Ugh....
User Rating: 4.8 | Dragon Ball Final Bout PS
Ugh....thats pretty much all there is to say....don't even waste your time reading the rest of this. Gameplay: The Dragon Ball series has always been about speed, something that this game has oddly chosen to leave out. The characters are very slow moving, especially when turning around, this can definitely aid in you cheaply losing a fight. To be fair the game does offer the option to dash, but to change directions in between a dash you have to stop and then start again, which kind of ruins the pace of the fight. The controls in the game are pretty...well....messed up, they work but there is a delay between the button press and the action, which really is horrible because this causes you to lose damage far too often when there was nothing you could do about it. One feature that I actually found cool was the fact that you can have power struggles between you and your opponent.The way a power struggle works is that when someone attacks, you have about a split second to counter, when this happens you both begin trying to take over each other with a power blast by tapping the triangle button as quick as possible, this is cool at first but gets dull quickly. The bad design of the game makes everything particularly tough for beginners, but with unlimited continues, which actually allow you to chose a different character, you will likely beat the single player mode in no time. Final Bout also features a build up mode to strengthen your characters and a multiplayer mode. I didn't have the game long enough to try out the build up mode (I traded it in right after I bought it) and I couldn't play multiplayer with just one controller. Graphics: Not much to say here, the character models are pretty nice looking for an early Playstation game, but the arenas are just plain horrible. The arenas mainly consist of empty land with a few 2D mountains or hills in the far back of them. Sound: First off, the voice actors aren't even the same as the ones in the show, this wouldn't be so bad, but the actors don't sound all that great and are forced to follow a pretty bad script. During fights the characters may grunt and yell a bit, but the sound effects come out squeaky and are obviously from the Japanese version of the game. As for the music, there are only about 2 or 3 tracks that are constantly re-used, and they aren't very good to begin with. Bottom Line: Stay away from Final Bout. The gameplay is boring and the controls are terrible. There is no reason for you to pick this one up, especially with the release of much better DBZ games such as the Budokai series.
