While it does have some flaws, Battle Stadium D.O.N. is a very fun game that you will enjoy with a group of friends.
The objective of the Battle Stadium D.O.N. is simply to beat up the opposing players. There is a bar at the top of the screen which is shared by all the players; this is the health bar. Each time you hit them or they hit you, a red orb is released which, once collected, expands your portion of the health bar. The size of the red orb is determined by the intensity of the attack; the stronger the attack, the bigger the orb. The player who completely fills up the health bar first wins the match. But since the battle usually takes many turns, fighting may not be over when the timer runs out, so the player with the larger portion of the health bar is declared the winner. If a player appears to have a great amount of the health bar filled, he/she goes into Burst mode. In Burst mode, that character is stronger and faster making it easier to put in the final attack to win. Many of the characters also get physical changes, such as the Saiyans going Super Saiyan and Sasuke revealing his Cursed Seal. But, getting in Burst mode does not mean you’ll win, it can be taken way if damaged a bit, in which case you must recollect red orbs to get Burst mode again. Items are abundant during the fight but are fairly useless in battle because of their slow response. There are also power-ups that appear which are a bit more useful than the items depending on which power-up it is, yet they aren’t very helpful either in turning the tide of the fight (with the exception of the shield which makes you invincible for some time).
Fighting is very simple and can be learned easily. Simple attacks (such as punching and kicking) are utilized by pressing the B button in combination with a direction on the control pad/analog stick; these attacks are essential to survive in the fight and to begin combos. Special attacks are used by pressing the Y button along with a direction on the control pad/analog stick; these attacks consume some energy which regenerates after a while. Each character has his/her own set of special attacks that are taken directly from their respective animes and can be used either on the ground or in the air. While some character get useful special attacks (Rock Lee’s attacks come to mind), others get really useless or broken attacks (most of Nami’s attacks for example), which give them almost no chance against the other characters. Pressing the X button activates a super attack, which is each character’s signature move. Super attacks are very useful if successfully completed, but they take away good portion of your energy. And again, some characters get better super moves than others (Goku’s Spirit Bomb can cover the entire screen). Along with these attacks are the basic blocking and dodging attacks. But the really useful move in this game is the Reverse attack, in which a character in Burst mode is countered so that they loose half of their possession of the health bar.
Battle Stadium plays very similar to the Super Smash Bros games in which up to four players fight on a 2D map, yet it lacks some of the technique that Super Smash Bros. Melee requires to truly enjoy it. Fighting is very simplistic and can be easily compared to the first Super Smash Bros. game. You don’t really need much practice to master the game. All you need is maybe half an hour of playing to easily take on Hard mode of the Story Battle mode. And, there are also flaws in the gameplay that make fighting frustrating, such as going through platforms when trying to jump on top of them. This is especially frustrating in the Giant Jack stage where you spend most of the time racing the screen to the top.
The single-player portion consists of 3 modes. Story Battle is the main mode, and it consists of fighting a series of random characters in hopes of fighting Cell or Giant Majin Buu at the end (depending on which difficulty you play). During some battles, the game gives you a mission to complete, such as jump 100 times or win in 60 seconds, and depending on the difficulty of the task, you are given an amount of slot coins for completing it. These coins are used in the slot machine at the end of the Story Battle to unlock characters, stages, and Custom Battle coupons. But, the slot machine is extremely frustrating since there doesn’t seem to be a pattern to open the unlock-ables. Yet, after a while, the slot machine lets you auto-win so you don’t suffer too much. Once you unlock all the characters and stages, there really is no reason to go back and play the Story Battle mode, other than to pick up more coupons to play in the Custom Battle mode. This leaves the single-player experience very boring and feeling incomplete since you can easily unlock everything in 6 to 8 hours of playing. The other single-player modes are Time Attack and Survival but they get tiresome after a couple of tries, and they don’t give away anything for successfully completing them.
The real fun of Battle Stadium D.O.N. comes from the multi-player modes. If you have three or more friends who either like the animes or enjoy the Smash Bros. games, then you will definitely have a blast with Battle Stadium. There are two multiplayer modes. The first mode is the Vs Battle mode which is a battle with the basic rules applied. Players can also be put into teams to give others a fair chance, yet the players in the same team share the life bar so if one player is getting beat up, the other player is losing the fight also. Computer players can also fight if you don’t have all four human players to fight with, and their difficulty level can be changed to your liking. The second multiplayer mode is the Custom Battle in which coupons are used to change the rules of the match: time can be increased or decreased, blocking or super attacks can be removed, certain items can be used through out the entire match, etc. Multiple coupons can be used at a time, but each time a coupon is used, the amount of coupons left is lowered. Coupons can be acquired again by playing the Story Battle mode, but it’ll be a while before you run out of a certain coupon.
The graphics in Battle Stadium look good. Cel-shading makes the characters look as if they were still in their animes, but it isn’t anything that we haven’t seen already in other anime games. The action flows smoothly and I have yet to encounter a slowdown. The only complain I have is that the DragonBall Z characters were modified so that they look like they belong in the other animes. The sounds are okay. Sound effects are placed correctly but there isn’t a wide variety of them. Music is present in every stage but none of them are very memorable or catchy. Voice acting is done by the Japanese actors of the animes, so they sound a bit weird for those of us that are more familiar with the English actors (I still can’t get over how Goku sounds like a drowning duck). But then again, there isn’t much dialog in the game so it’s not so bad.
Battle Stadium D.O.N. is a very good attempt at mimicking the Super Smash Bros. formula, but many of its flaws keep it from being anything more than just good. You must either be fan of the animes or a fan of the fighting system to truly enjoy it. And, while the single-player experience won’t satisfy much, playing against a group of friends will keep you entertained for hours.