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Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit Review

(Announcer's Voice) It is time now for Dragon Ball Z! Many anime fans will remember that sense of excitement they felt before every new episode began back in 1996. Today, Dragon Ball Z is one of the longest running franchises with a plethora of licensed toys, clothing and of course video game titles. Just about every gamer would agree that the best one was Dragon Ball Z Legends on the Sega Saturn. Now, on the next-gen consoles we have Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit and trust me, it will not take five episodes to power up this review.

The Dragon Ball Z anime is the sequel to Dragon Ball, one of the longest running shows in Japan with an asounding 290 episodes. In the story, Goku is trying to have a nice BBQ with his son Gohan and friends until an unwanted family member suddenly crashes the party. The characters usually fight for about ten episodes, die, come back to life and then an even more powerful enemy comes named Vegetta, in which more friends die and you go Kaoken and then defeat him, but he comes back and then a Spirit Bomb..., but you get idea. Basically that is what we had to deal with over the years with the same story and with every game, however the only thing that does change is the game play. So far, no one has been doing a good job...until now!

Now mind you the public is getting tired of the series, after many years of dealing with the long drowned out fights trying to get to one main goal. However with the colorful characters and funny situations especially making Hercule a hero while the other Z fighters hid from the public, it was still a fun cartoon to watch. The one thing that was a problem with my friends and myself was the fighting was very weird where you have a short character still getting hit by high attacks not even bending over to hit the shorter characters. However with this new version the fighting physics has changed where as the short characters for example: Krillan and Gohan have the bigger advantage in a fight forcing the taller characters to change tactics.You no longer have to worry about wasting energy when using your Ki-Blast, but that is changed with your Aura spark in which you use to do a more exciting pursuit attack against the opponent having to press all the face buttons to ensure victory.

You also have something new in this installment called the "Drama Pieces" which are activated during certain events in the story. During these actions either another character will help out in the fight or the character you are using will start up a new power. This is actually unique because whatever you do during the course of the battle it will effect the storyline differently giving it more of a free form feel vs. the other games. This in turn will make you play the game much more differently each time to see what other drama pieces you can make happen. You also have a fatigue gauge which will become your disadvantage, because when it fills you will become immobilized and then well you know. Good timing and fast reflexes will be key to your battles against the computer and other opponents.

We are going to enter the deep combat of the game. With a lot of practice you can have many impressive DBZ style battles and trust me doing the tutorial is very important if you want to master the game correctly. You have your super attacks, ultimate attacks, transformations, grabs, aura actions and vanishing moves will be your best friend if done correctly. My favorite is combining my aura attack with a transformation and then ultimate attack combo in which you get a kaoken kamahamaha!! With an addition of online play you get a better feel and challenge against an opponent, even though there is a bit of lag. Trust me it is very sweet to check out live.

The flaws I see in the game are basically with some of the sequences of the drama pieces being repetitive and of course you are basically looking at the same story over again which is getting tired to the masses, however since the game play is always important you won't have to worry too much about it. Another thing is that the story ends after the Cell Saga so we might have to wait for a sequel before some of us get a chance to play as Buu and the other characters.

All right folks grab a senzu bean and get ready to power up for this summary. You have all the Z fighters to play as all the way up to the cell saga- even the side story movie characters. The combat has greatly improved which will make a lot of fighters out there enjoy this game more then most of the series. (Sorry DBZ Legends is still the best) Repetitive dramatic scenes will get old after a while until the story changes and of course it is still the same Dragon Ball Z story that we already know about like the back of our hands each time we play the games. Replay value is there since the online feature has been established and as every fighting game that goes online there is a bit of lag. It can get annoying since this game is a fast paced combat system, so I would suggest timing it just right. Honestly I am going to give Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit 4 kaokens out of 5. Good job Atari on making the combat system much better and "stay frosty" gamers!

(Announcer's Voice) It is time now for Dragon Ball Z! Many anime fans will remember that sense of excitement they felt before every new episode began back in 1996. Today, Dragon Ball Z is one of the longest running franchises with a plethora of licensed toys, clothing and of course video game titles. Just about every gamer would agree that the best one was Dragon Ball Z Legends on the Sega Saturn. Now, on the next-gen consoles we have Dragon Ball Z Burst Limit and trust me, it will not take five episodes to power up this review.\n\n