Ever since my brother 🦹showed me a , has been my favourite a𝓡nime. fans will call me basic, but to this day I’m a sucker for anything involving Super Saiyans, senzu beans, and spirit bombs.
As much as I adore the adventures of Goku, Vegeta, and the rest of the Z-Warriors, I roll my eyes when each new Dragon Ball game decides to adapt and retell the same old sagas we’ve all seen a million times over. I’ve played through the Saiyan, Namek, Cell, and Buu sagas more times than I can even count at this point, and even recent games like XenoVerse that put some kind of spin on it still have you recounting a story we all know off by heart. No, it doesn't change things up if Vegeta glows purple this time.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot might be one of my favourite Dragon Ball games thanks to its unique open-world exploration and light RPG mechanics that call back to Legacy of Goku, but it’s unarguably the worst example of this inability to let go of DBZ, making us play through it all over again and doing nothing to mix things up beyond adding a few extra scenes from the manga here and there. but even then I remember struggling to make it through Goku's fight against Kid Buu for the 42nd time without wanting to scream a little bit.
Thankfully, Kakarot’s DLC packs hඣave helped things by focusing on scenarios from Dragon Ball Super and some of the side stories like Bardock and Future Trunks’ sagas. So far, aside from the Super expansions being a little barebones and making you incredibly overpowered thanks to Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan Blue, these DLC packs have been exactly what Kakarot needed to avoid the same DBZ fatigue.
Bardock stans might have been starved for a proper adaptation of his story up until Kakarot, but no one has been as hungry as original Dragon Ball fans. Beyond some of the characters being playable in spin-off titles like Dragon Ball Fusions, we’ve not had anything game-related focusing on the series’ beginning since 2009’s Revenge of King Piccolo on the Wii. That’s exactly why the latest DLC packౠ for Kakarot is so exciting, as it finally feeds those fans by giving them an episode focusing on the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai tournament that saw Goku fighting Piccolo for the first time.
Although the DLC is disappointingly short at around two-to-three hours, it’s still one of Kakarot’s better DLCs thanks to it finally giving us something outside of Dragon Ball Z. Getting to play as Kid Goku for the first time in a decade as he takes on King Piccolo is a treat, as is seeing younger versions of the main cast and characters that Akira Toriyama has long since forgotten about like Tien, Yamcha, Emperor Pilaf and more.💟 Christ, 🔴even Oolong is here!
Just like it did in the base game, CyberConnect2 does an amazing job recreating iconic moments from the series in game form, from Goku's brutal meteor combination against Piccolo to smaller intimate moments like his impromptu marriage to Chi-Chi. It's not just the setting and recreation of original Dragon Ball content that's unique here, though. Since the 23rd World Tournament takes place long before Goku can properly fly, the combat has been reworked to take place entirely on the ground.
It’s a little tough to get u𝓀sed to R2 being jump and not being able to dash towards enemies, but it’s a great change that mixes things up from the base game more than ever before and manages to feel faithful to Dragon Ball. Little details like Goku using a shockwave instead of a Ki blast and riding around on Nimbus are just the icing on the cake and prove how much love has been put in here.
Small gripes aside like the already-short DLC skipping moments that should have been playable likꩵe Krillin’s fight against Piccolo (which is just shown as a slideshow cutscene here), Kakarot’s Tenkaichi Budokai DLC is still its most interesting yet and shows just how much potential there is for a new game focusing entirely on Dragon Ball.
𒅌DBZ’s screaming transformations and aerial battles might be what gets a lot of people through the door, but the original Dragon Ball is what started it all and it’s just as beloved. It’s a crim🌼e that it’s been ignored as much as it has over the last decade, especially when Kakarot’s DLC proves how great it could be.
Not only do we get to play as Teen Goku with techniques that are separate from the base game, but the start of the DLC teases us with a playable Kid Goku that has his own fully-fleshed-out moveset, which is surely proof enough that an OG game could work. Ground combat works so well in this opening moment and across the rest of the DLC that I’m praying CC2 gets the chance to go all out with it in a dedicated Dragon Ball game. Just give Goku his Nimbus to get around (just like this DLC does) and we're all gravy.
A lot of Dragon Ball fans are calling out for the next DLC pack to feature Gogeta versus Janemba or something to do with Broly, but this is all stuff we’ve seen so many times by now. Kakarot may have its issues in places and I wish there was a bit more meat to the World Tournament DLC, but I have nothing but praise for the direction the team has gone here in highlighting the parts of Dragon Ball that deserve more attention. We’ve already got Budokai Tenkaichi 4 on ൩the way for the DB🍒Z fans, so it&rsquo🍃;s time for the original ꦅstory to shine.
A PS5 code was provided by the publisher.