INTRODUCTION:

Dragon Ball Z is a manga/anime that is characterized by frenetic action, battles involving mass destruction, and lots of big fireball blasts. The storyline revolves around the adventures of Goku and his friends in defending the earth from super-powered bad guys or finding the seven dragon balls. The dragon balls are seven mystical artifacts, when brought together, summon the Great Dragon, who grants the summoner one wish.

Dragon Ball Z Legends (a.k.a. Dragon Ball Z: Idianaru Dragon Ball Densetsu) is a pseudo "street fighter" game with some 3-D scrolling movement (more on this later.) You can choose up to three characters (although you control only one at a time) who fight simultaneously (!) on a battlefield against the computer.

GRAPHICS: 6.5 (out of 10)

Unfortunately, the graphics of this game can get pretty ugly at times. The character sprites are 2-D and interact on a 3-D polygonal background. The 2-D sprites look as though they were from a 16-bit video game and can get really very pixelly at times (especially during the 3-on-3 battles). On the other hand, there are some nice graphical touches when characters do their super move (like Goku's kamehameha) that show some pizzazz. The 3-D background is a generic landscape that is either populated by rocks, trees, or cities. However, the overall effect isn't too bad, especially if you compare it to that other horrid Dragon Ball game (in which the 2-D/3-D looks very jarring). The graphics don't really take away too much from the game, but they certainly don't add anything either.

AUDIO (sound and music): 6.0

There isn't really any music in the game (or maybe it is very muffled). The sound effects are limited to the sounds of people getting getting beat up, fireballs, and the whizzing air sound as the characters fly around (which is somewhat annoying at first). Not much audio effects in this game.

GAMEPLAY: 7.5

You will definitely want to download Henry LaPierre's nice faq from www.gamefaqs.com in order to fully understand how to play this game and read all the menus (which are all in Japanese). I like how Mr. LaPierre summarizes the game: it is basically a big gang fight. The reason I don't really consider this game as a true fighter is that the controls are very simple and the gameplay makes you think back to olden days when Final Fight was king of the arcades. I will try to summarize the unique game engine as best I can:

Basically each character has an energy bar and a power bar. When you attack or fly very fast, you use up some of your power. When your power bar is totally depleted, you become temporarily tired and helpless until you can power up again. There is a tug-of-war meter at the bottom of the screen (like World Heroes 2) where you and your opponent beat the hell out of each other until someone gets the upper hand and pushes the meter all the way to their opponents' side. Then one of the victor's characters gets to do a super move (auto event) on one of the loser's characters, which depletes about a quarter of the loser's character's energy bar. Afterwards, the battle continues until all the character's on one side are knocked out (meaning all energy bars totally depleted). This can take a while!

You can only move in two directions (forwards and backwards), although you can also fly in the air as well as duke it out on the ground. You can shoot strings of mini-fireballs, but unfortunately you can't throw massive fireblasts (at least manually) at your opponents like in the Super Famicon version of the game. Therefore the major means of fighting is using the attack button. Basically, you attack your opponent, beat him up a little, kick him far away, chase after him, beat him up some more, kick him away . . . I think you get the picture.

Since all of this fighting depletes your power bar, you have a button to power up your character (yay!) which recharges your power bar. You can also use this button to fly around up to a 360 degree circle around your opponent which changes your vector of attack and gives the game a sense of 3-D freedom.

You have a block button that can block ALL of your particular opponent's attack without loss of power. This may seem cheap, but it is not really when you consider you can only block against one opponent at a time. This means the opponent's allies can get free shots at you. So if you're backed into a 1-on-3 situation, you're in lots of trouble!

Although the battles range anywhere from 1-on-1 to 3-on-3, unfortunately this game is only for two players. Basically you actively control one character while the CPU controls your allies, and you all fight simultaneouly. You can switch between your characters in the middle of the fight and you can also switch between the particular opponents you want to beat up.

You get to choose from over 30 characters (most of which you have to unlock from playing the one-player game). The balance in this game is not exactly even if you consider the power levels of all the characters (although this is expected if you're a DBZ fan). For example a battle between Krillin and young Gohan vs. super-blond-hair Goku and super-blond-hair Vegeta will get very ugly very quickly for the former team.

Overall the controls are very good (Saturn controllers are the best!), if somewhat simple. There are some more subtleties in the gameplay, but again, just check out Mr. LaPierre's faq for the details. If you're playing a two-player game, don't play 3-on-3: the graphics just gets too ugly and the action too crazy for you to really know what's going on.

OVERALL: 8.0 for Dragon Ball Z fans and old-school fighting fans 6.0 for everyone else

Although I gave this game mostly low ratings, it is actually is very fun! I like to play this game as a stress reliever after long schools days where I just need to unwind a little. I am also a Dragon Ball Z fan, so it was a blast to pick my favorite characters and pound away the opponents and chase after them just like in the anime. Of course, this is a lot more fun as a two-player game. The battles can be quite long, taking anywhere from 15 minutes up to an hour! Due to the simplicity of its fighting engine, I think old-school brawlers would also like this game. If you don't like old-school fighters or don't know anything about DBZ, then this game may be too monotonous for your liking. I picked this game up from my local import game store used for only eight dollars, so I really got my money's worth. Although, a Capcom- or SNK-like DBZ game has yet to be made, I nevertheless highly recommend this game for all Dragon Ball Z fans!
- David Anh Quach