Though it's pretty short, you'll have a blast playing Shin Budokai while it lasts.

User Rating: 7.7 | Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai PSP
By death919 | Review Date:
Gameplay: Shin Budokai plays like the classic Budokai games (not like the new Tenkaichi ones). The storymode covers the Janemba DBZ Movie, and the storymode basically involves you selecting a battle from a path (sometimes there will be multiple paths), reading some dialogue, then fighting. One thing that didn't feel right was the fact that you're usually reading more than you're actually fighting. Still, the fighting is pretty awesome and you'll have a blast playing it. The game features around 20 characters, which isn't as much as the console versions but is still a fairly large number for a fighting game. One thing that kind of bothered me was the lack of modes. There just isn't a whole lot of things to do. There's the story mode, an arcade mode, a versus mode, and time attack and survival modes, but that's pretty much it. Still, despite this lack of modes, the fighting itself makes up for it, and you'll definitely have fun while you're playing Shin Budokai.

Graphics: The graphics in Shin Budokai really impressed me. The game looks nearly as good as the console versions. There are a few sketchy things in the characters though, like the "dotted line" effect that surrounds the close-up versions of the characters, but overall, the animations during the fighting look amazing, and there is never any slowdown at all.

Sound: The sound in Shin Budokai is what you'd expect from a Budokai game. The music is exciting and the sound effects during battles are all here, including character voices for the openings/endings of battles. It would have been nice to have the story elements voiced as well, since there is a fair bit of dialogue in the game, but even so, Shin Budokai's audio is very nicely done.

Value: Shin Budokai one weakness is that it's not the longest of games. The game's story mode took me about 4-5 hours to beat, and like I mentioned earlier, there aren't exactly a whole lot of modes to delve into once you've finished this story mode. You could try getting a Z ranking on all of the story mode levels, and there's a shop system where you can buy stamps and make profile cards which is pretty cool, but overall there isn't a whole lot of things to do other than a couple of modes. If you have people to play multiplayer with then you'll definitely get a lot more out of the game, but it would have been nice to at least have an online option to extend your time with the game.

Tilt: Overall, Shin Budokai is a fun, though short, Dragonball Z experience. It's not the best in the series, but I still recommend it to any fan of fighting games that has a PSP. Whether you rent it or buy it is up to you, but you should definitely get your hands on Shin Budokai. It's a great game that you don't want to miss, especially if you're a DBZ fan.

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