This game is a good improvment to the last game, but the game isn't lenghty enough for hardcore fans of the game!!!!
Gameplay: If you played the last sequel of the game, then you will know what this game is all about. If you haven't then you are in for a great fighting experience. This game can be called Mini-Dragon ball z budokai 3 on the PSP because many of the features that there were in Dragon Ball Z Budokai 3 are in Another road. Another road is new to the Dragon Ball Z universe because the story itself hasn't been in the Dragon Ball Anima series. The game has many modes for you play in (which I will explain about them later), many characters to play with (which I will explain about them later) and many unlockables which you can unlock (which I will explain about them later). For now let me talk about the modes. The first mode is story mode. The story mode follows Future Trunks (which you are going to play as), as he fights Majin Buu in his own time-line in the future. When you start, you will be able to play as Future Trunks only, but after you progress through the game, you will be able to add team mates (who help you fight difficult fights) and change yourself into one the characters like Gohan, Goku, Piccolo and Krilln. The story mode contains seven chapters, each of which contains long stages and every stages contain a primary mission and sometimes a secondary mission. As you progress through the story mode, you will be able to open different endings and unlock new characters and transformations. In the story mode, you will able to fly around Earth (sometimes Namek) like in Dragon Ball Z Budokai 3 and you are going to defeat your objectives, but at the same time maintain the health of the three cities that you will have to protect and if you have team mates, take care of their health asewell. As you progress through the stages, the difficulty will get extremely tough and you will be very frustrated from the game. Already in chapter 5 there is a twich in the difficulty and from there, the game is for proffesionals of the game. The difficulty is too high in such a low chapter, but it does add some depth to the game so if you won't succssed in one point, you will be able to go back and try over and over again. This year, the developers added a new feature with the postcard thing (which was boring in the last game). As you progress through the story and win fights, you will be awarded with cards, which you can upgrade the Character's health, ki, ultimate attack and power. This feature is really good which can really help you in hard fights like in Chapter 7 when you have the beat Kid Buu in the hardest difficulty. After you beat an enemy in a battle in the story mode, one of these two things can happend: or he will dissapear, or you will keep him away from the city. When you are on a damaged city with no enemies around, you will be able to restore your own health, asewell as the city's health. That way, keeping you and the citys out from danger. Ok. Now that we finished from the storymode, let's go to the other modes. The next mode is arcade mode, which is like world tournament mode. You will be able to choose on character and then go through a series of fights until you are crown the champion of the tournament. The nice thing about this mode is before you are choosing an enemy, you can change the time of each round, the difficulty of the fights and how many rounds there are in one fight which is kind of cool. The next mode is Z-Trail mode which I think is the best mode of the game. In this mode there are three small modes: Time attack, survivol and challenge mode. Time attack is when you pick a character and then you have to beat an enemy as fast as you can. If you manage to beat this mode, you will open a new mode called Time Attack 2 mode which is the same as last mode, but here you have to beat groups of enemies as fast as you can. Survivol is what the name means. You have to pick a character and then beat as many enemies as you can until the health runs out. The last mini-mode is Challenge mode which is a new mode to last year's game. You will be given 50 challenges in different difficulty and you will have to pass them. Some of the challenges are really easy like "pull off an ultimate attack" and some of the challenges are hard "Pull off a 20 hit combo". This mode really addes depth to the game and it is a great new feature to the series. The only problem about this mode is that there are some challenges that you don't understand what they are asking you to do. For example: You are asked to do Charge Cancel 5 times. If you are new to the game, you will have no idea how to do it which is kind of a bumber that they don't give the challenges in simple turms. The next mode is Network mode. Here you will be able to play in ad-hoc multiplayer against 1 enemy. Here you will be able to fight against him one on one, or you will be able to trade stamps and show your post card to him. The thing is, there is no Wifi mode which means you can't fight against other people in the world and that bites. The next mode is Training room. Here you choose the character, the stage, your health and ki and then you will be able to practise in different ways (you can practise on a guarded enemy or you will be able to choose a difficulty and then play a match against an enemy of your choosing).I forgot to mention that there are about eleven stages in the game. The next mode is profile mode. Here you can buy stamps to put on your post card (shop), put the stamps on the post card (card collection) and see the records of your single player mode and mutiplayer mode battles (battle data, battle log). The last mode is options (which you know what it does. This year, they added a new feature to the options which is that you can change your camera angles and that is really cool because if you are used to other camera angles and you had problems with that in the last game, this is the place to fix it. It is a great new addition to the game. Now that we talked about the modes, let's talk about the gameplay itself. You have the same controlls as last year's game but this year they added two great new features. The first one is the improved teleport attack. Last year, you can teleport behind someone and kick him around as many times as you want until your ki runs out. This time you will be able to teleport behind your enemy, kick him three times and then blast him with a cool move like a blast or something. The next new feature is Aura Burst Charge. You can do that by holding the R button and then press the L button. When you do that, you go to Aura Burst Charge mode and that boosts your character. This thing boost each character in different ways. For example: If you do that on Goku, you will get high strengh but for Broly you get invinsibility and raised power. This two new features really add to the gameplay overall and they make it better then last year's game. Now let's talk about the characters which are disappointment for me. You have the same characters from last year's game, some unwanted characters and two or three new transformations. The unwanted characters like another Trunks and another Gohan aren't wanted because they basicly have the same moves. The new transformations are really cool but the problem is that there aren't enough of them. The developers said that there will be GT characters, but there is only SSJ4 Goku from GT. This is a disappointed because if there is SSJ4 Goku, why there isn't Omega Shenron and SSJ4 Vegeta and SSJ4 Gogeta. Although all that, there are fairly good amount of characters, a lot more skills and ultimate attacks, an awesome frame rate that keeps the Dragon Ball Z experience alive (although the frame rate goes down when you choose a character) and good load times (you will encounter a lot of them in the story mode). The one thing I forgot to mention is in-game transformations which there are none. What that means is that you can't go from Regular Goku to SSJ1 to SSJ2 to SSJ3 to SSJ4. This is a little disappointing but there an advantage of not having in-game transformations, more ultimate attacks. For example: If you choose SSJ3 Goku and you start off as Normal Goku, you can lunch his Spirit Bomb, then turn into SSJ3 Goku and make it a Super Spirit Bomb.
Graphics: The graphics here are really well done (although they haven't really changed from last year's game). The characters' models look awesome, the stage design look unbelivible, the attacks and ultimate attacks look great and the frame rate is superb and brings the Dragon Ball Z experience alive. The only two problems with the graphics is that in Character mode, the frame rate goes down and in the story mode, when you fly, the areas look like they pasted it from a newspaper (although the effort of putting the flying feature in the story mode is really awesome).
Sound: The sound in this game really didn't changed from last year, but they added more Voiceovers. The soundtracks are really nice, there are half the storymode voiceovers and half the story text which is kind of disappointing and the sound effects of the attacks and ultimate attacks sound amazing (like the game is actually the anima series). I want to mention here the I absolutely loved the intro of the game. Value: You can play this game for hours, trying to unlock every stamp you can find. There are plenty of modes for you to play in, you have a fair veriaty of characters to play with and you have tons of unlockable stamps for you to unlock. In the shop you can buy thousands of stamps which you can unlock. The funny thing abou the stamps is that there are stamps of SSJ4 Vegeta and SSJ4 Gogeta and if these are there, then there should be SSJ4 Vegeta and SSJ4 Gogeta in the game. The problem with this game is that it doesn't have a good amount of depth. After you finish Z-trail, Arcade mode and Story mode, that is it. You won't be able to enjoy the challenges of the Z-trail and the storymode. This really bites and to add salt, there is no online mode which bites asewell.
Reviewer's tilt: Overall Dragon Ball Z Shin Budokai Another Road ends up to be a fair sequel to last year's game, by adding new features that help to improve the gameplay, but there isn't enough depth for hardcore players. You have many modes and characters to play with and unlockables can keep you busy for quite a while. If you are Dragon Ball Z fan, go get this game. If not, then you should go and buy Tekken Dark Resurrection, which I think right now, is the best fighting game around on the PSP.