a few clips from the anime. You will immediately notice the Dragon Ball
Z intro when you start up the game, and also immediately notice the
fuzzy visuals (Although, this is a common problem in many GBA games).
The sound quality is decent. However, they do not use the voices of
various characters often, if at all. Unfortunately, they didn’t do so
with the music, which desperately needed replacing. It is dull and
uninspired, using both mediocre new songs and the trashy music that
FUNi uses in the anime (Rock the Dragon FTL).
And replay value? I cannot find myself replaying such a joyless game.
No matter that it has sidequests, bad sidequests are not worth doing,
especially in a bad game.
Overall, Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku is not only one of the worst
games of this generation, but also one of the joyless games ever made.
Infogrames (now Atari) is a God awful developer at times, who put
almost no effort into this. I dare say that I would never recommend
this game to even the most hardcore Dragon Ball Z fan, as any true
Dragon Ball Z fan would not support a developer as incompetent as
Infogrames. If you want a decent Dragon Ball Z game, I would recommend
Super Sonic Warriors and Budokai. You'll thank me later.
Article by: Alttp
Posted on: Oct. 16th, 2006 |
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Review Recap |
| Gameplay |
| Terrible gameplay with very little quality control to speak of. |
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Graphics |
| The sprites aren’t very good, the backgrounds are average and there is nothing eye-catching. |
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Sound |
| Good audio quality, but the music composition is terrible. |
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Replay Value |
| This game makes me want to cry. I’ll never play it again. |
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