Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II

Dragon Ball Z and it's sequel and prequel have had a long history with video games. Their creator Akira Toriyama has also had an impact on games especially RPGS like Dragon Quest [ドラゴンクエスト] and Chrono Trigger [クロノ・トリガー]. His company also did consult Nintendo on the designs of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! [パンチアウト!!] characters, so I was right in my review of that as confirmed in the Gaminghistorian's great "The Story of Punch-Out!!" video. Unfortunately for the creator games about his show haven't been as great as his shows and the sure as fuck don't live up to the games he has worked on separate from this series. A big reason why is a lot of them are fighting games and almost all of these games did look good for their era, in fact, I think you can credit the DBZ games with pushing boundaries of cel-shading and perfecting the look of cartoon games in a 3D setting. They by no means originated this technology, but the first Dragon Ball Z: Budokai [ドラゴンボールZ武道会] games and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker [ゼルダの伝説 風のタクト] finally encapsulated the potential of this art style in its early stages. These games have technical merits but...
Ok, story time. So sometime around the end of the 90's this guy I knew came over with an extremely rare at the time copy of "Dragon Ball: Final Bout [ドラゴンボール ファイナルバウト]." This was one of the rarest PS1 games for a while because of an extremely limited initial print run and because of a huge demand for it in the west which had seen a massive wave of fandom for DBZ around this time since it was being aired on Cartoon Network in a few parts of the country and/or to those who paid to have it. Someone over in Japan realized this at some point and decided to re-flood the market with more print runs of this game, but for just a small few years, this was a holy grail for it's respective system. So he had this rare copy because he bought it from someone who imported it, not knowing how to play a game like this. We tried several "tricks" that allowed you to essentially override the region lock and play a game from based-nippon. I remember one of them was using a crumpled piece of paper to hold a button down, while having a Gameshark or some kind of device like it in. Something we did ended up working, but the game wasn't that fun. In fact it started a long trend of me being underwhelmed by the gameplay of DBZ fighting games that continues today. I was a big fan of the show and I really wanted to like these games, but I just couldn't give a shit no matter how much spirit energy I tried to harness. I entered a hyperbolic time chamber for a day which is the equivalent of a year outside and even after training my mind and body for that whole time I still didn't have the power and training necessary to muster a fuck.
Now before we go on from this topic, I would like to entertain a possible excuse one might have for these games before we move on and that my friend is that you might accuse me of not liking fighting games. Well, it's definitely not my favorite genre of video games and it never really was, but I did grow up in the 90's and let me tell you in the now mostly forgotten war between Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter I was a mercenary on both sides, talking up the merits of both until in most people's perception Mortal Kombat fell off and Street Fighter definitively "won" the war between these two games. More on this if I review an MK game, but aside from these two series I also really liked Tekken [鉄拳] and Dead or Alive. I remember specifically a trip to Las Vegas, where I was supposed to be spending the time seeing the "sights" there and instead I played an arcade cabinet of the then-unreleased Tekken 4 [鉄拳4] for 75% of the trip. I won't claim I'm some expert on them or that I'm particularly good with this type of game because I'm not, but I have played them enough to know what I personally like and don't like in a fighting game. I liked this genre and I still occasionally indulge in it and despite it not being my favorite I was hyped for DBZ fighting games being good but they just weren't. The physics of the games were all completely off and awkward, they actively made the controls worse and the floaty overly weighty characters reminded me of a somehow even worse Virtua Fighter [バーチャファイター] clone. Those were the early games. The newer games suck because of a whole slew of other reasons, usually centered around the fact that the 3D fighting mechanics always somehow manage to feel dated in comparison to other fighting games by a few years, albeit while again still looking very visually impressive. I think it's safe to say the Xenoverse games at the very least are extremely impressive visually if not good in any other regard.
So I didn't like the DBZ fighting games. In fact with Master Roshi's help I had come to train my mind against noticing DBZ games on store shelves in game stores the way you do with certain game series and IP's after a while once you settle into things you like and don't. I remember being in a store called Gamecrazy and having bought a few other things, I had a minor amount of money left, just enough to buy a loose copy of Legacy of Goku 2. I remember considering for like ten minutes whether I should get that game or another game and I almost didn't because as stated above I never really liked any of the DBZ games I played. On a complete whim I bought this game and didn't play it, I think I had bought it with a new copy of Mega Man & Bass [ロックマン&フォルテ], also known as "frustration" the game. I finished and went to this.
If I can call anything related to Dragon Ball Z "underrated" and I say even this with some restraint, I would say Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II and Dragon Ball Z: Buu's Fury GBA games are that and so is the one Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure [ドラゴンボール アドバンス アドベンチャー] game. This game is one of the best games for the GBA, I wouldn't call it "the" best but I think it's a really great little title that I have played a lot more than I ever would have imagined when I first considered buying it back then.
One of the reasons I think this game isn't and wasn't well regarded or noted at the time, I mean I'm sure it sold just out of the inertia of DBZ fandom but I never really heard anyone praise it that much. Was that unfortunately as indicated by the "2" in this games title it was the sequel to a game that wasn't that good. The first Legacy of Goku game on the system is an ugly ass mess with bad fighting mechanics that no one should ever play. Most people like myself like to play things in chronological order but with these games that is a definite miss step because the first game is just terrible. I'm sure there are thousands of people who played the first game and figured after playing it about an hour that this was yet another cash grab piece of dog shit with the DBZ name on it and then unfortunately ignored the rest of the entries in this series. So now that we got all this preamble out of the way we can finally do the actual review part of this review and talk about Legacy of Goku 2.

The graphics of this game are pretty vibrant 2D and despite the hardware limitations of the GBA the areas and the items manage to look a lot like the show. I'll give the fighting games that Sagas came really close to doing this in a full 3D environment, but it lacked a lot of the setting details and cool areas of the series that this GBA game managed to include. It also includes a lot more of the characters than most of the other games. One of which I always get a kick out of is that Mayor of the town that just so happens to be a dog for some reason. In my minds eye him and AC Isabelle are the furry Japanese power couple that hasn't realized their "fusion" abilities yet. Anyway, I can help you Mr Mayor? ;)
Another thing I like about this game's graphics and its depiction of the DBZ world is the look of the Capsule Corp houses and items. It gives a lot of the little towns a distinct look from more standard settings and it reminds me a little bit of the simplicity and flair of Pokemon towns. It also expands the lore of the use of capsules a little bit. Which in case you didn't know capsules are technology that basically makes anything portable in a bean like capsule container. One NPC in this game says he tried to put a capsule into a capsule and he was promptly fired for such reckless experimentation. This makes me ponder the deep implications of what paradoxical outcome might come from putting a capsule into a capsule... Don't look too deeply into that abyss kids.
I think a lot of the appeal of this game, is the DBZ setting. I know that might not be the most shocking revelation, but I figured I would lay it out anyway. I think a person can enjoy this game regardless but if you don't like the story or the Toriyama art style I don't think this game will redeem those things for you. Just a fair warning.

The music in this game is good and it has a few simplistic versions of the themes of the show. I won't oversell this aspect of the game, a lot of the tracks unique to this game are good, but not particularly memorable or anything groundbreaking for the GBA. After thinking about this for about ten minutes I couldn't think of any games that didn't already exist on another system aside from the original Ace Attorney games that had particularly good music for the GBA. I might be forgetting something big though.

You primarily play as five characters, Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo and Trunks. There are small segments of the main story where you play as other characters for a very brief time, but these five are who you will be controlling for 99% of this game. Most of the game is you moving from one set piece of the story to the next in a big variety of location in the show and broader mythos. In between boss fights you fight the shit you usually fight in games like this, like vicious animals, bandits, rogue AI's and crippling credit card debt. Healing shit like Phantasy Star is food items and Capsule Corp products. This game is a very good mix of beatem'up and action RPG. This also one of the only games I know of aside from the two sequels and it's abortive precursor that tried to bridge this gap in genres. If I try really hard to think about this for a second I think I heard of a Sega Saturn RPG where you're on some ship that has a lot of beatem-up elements to it if I remember correctly and a lot of the Vanillaware games are a mix of a side-scrolling beatem'up and RPG elements, but what makes this particular series unique is it's isometric gameplay and this mix of genres. It might not seem that remarkable since ARPG's already have a lot of elements that make them like these games anyway, but I believe there are some subtle differences here. One of which is the way the game progresses the action, like a beatem'up game you move from one "scene" to the next and clear out enemies. Instead of the more open world approach of most ARPG's. So you have these linear action sequences like a beatem'up game the first time you progress through an area but when you come back for whatever reason you have more freedom to move around and kill enemies like a more standard RPG. The way attacks and fighting work is also more like a beatem'up in that they seem to do a static amount of damage within an RNG range depending on your level rather than a roll based attack system like most RPGs. The fighting just "feels" more like a beatem'up in the way the enemies react to your attacks and how it all comes together. It's a lot more action oriented and usually, with an ARPG that would mean it's mindless and lacking in depth, but with the mixing of these two genres, it manages to feel rewarding in a different way. For a comparative example when I described combat in Diablo I tried to illustrate that what is good about that game is that it's tough but fair gameplay gets people to explore more carefully and even though the combat itself is literally just you clicking one button it manages to feel more immersive by having realistic threats in your feeling of exploration and putting the "crawl" in dungeon crawl. In contrast, if that was how this game worked it would be a design failure because the point of being a hero in the DBZ universe is that you're already powerful and Saiyans and super-powered Namekians don't have the same concerns that a careful explorer in another ARPG like Diablo would have. So the beat'em up gameplay gives you that feeling of being a hero in taking on large groups and tougher single target enemies and bosses while still giving you that power fantasy that goes along with these characters and the setting.
This game isn't particularly difficult. I just want to say that because I know there are certain people who only see worth in a game in relation to how difficult it is, so I guess this is your cue to leave. It's about as hard as most GBA games and Beatem'ups are which is to say not very hard once you learn a bosses patterns and the limits of their attacks.
The RPG elements this game does have is leveling, missions and a lot of exploration. This game has a linear path for its main story, but again a lot of open exploration in those areas after that. It also has a lot of side content in the game, something I'll talk about in relation to the story, which is luckily what we're going to talk about next.

I won't do a big story section for this game, because its story is the story of Dragon Ball Z's middle sagas, specifically the Android and Cell sagas. So even though I won't do a synopsis or analysis of this, I will say that I love the way this game tells the story and the way the story is told through its RPG like progression. Another thing I like about this is Dragon Ball Z always had this weird disconnect with its movies where they didn't exactly connect with the main story but elements of them would sometimes make it to the main series. I think this game utilizes aspects of the movies best by making their antagonists optional more challenging side bosses to beat for each one of the characters you play as. You have to do a lot of leveling up to get into secret areas that allow you to face them. There is so much to do in this little game and it really lets you explore a wide breadth of the DBZ era world of Dragon Ball. Had it included the small amount of stuff that is in the first game I would say it contains all of the greatest DBZ sagas. As I was never a big fan of the Buu saga but the sequel to this game that contains it is a good representation of it. Whenever I go to reimmeerse myself into DBZ stuff I don't watch the show again or read the manga, I play this game because I like how it seamlessly connects all this into one cohesive narrative, without a lot of the filler of the show and it manages to keep a lot of the humor of the manga. It's like the best of all possible DBZ worlds, Pangloss would bust his small Dragon Balls over it.
If you manage to do the all of the side bosses in this game you get statues of each of the five characters at Capsule Corp headquarters so my bae Bulma can have tactile stimulation and inspiration at hand. Once all five statues are there you get to play as... Hercule. Look we all want to be the hero, but in reality, we're Mr. Satan at heart. He is pitifully weak in comparison to the other characters as you might have guessed, but if you manage to level him up to fifty you get a secret ending for the character.
It's my favorite way the DBZ story has been told and the sheer amount of extra bosses and side quests in this little game is quite staggering. I only mentioned the movie side bosses, but there is a lot else to do and see in this game. I was always kind of flabbergasted that the countless shitty fighting games in this series get nonstop praise from fans but no one ever talks about this game and its sequel that actually tried to do something different with the license and succeeded. I think a lot of the reason this game, unfortunately, went unnoticed by both people at large and fans of the series was the first game was just such a horrendous turd, that I'm sure most people thought the second game would also just be another shitty cash grab game like that.

This is one of my shorter reviews as of recent there isn't a lot to say about this game, aside from I think it was good and despite it's connection to a famous franchise I feel like it isn't quite rated as highly as I think it should be. So this was more to bring this to the attention to the three people who might accidentally read this review or who are forced to read my reviews as a form of torture in CIA black site prisons all across the globe. This isn't a favorite game of all time for me, but with an interesting mix of genres and it being one of the best ways this particular story has been told I think it deserves some merit and at least this small review for me.