Having played Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 when it was released at the time of the Wii launch, I approached the Atari suite at E3 with some reservations. My experience with the past installment consisted of hours of frustration and near- destruction of several glasses on the living room table, mostly due to the inaccuracy of the Wii controls. This time the gaming experience was definitely better, and not just because the Atari suite was much bigger than my living room. The development team is concentrating its efforts mainly on the game's controls, increasing its playability and adding a couple of new modes.
Hardcore "Dragon Ball Z" fans can relax, because once again the faithfulness to the original anime series is guaranteed. The last part of the Z trilogy features over 30 stages, all inspired by the settings seen in the TV series and displaying times of day such as night and dawn. We had a chance to fight in a gigantic desert, a new addition that makes hiding from enemies simple thanks to the abundance of rocks on the terrain. Stages are as usual very large and filled with destructible items. Even more amazing, the number of playable characters has been increased from the previous 120 fighters to over 150, including almost every character from the anime. New additions include some of the Majin warriors, such as Spopovitch or the goblinish Babidi, who prefers to throw powerful energy spheres creating almost inescapable combos.
The best improvements are, however, related to the control system. All the regular moves are performed by pressing the A button; button mashing is allowed, resulting in long combos that will delight younger and inexperienced players. DBZ: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 is surely not designed for hardcore fighting games fans; everybody else will find the fighting system extremely easy to master and the special moves even more rewarding.
Many will remember that in the second installment in the trilogy special moves made players wonder about the movements they had to perform, only to end up flailing their arms at the screen and hoping that it would have some effect... any effect. This time, pressing the left button on the d-pad charges up the special moves meter. Once it's filled, a special gesture-based move can be performed. A small animated icon appears in the lower-left corner of the screen, mimicking the Kamehameha or whatever other move players need to repeat and avoiding once and for all the embarrassing sense of confusion that was a trademark of the previous game. Moves like Meteor Smash or Super Explosive Wave, directly inspired by fighting techniques from the TV series, are well-realized and feature more realistic effects and shading techniques.
