I have played practically every Dragonball Z game ever to come out. I've played the NES games. I've played the gameboy games, Hishouden and Gekitouden. I've played Super Butouden 1, 2, and 3. I've played Super Goku Den 2 (and the first, but that was DB). I've played Legend of the Saiyajin. I own Hyper Dimension. I own Bu Yuu Retsuden for the Genesis. I own Ultimate Battle 22, and Legends. I own DBGT Final Bout. I also own Budokai 1 and 2, and I now own Budokai 3.

I have seen the ups and downs of the DBZ fighting genre. I view the SNES games Super Butouden 2 and Hyper Dimension, and the Genesis Bu Yuu Retsuden as the greatest of the list, with Legend of the Saiyajin, UB22, Final Bout, and Legends also ranking as favorites but held back by various flaws. Having seen all these games, I have looked upon every single major website review of DBZ Budokai 3 to come out so far with a grain of salt. Don't get me wrong... Budokai 3 is getting some great scores.

But I know what it means to a long-time DBZ fan to have an opinion from another long-time DBZ fan based on experience with a lot of the games. I want people to have a viewpoint that speaks out of experience with all of those... and that is what I will now attempt to provide.

With that, I'd like to say that DBZ Budokai 1 and 2 were very entertaining games for me. I was skeptical that American developers could produce the kind of quality in a DBZ game that had been coming only out of Japan for so long, and I was overwhelmingly pleased with the result. Budokai 2 was great because of the cell-shading, but I must admit I cheated to get the capsules in that game, because the Dragon World mode just wasn't fun for me. I wanted to beat the living hell out of those slowly hopping avatars and just get to the fighting.

---Dragon Universe

Budokai 3, however, has blown me completely away, and I will begin my review by discussing the Dragon Universe mode (henceforth referred to as DU). DU is a DECIDEDLY better foray into the RPG realm for DBZ than its SNES predecessor, Legend of the Saiyajin. Its background music invokes the catchy tunes of that game and of the Super Goku Den games and really captures the feel of a good DBZ game the moment you boot it up. Then you start flying around and hit the shoulder-button for the first time, and feel that sensation of speed as your character explodes with energy and rockets over the landscape. You're sold before you've even started fighting.

In DU you can play at many of the game's main characters, such as Goku, Vejita, Piccolo, Gohan, Krillin, Yamcha, etc. The only big drawback to this is that you can only have one story going at once, which means that if you start a game with Goku, you damn well better finish it before you jump into your Vejita saga, because you'll lose all of Goku's progress. Which is annoying, but totally forgivable. There are hidden items all over the landscape that you can find by looking for shimmering dots on the ground, or if it¿s a Dragonball you¿re looking for, you can hunt down the Dragon Radar and find them that way. If you collect all the Dragonballs (be sure to look for them as you go through different planets and sagas, because they wont be all on one map at once), you get to choose from one of 3 wishes pertaining to the character you played with once you beat the DU story with that character. It's a great addition to the game (and the 3D Shenlong sequence is STUNNING... I do miss the growling voice from the original (first) American cast though), and looking for all the hidden stuff while soaring around will keep you occupied for hours.

As for little drawbacks to DU (as far as we DBZ fans go), the cut scenes are just silly. They're just drawings of characters (some of which are missing entirely, such as Baba's drawing when she comes to get Goku from Earth in the Buu saga) with sounds in the background when there's supposed to be something happening. Only the most well-educated DBZ fans will know what i s going on throughout the series of disjointed cut scenes you encounter in DU. However, it doesn't really matter, because you'll probably skip through them all to get to the good stuff. The REAL fun of DU is in the battles, the character exp/leveling system (definitely more in-depth than Final Bout's buildup mode), and in the exploration and item-hunting.

A brief note on the EXP system before we get to the fighting mechanics: It works surprisingly well. I haven't tested out the password feature yet, nor have I contributed any of my EXP points to the "com" stat of my characters (which decides how well the computer controls your character when you give someone else your password to fight your character on their PS2), because I want to kick all ass just in *my* DU mode.

I will *not* be cheating to get my capsules in Budokai 3. This is way too much fun.

---The Saiyan (bah, it's SaiyaJIN!) Overdrive System

You know, watching the commercials, interviews, and previews for this game made me snicker. They were calling the reworked system the Saiyan Overdrive Fighting System, and I was just like "wow... this better be good".

Turns out it is.

Where to begin? Well, let's start with modifications to the old system. First of all, the Ki system has been REVAMPED. You still have energy bars, but it's now a lot simpler to see just how much energy you have because you've got a row of vertical bars to symbolize your total energy rather than just a single bar with a number next to it. That's not even the revamp, either. Ki now goes up a lot faster when you hit your opponent, and doesn't drop quite so fast when you're in the high-level transformation modes. You can remain at Max Power for a few seconds as SSJ3 Goku, for instance. Not to mention the dust swirls you get around characters powering up now are just pretty. And the new energy glow. Did I mention the energy glow? It's just nice. Very, very nice. If you've seen the gameplay movies, you know what I mean.

Now that that's out of the way, on to the new aspects of the system. I have to say that I was very skeptical about the new countering system and the "Dragon Rush" modes we've all been hearing so much about. I was worried that it wouldn't be balanced right---that the counters and rushes would be too easy to perform, and consume too much or too little ki.

Let me say that one of the biggest annoyances for me in Budokai 1 and 2 was the knock-back attacks. It drove me NUTS how you couldn't do jack, most of the time, once you'd fallen victim to a combo and knew you'd get smashed backwards. I was mortified that the new additions to the fighting system in Budokai 3 would not be able to conquer this problem. Well, they did.

The new counter system (and the pursuit system where you can zap behind someone after smacking them backwards) has taken the Budokai franchise to a whole new level of depth. The counter AND the very cinematic Dragon Rush are relatively moderate in difficulty, so you don't see them dominating the battle. They both involve carefully timed button presses (you have to hit circle IMMEDIATELY after doing a knockback attack on your opponent to initiate a Dragon Rush while in hyper mode) that are balanced to just the right amount of difficulty. Also, you only have a limited amount of time (based on how much ki you gathered) once you've gone into hypermode (that red glow you see in screenshots and gameplay vids) to start a Dragon Rush, or you lose all your transformations and get dizzy, which is a nice touch. Also, because the of the Ki bar going up so much faster now when you attack your opponent, those of you who were concerned that the counter would consume more ki than you could take in with a certain amount of fighting need no longer be afraid.

All that being said, it is a LITTLE annoying just how easily the computer can pull of Dragon Rushes and counters, but I thoroughly look forward to my first multiplayer cannonball dive into this game.

All in al l, the fighting engine in Budokai 1 and 2 just didn't beat out the fun to be had in the older games like Super Butouden and Final Bout. Budokai 3 hands them all their asses on a platter, WITH side dishes. It's just plain fun to play, and you can no longer complain when you lose a fight, because just like a good DBZ fight, the counter provides you with the means to come back and retaliate even with a sliver of your own life left. The fact of the matter is, with the counter system, DBZ Budokai 3 requires the fastest button-pressing I've ever seen in a fighting game. You HAVE to be quick on your feet to be good with the counters, because the counters go nearly as fast as the ones on the show.

A final note... with an utter stroke of genius, throwing is no longer counted as a move on your skill list. Pressing punch plus guard simply makes you throw someone now, without needing a slot equipped with the skill.

---Wow, it's purty.

The cel-shading effects have been given somewhat of a shinier look in Budokai 3, making it the best-looking Dragonball Z game ever made. The contrast lines of bright colors (where the light or power glow shines on a character's face) and dark colors are very well-defined and much more fluidly animated this time around, easily giving the game the animated feel that the second game just BARELY achieved. In a feat that Budokai 2 can't match, and to quote another reviewer, the 3d models in Budokai 3 often look better than their animated counterparts. It's true.

Oh, and the energy dans (ki blasts) you get when you hit circle finally look like DBZ ki blasts rather than those annoying blurs of light from Budokai 1 and 2. Not to mention the fact that you can automatically do renzoku energy dans (the repeated blasts) just by rapidly tapping the energy button. YEEESSS. It's beautiful.

---The Old Meets the New

Some returning favorites from Budokai 1 that got the knife in Budokai 2 are the destructible stages (when a massive energy attack succeeds in hitting you, you get a nice scorched earth stage surrounding you) and the fully transforming Cell and Freeza. There may be even more, but I haven't discovered it yet.

---In Closing

I think I've said enough, folks. Dragonball Z Budokai 3 now ranks in my book as something the predecessors of the series could not achieve: The greatest DBZ fighter of all time. And I really mean it.

They damn well better be nice and give this one to the Japanese folks. They deserve a DBZ game this incredible.