Dragon Ball Z: Buu’s Fury Review

The third chapter of the DBZ trilogy finally hits stores. Surprisingly, Atari didn’t give this game a ‘Legacy of Goku’? title, even though it is a direct continuation. I never really got into the LOG series because I thought they just lacked a point. I absolutely hated the first game in the series, which was the first DBZ game to hit stores in years. I was so excited about it being released, then I felt so robbed when I saw that it was a really dumb game. LOG2 improved the first game by a lot, but in its very essence, it was LOG with a lot more features. I despised nearly everything about LOG, and since LOG2 still had some similarities to the first one, I was somewhat turned off. How does Dragon Ball Z: Buu’s Fury (or should I say LOG3?) end up?

I am not going over the story of this game, because it follows the general DBZ storyline. However, the original show, I felt, had an amazing storyline. Each of the games in the LOG series doesn’t seem to catch the same feeling (or any other good feeling) that I had when I watched the show. Though they got most of the general events right, they didn’t seem to understand how the characters in this universe acted. Akira Toriyama (the creator of DBZ) is a virtuoso of creating terrific characters. And because Atari couldn’t really display the storyline well, the entire game felt boring because of it. I knew what was going to happen and I didn’t really care to play after the first couple of minutes (though I did beat the game for the sake of this review).

The gameplay is similar to LOG2. You get to punch, kick, shoot beams, fly, and a couple of other stuff, but the most notable new feature in this game is the ability to block. Atari never seemed to add a block button in the previous two games. Since you couldn’t block in the previous two games, melee attacks were remarkably bad to perform because the enemy would always hit you before you can escape. When you kill enemies, a lot of the times you get stuff. Sometimes the enemies drop food, which replenishes part of your life. Sometimes the enemies drop some drinks, which replenish your Ki bar. Sometimes the enemies drop some Zen, which allows you to buy stuff. Using Zen, you get to buy a lot of stuff, most of them that increase your stats.

The more enemies you kill, the more experience points you get. When you get a good amount of experience points, then you level up. The entire leveling up system is very flawed. You get to distribute your stats between 3 categories; strength (your melee attack power), power (your Ki attack power), and endurance (your defense). The problem is, Atari somehow decided to make the strength category very unbalanced. They made melee attacks stronger and faster, while they made Ki attacks weaker and slower. I just ended up added nearly everything to my strength category, and was unbeatable. This makes the game very easy. Another flaw is that you just level up too fast, which makes the game extremely easy.

There is also an interesting Super Sayian mode. In this mode, your character gets to be a Super Sayian (SSJ for short). SSJs are much stronger than a normal fighter is (a level 50 fighter is weaker than a level 50 SSJ). However, you only get to stay as a SSJ for a limited amount of time. Use the time wisely, well actually, use it however you want. It is really not that important, considering the game is so easy.

The game’s graphics and audio aren’t changed from LOG2. The game’s graphics aren’t bad, I just wished a little more effort in this category. But I will give Atari some credit because they did depict the characters (visually) rather well.

I beat this game in two days and got about 7 hours of gameplay from this game. Most likely, the average gamer will get 14 hours from this game (which still means it can easily beaten in a week). Atari really needs to improve the length of the LOG series.

In so many ways, this game reminds me of Sword of Mana. Both games were extremely easy, both games were short, both games didn’t have really the good plots, and both games weren’t really that original. Though Sword of Mana wasn’t that bad of a game, the only reason why I liked SOM better was that it had an original plot (even though it wasn’ best) and a better leveling up system (because it involved the ability of changing classes). Far from perfect, DBZ: Buu’s Fury is still a decent game and worthy a rental if you’re a big DBZ fan.