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Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku (Game Boy Advance)

Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku review

Game: Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Genre: Action RPG
Developer: Webfoot Technologies

Reader review by icehawk

July 29, 2005

When I think of Dragonball Z many things come to mind. The dozens of filler episodes. The lame dialogue, and not to mention a pretty uninteresting story compared to most anime. DBZ’s saving grace is its insane fights, and long, epic confrontations. Now, take out these great fights, and make them suck. Then, take everything that plagues the DBZ TV show. Put all of this into a game. You’ll end up with crap. You’ll end up with…

Dragonball Z: Legacy of Goku

What makes these Action-RPG fights suck anyway? Simple. The developers made Goku a wimp. Even a wolf, and basically any other regular opponent in the game can take out Goku in a few hits (What the hell is Goku doing fighting wolves anyway?). So rather than rushing in, and pounding any and all opponents into submission with super quick and powerful thrusts of the fist, you end up fighting like a girl the entire game. Fighting like a girl basically ends up being, blast your enemy with a Ki attack. Walk away like a pansy, blast, walk away, blast. Rinse and repeat.

Why do I say “walk away” instead of “run away”? Because Goku is literally unable to run or dash, he only has the ability to walk the entire game (he can also fly, but you can only do it for a very limited amount of time, before you have to find items to charge it again). While your speed does get increased a couple times over the course of your adventure, it basically just makes it so Goku walks a little bit faster. Another lame part of Goku’s movement abilities is, he can’t move diagonally! Using the “girl” strategy gets even more annoying thanks to this, and you’ll find yourself getting hit by enemies sometimes simply because of Goku’s crappy mobility. This along with Goku’s slowness makes the game more repetitive than it already was.

In fact, the only real variety in battle is when your enemy randomly decides to stand still, even though you are nearby. In those situations, rather than running away and firing a quick blast when you have the opportunity, you get to actually stand there and charge up your Ki attack before firing. Exciting! Variety!

Speaking of all the games variety. Let’s look at attacks. Your characters gets a whole 3 different energy attacks! YES! Unfortunately, two of them are pretty similar, and the Solar Flare is kind of useless. You also have a melee attack, but it’s flat out suicide to use. You have to be pretty damn close to the enemy for a successful hit, and that hit won’t be worth it when your enemy hits you back and takes out a third of your health. Your enemies’ attack variety isn’t much better. All the regular enemies (except for a few) can only run up and melee you. Bosses all have a Ki attack at least, but while they stand there charging it, you can get away very easily.

The mediocrity doesn’t stop at the battles though. Everyone’s favorite part about DBZ, the filler episodes, makes a triumphant entrance into the actual game, except in different form. You see, the developers decided that rather than playing as Krillin and Gohan and others (in order to get to see everyone’s point of view and fully show the story) along with being Goku, you’d much rather just be Goku and save kids, and pick flowers for a kid, and save more kids, I HATE KIDS, ARRRGH. Thanks to the inclusion of all these useless quests, you will feel like you are wasting time half the game.

Not even the DBZ license saves the game. While a lot of DBZ characters do show up in the game, none of them are good for more than a few lines of dialogue. And thanks to the game only showing Goku’s point of view, the story isn’t very complete. And short as well. Legacy of Goku will probably only last you somewhere around 3 or 4 hours. That’s right, they managed to take several seasons of DBZ, and shove it into 3-4 hours of gameplay. Another example of how poorly executed this game was.

In the end, not even the most fanboyish of DBZ fans should enjoy this game. In fact, if they have any sense about them they should be completely appalled by the lack of effort put into the game, and take burning torches, burn stuff, etc.

Rating: 3/10

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