Mediocrity Shines in Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden - Preview

by VGChartz Staff , posted on 13 October 2015 / 8,720 Views

Dragon Ball Z has lent itself to many a fighting game over the past 20 or so years, a number of which have been sub-par. Xenoverse is the exception to the rule, being the best DBZ game to-date, it captures the feel of the series and is actually fun to play. Namco Bandai hopes to hit gold again with Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden for the 3DS, a fighting game similar to the Budokai series that is being developed by Arc System Works, the minds behind the acclaimed BlazBlue and Guilty Gear fighting series. Given the developer's track record, I had high hopes for Butoden, but was ultimately left disappointed.

My initial thought when I started playing was that it looked more like the Super Nintendo DBZ fighting games with Arc System's hand drawn art style. It’s interesting to note that this was a series of DBZ games that held the Butoden name as well, and the art style resembles many of those titles. Given how well recent games have recreated the Dragon Ball art style, especially in Battle of Z and Xenoverse, Butoden's style is definitely a step back. The game feels a bit aged, and characters are sluggish to move and perform actions.

The game uses a 3v3 approach, with the touch pad being used to switch characters and a cooldown being triggered after switching. There are a decent amount of playable characters, but nothing like past DBZ games, as many of the characters from the series are going to be used as assist characters. Rather than be playable, they’ll only be available to provide extra attacks. While many people ultimately choose to play as the Saiyans or one of the major villains, it's still nice to have a wide variety of characters to choose from, and Butoden doesn't look likely to satisfy in that respect.

As in Budokai, combos are strung together with weak and strong attacks, with special moves being performed only when certain conditions are met, like performing four weak attacks in a row then a strong attack followed by a rush move, all while having the special meter at a certain amount. Kamehameha and other special attacks can only be performed in this manner and cannot be included with different types of combos. It makes the characters feel lacking in terms of their movesets, since you cannot pull off a Big Bang Attack or Special Beam Cannon whenever you feel like it. I want to be able to fire an immense amount of different kinds of ki blasts in my DBZ fighters, and Butoden just doesn’t offer that.

While it looks like a Dragon Ball Z game, it definitely does not hold its essence, and feels more like a generic fighting title. Even when inputting the correct button prompts in order to bust out a special attack, it doesn't always work and this can prove to be very frustrating when you're getting your butt kicked because you're trying to blast away your opponent with some style. Put succinctly, Extreme Butoden doesn't have the flare of a great DBZ title, and it doesn't have the depth of a Guilty Gear or BlazBlue either; it's the worst of both worlds.

Like many DBZ games before it, Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden, looks set to be yet another mediocre fighting game in an exceedingly long list of bad fighting games. Even with an accomplished fighting game developer like Arc System Works at the helm, the overall gameplay just doesn't jive with the DBZ atmosphere. It's a good thing we still have Dragon Ball Z: Xenoverse to give us hope that another great DBZ game is potentially on the horizon.