Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 - updated hands-on

The story mode is full of battles from the show, and the game will helpfully prompt you to initiate events and attacks to move the story along. There are over 30 battle stages, but we so far we've only fought through the Vegeta Sagaand tried outfighting with all of earth's fighters from season 1. The fights are long. We went through four fighters before Goku arrived and finally took down the hulking brute Nappa. Although if you're good enough,there isn't any reasonChiaotzu can't beat him, but we're gonna need a few more rounds of Ultimate Training before we can do it.

We are a bit concerned that the characters won't have enough of a unique feel. All five of the heroes use the same basic attack schemes, with special attacks activated in the same ways. The characters' power levels feel about right. We were able to pummel Vegeta into the ground until he transformed into his Great Ape form andupped his power-level. As you progress through thegame, you also earn the option of equipping Z-items to buff up your fighters. We were still getting started and hadn't earned many Z-items, but looking through the list of attributes and skills they can add, it seems like they could add some personal touches to your level three Super-Saiyans

The cast of the game is the biggest yet with over 150 playable characters (yeah, that's pretty much everyone). If you don't know where Super Janemba or Salza fit into the universe, don't worry. You can consult a character reference section with brief bios on everyone. You can even listen to Chi-Chi's perspective on a character - usually a rant about how delinquent whoever it is may be. And after that you can pit Salza and Super Janemba against each other in the game, even though they never met in the show or manga.