Dragon Ball series has a long history in video games. Between 3D fighting games like the Budokai Tenkaichi series, for role-playing games like Attack of The Saiyans, for traditional fighting games like the FighterZ, there’s always an abundance of Dragon Ball games on the market. But there is a certain kind that the fans of the series have always wanted and did not get, which is the open world. An open-world game in which you fly in Dragon Ball worlds has always been a dream for many players especially the younger ones. In Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Namco Bandai teamed with Cyberconnect2, the developer behind Hack games and Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, to make this dream come true.
The game covered the events of the second half of the manga that was quoted in the Dragon Ball Z series, from Raditz reaching the ground to defeating Majin Buu. This era of Dragon Ball history has been covered by video games more than any other era, but Kakarot may be better than its cover. Being a forty-hour open-world RPG game, Kakarot tells Z events in detail that no game has ever played before, but sometimes even adds to it. You find, through side quests and sometimes the main story, the appearance of characters from the first half of the manga that did not appear with Z like Launch, and details of things that are not explained, such as the reason why the tails of Johan and Vegeta did not grow after cutting them, and side stories that focus on the lives of the daily characters, most of which are found in periods of rest Among the major manga chapters, the game offers most of its original content.
You play in Kakarot with the characters of the Saiyans, Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Trunks, and Gotenks, as well as Piccolo, and switch the game between them during the story particles, while you can choose who to play with the free particles. Each of the characters has his own fighting style, moves and separate development tree, where you can focus on developing your favorite character faster than others, and we advise you to focus on Johann because, surprisingly, due to the name of the game, it is the character that you will play most of the time. Other characters such as Krillin, Tenshinhan, and Yamaha are limited as auxiliaries during the fighting but are not playable.
Kakarot’s gameplay is divided into two parts. The first section is an exploration and the open world. The Kakarot universe is not Seamless but divided into several areas from which to choose from a map, covering all areas that you remember from the manga and the original series. From the mountains where Goku has fought the Saiyans, to Planet Namik, to the western city and snowy region where Dr. Giroud’s lab and the Red League Army were. Activities in the open-world include simple but fun side quests and full of funny details for chain lovers, fishing, cooking, playing baseball, learning new moves, and most importantly, collecting the Z Orbs.
Z Orbs are balls where the Kakarot world swims, you find them everywhere, and you use them as a coin to develop your character and unlock new moves in the development tree. I found Z Orbs as a cute system that gives you something to do while flying in the iconic Dragon Ball Zones and talking about this, how amazing that feeling is. Free flying and exploring classic areas are a few of Kakarot’s best moments, and the child’s dreams flirted within and fulfilled every Dragon Ball series fan. Unfortunately, when the magic of feeling goes and grandmother goes, you’ll find a slightly empty Kakarot universe that suffers from repetition, but it still accomplishes its most important goals, which is to translate the iconic Dragon Ball world of the video game.
The second half of Kakarot’s gameplay is fighting, and here you find a style similar to that found in Budokai Tenkaichi and Xenoverse, and the game becomes more like Arena Fighting than RPG, but I found Kakarot’s version of this better combat system among its similarities, and that’s for several reasons.
The first is that Kakarot is not a fighting game and does not contain a competitive phase between the players, which allowed it to ignore the weight and present boss battles at a reasonable level of difficulty, requiring you to understand the style of the fighting leader and his movements and know when to avoid, repel and attack, in a manner that is similar to what you may find in leaders Games like Ys and Kingdom Hearts, so I think Kakarot is the best translator of series fighting and Goku’s feeling against enemies that outnumber him tens of times among her similarities.
Another point where Kakarot excels is the sense of sophistication. Training and development is a pillar of Dragon Ball and perhaps its most popular element, and as Kakarot is an RPG game, I managed to cite this feeling well, as you see Goku’s Kamehameha grow more and more until you find her at the end of the game times the size of the one that started the game. The game handles transitions well too, while Kaioken consumes life points, Super Saiyan consumes Ki and words increase the degree of Super Saiyan the more Ki is consumed, which makes each transformation his strengths and weaknesses, as is the case with the original manga, and switch between them during the fighting Smooth, amusing and outwardly beautiful.
Unfortunately, the fighting also has its fundamental problems. The playable characters are really unacceptably similar in their tools to their intense few compared to other Dragon Ball games, so if you develop them all in parallel, you will not feel much difference when moving from Johan to Vegeta, and your game strategy will not change. This also applies to leaders, where, with the exception of a dearth of movements, you find them very similar, and you will find strategies that work against most of them just enough that you can play the game, adding to the feeling of repetition of the game.
Technically, the game is beautiful and translates the iconic Dragon Ball theme of the 3D game in good to dazzling ways, and some cinematic scenes are truly exceptional in appearance. Long download times are unfortunately a problem, and some side quests contain up to seven download screens, each of up to 40 seconds, making some game moments unbearable. Hardly, this might be the first Dragon Ball game to use original music from Shunsuke Kikuchi, adding a sense of originality to quote the game, not found by most of its predecessors.
Excluding FighterZ, I have no doubt Kakarot is the best Dragon Ball game ever. There is a lot of love for the series in this game and a lot of fun and entertainment for any lover. As a video game, Kakarot is closer to a good foundation that needs a second try to polish it up to the franchise, but as a Dragon Ball product, I highly recommend it to every series fan who wants to live the Z events again in a new way.
