"Playing this will make you feel unaccomplished quite fast, as it provides no challenge whatsoever."
Budokai sets out the main style of later Dragon Ball Z games: Standard fighting with a few gimmicks such as smashing people through buildings, mountains and even sending them to another location in the stage. Except, the later games do it a lot better than Budokai. Budokai feels completely half-assed most of the time, especially when watching the cutscenes.
The plot of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai simply follows the first three sagas of the series: The Saiyan, Namek and Android sagas. However, according the the anime and manga, these three sagas have other sagas within them. The Saiyan saga is completely fine, but the Namek and Android sagas have various parts to them. The Namek Saga has three parts in Budokai: Namek, Ginyu Force and Frieza. Now, these are all sagas in the anime/manga for the Namek saga in the game. The Android saga also has three parts: Android, Cell and Cell games in the manga and anime. Well, at least Atari was kind enough to just leave it at three.
Anyway, there's still more to the plot: It follows Goku (Son Goku in the Japanese version) and his friends (plus his son) defending the Earth from evil tyrants known as Saiyans. The first Saiyan that lands on Earth is called Raditz, who tells Goku that he's his brother and that his real name is "Kakarot". Goku doesn't believe Raditz, so Raditz retaliates by stealing Goku's son, Gohan. That's just the beginning of the Saiyan saga. Each saga has different stories, characters and endings. There's really no need to go deep into detail.
There are two really poor things about the story mode: It's extremely short and that the animations are of low quality. Now, this is the sixth generation of gaming we're talking about here, its early-middle sixth generation, so we still aren't expecting the best, but this was pretty bad. The short story mode isn't completely bad, but it means that the attention span for the game won't really last long.
The cutscene animations aren't completely bad, either. But they feel really… Well, not complete. Here's an example: in the scene where Piccolo kills Goku and Raditz, Goku is falling to the ground and will disappear just as the scene fades away. Why couldn't they just finish the scene completely? That's just poor quality. Not all the cutscenes are awesome. Actually, none of them are. There's really no epicness to any of them. Oh, and they speak Japanese. Dragon Ball Z is one of those anime that have good English dubs. It's highly non-understandable. Quite pathetic, Dimps.
The graphical design is quite impressive, admittedly. It's not cel-shaded, it's just solid graphics and they're implanted very well. Despite that, people prefer (that includes this humble reviewer) the cel-shaded graphics that were originally put in Budokai 2 onwards. Despite that, Budokai's graphics are still impressive, even to this day (well, to people who think realistic graphics aren't the best thing ever).
The gameplay, however, is where it's at. Actually, scratch that. The gameplay in Budokai is just simplistic fighting with a few gimmicks. Sure, you get to use special attacks from the series that everyone loves and you have the ability to fly in the air, but it's nothing special. Brings nothing new to the fighting genre. Sure, the Budokai series has evolved and brought new mechanics to the fighting genre, but that doesn't mean that it's the best thing on Earth.
The music is really… This is going to be short: There aren't any songs from the anime whatsoever, except the song played during the opening sequence and the credits. The songs are cool, but lack the awesomeness that the anime had.
There are various extra modes, such as Tournament Mode and various others. There's a mode where you can customise the abilities that the characters have. You see, throughout the process of the game, you'll get skills and characters. However, this is utterly useless. You see, in this game, when you select a character, you'll get a choice out of "Normal" and "Custom". Custom allows you to use the set skills you've given to your characters, while Normal gives you a standard, more preferable set of skills for each character. Dimps later scrapped the concept of Normal and just made it… Crap. No auto-set skills at all. Brilliant work, you fools.
The Budokai series has improved over the years, but the original has some flaws and some stuff that made it good, but were late scrapped later in the series. Budokai is a simplistic game that should only be played by the Dragon Ball Z fans, not for everyone. Fighting fans, stick with Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Playing this will make you feel unaccomplished quite fast, as it provides no challenge whatsoever.