My first DBZ game for the PS2 and it satisfied me as a DBZ fan.Great experience with fast and spectacular fighting.
Straight away I was entertained and blown away by the speed of the game,the battles were very exciting because of the teleportation counter system,the dragon rush mode and for the fact the possibility of ring outs made matches more exciting because it was possible to win via a ring out even if it looked like you surely going to lose and just from the speed of the fighting itself.
The teleportation counter system is when you press the D-Pad in a certain direction and X you would appear behind your opponent and land a blow on them from behind to gain the upper hand or to perhaps knock them out of the ring when they had you near the edge of the ring.The Dragon Rush is when you or your opponent activate a mode which means you or your opponent can land a series of powerful blows in succession or will have to defend against them by pressing certain buttons that land or block attacks and it's quite spectacular to watch and is another way it can help keep battles more unpredictable.
The game also uses the ki system in a clever way by making energy attacks consume ki but also by making the more ki energy you have in your meter the more powerful your basic attacks are and you'll need ki for transformations,such as transforming into a super saiyan but it doesn't mean you shouldn't use energy attacks because they're quite powerful,all it means is it's a risk vs reward system that's well balanced and encourages you to try to utilize basic moves and combos.
The beam struggle is a great feature too because just like in the anime,two characters have make their energy attacks collide with each other and they'll get into a dual in which they'll try to overpower their opponent's energy attack with their own energy attack and to win an energy beam struggle you need to rotate the analog stick and press buttons quicker than your opponent.
There's other things about the game I like such as how Vegeta can transform into Majin Vegeta after he is down to 1 health bar left and becomes insanely powerful and can do massive amounts of damage with his attacks but he will be not far from being KOed so it balances itself out whilst keeping things interesting and you'll see Babadi casting a spell on Vegeta everytime he transforms into Majin Vegeta and I like how the dragon rushes and beam struggles and spirit bomb all look spectacular.
The game also lets you do a story mode(Dragon Universe) for each character which also allows you to travel the world and fight enemies for experience points so you can level up your characters and use their stat upgrades when you fight in the world tournament,and the same applies when you can learn new skills by earning,buying or finding capsules which can give you some of the most powerful moves and transformations such as Super Saiyan transformation for certain saiyans or Majin Vegeta for Vegeta and for some of Frieza's transformations.
Some of the characters available in this game include kid Goku,adult Goku,kid Gohan,teen Gohan,near adult Gohan,Goten,Trunks,Vegeta,Krillen,Tien,Piccalo,Frieza,Cell and many others.
The graphics for their time had a nice blend of colorful cel-shaded visuals which also for their time looked great on a technical level.The character designs looked great and their body movements,poses/stances matched their personalities/fighting style fromt he anime and make things more intense.The camera angles used when dragon rush occurs makes the fighting feel more epic and the way the fighting moves so fast but is well animated makes things feel more epic.Like I said before,powerful energy attacks such as a spirit bomb or the energy collisions from beam struggles look spectacular.
I also love the voice overs such as hearing Vegeta say ''I am the prince of all Saiyans'' and yelling ''drop dead!! during battle when he does attack'' and you will hear Babadi's evil laughter when Vegeta transforms into Majin Vegeta and the moves sound very powerful and energy attacks make loud explosion sounds.Even when the characters move throughtthe air you can hear it.
The game doesn't have any major flaws,there is some things that stop the game being truly awesome such as how the character stories could have been presented better and unless you're a very good player you'll need to level up your character and help them learn new skills if you want to have a good chance of beating world tournament,even on amuteur difficulty.
Nevertheless the game was great for it's time and it made me more than happy as a Dragon Ball Z fan when I bought it as one of my first 2 PS2 game purchases.