Patreon button  Steam curated reviews  Discord button  Facebook button  Twitter button 
3DS | PC | PS4 | PS5 | SWITCH | VITA | XB1 | XSX | All

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

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


"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… "

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.



icehawk's avatar
Community review by icehawk (July 29, 2005)

A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.

More Reviews by icehawk [+]
Final Fantasy VI Advance (Game Boy Advance) artwork
Final Fantasy VI Advance (Game Boy Advance)

(Note: I never played the original FF6, so I have no real views on the new translation debate. However, from comparing scripts, I think the new script is a lot better and more clear. If you are playing the game for nostalgia, you should probably be doing it with a SNES controller in your hand anyway, that’s all I have ...
ActRaiser (SNES) artwork
ActRaiser (SNES)

For years, two questions have constantly been on my mind. Is there a god, and could a 2D platformer/strategy game actually work? Imagine my delight when I found out about a game where you play as a god in an Action/strategy game. Finally my problems were solved! But alas, this game's action strategy combination didn't ...
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (Game Boy Advance) artwork
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (Game Boy Advance)

Robots, thousands of them were gathering in the middle of a secluded bit of desert out in Arizona. I was hiding behind a cactus, watching them. The Robots were gathering and rallying for the soon to be invasion of Phoenix, several thousand humans, aware of the Robots assemblage, began to march towards them screaming...

Feedback

If you enjoyed this Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku review, you're encouraged to discuss it with the author and with other members of the site's community. If you don't already have an HonestGamers account, you can sign up for one in a snap. Thank you for reading!

You must be signed into an HonestGamers user account to leave feedback on this review.

User Help | Contact | Ethics | Sponsor Guide | Links

eXTReMe Tracker
© 1998 - 2024 HonestGamers
None of the material contained within this site may be reproduced in any conceivable fashion without permission from the author(s) of said material. This site is not sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, or any other such party. Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku is a registered trademark of its copyright holder. This site makes no claim to Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku, its characters, screenshots, artwork, music, or any intellectual property contained within. Opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily represent the opinion of site staff or sponsors. Staff and freelance reviews are typically written based on time spent with a retail review copy or review key for the game that is provided by its publisher.