This Saiyan's pride is hurt by it's short length which consist of about 4 to 5 hours roughly, bad design, bad battle...
Game Title: Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku
Platform: Gameboy Advance
Developer: Webfoot Technologies
Publisher: Infogrames
Genre: Action RPG
Age Rating: 3+ ELSPA (Europe), E ESRB (North America)
Release Date: April 14th 2002 (North America), October 4th 2002 (Europe)
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Game Score: 3.5/10
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Summery:
This Saiyan's pride is hurt by it's short length which consist of about 4 to 5 hours roughly, bad design, bad battle mechanics and also a unbalanced enemy design followed by it's bad hit detection and also some inaccuracies
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Like all other Dragon Ball Z games before it, there are mostly just sad attempts to capture the feel of the popular Japanese anime series and so is the Gameboy Advance title Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku from Webfoot Technologies. The game is a retrace back to the 16 bit Super Nintendo days where the gameplay is nearly similar to Square's Secret of Mana titles expect that this game's power level of trashiness is over 9000 on my scouter.
The game takes place during the beginning of the Saiyan Saga, Namek Saga all the way to the final showdown against Freiza. Fans of the show or those who read the manga books might appreciate the idea where the game is getting at for the most part and there is solid writing for the character dialogue.
You play as Goku through the whole game and the gameplay style is a overhead action RPG like Zelda and Secret of Mana, You can fight creatures of the wild like snakes, squirrels, crabs, dogs, dinosaurs, and also powerful warriors like in the show right? It's absurd enough that Goku is spending most time blasting some poor animals but however Goku starts the game at a very pathetically weak level which advancing to quickly will cause Goku to be murdered by dogs which take about 1/3 of his health.
Levelling is extremely necessary if you are willing to survive cause enemies could kill Goku in an instant since the amount of damage the enemies do makes the game very unbalanced. Also there is a problem with the game's hit detection, get this: when you punch an enemy you'll hear either a bash sound which knows that your attack has landed damage on him but if you hear a ticking sound it shows that either your attack has missed him or the attack did nothing at all. Whatever you do try to avoid getting into mindless button mashing since that will only get you killed against harder enemies. You can find Herbs and Senzu Beans which restore your health but in all the battles are all about trying to be rather precise and avoid taking damage then fighting head on. Eventually after some levelling your fireballs will eventually take out most enemies in the game with 1 blast but even then the levelling will only go up as high as 25 in this game.
You can control Goku with A Button for punching, B for KI attacks, R for flying but he has a limit to how long he can fly for while L switches your KI attacks from Energy Balls, Solar Flare to blind enemies for a few seconds and also Goku's famous Kamehameha in which his voice is portrayed very well when using it.
When you're not fighting wildlife creatures you'll find people that will ask you for your help and it's the only way to advance through most of the story. You'll do things such as finding a lost child or a cat or finding bricks to make a bridge for an old man to cross. On top of that the awards like learning the Solar Flare from an old guy and Kamehameha from King Kai makes the storyline very inaccurate but however it does give the game at least some value dispute the poor set up.
There is one thing that this game does right and that's the presentation that is impressive for the system. I actually played this game on my Nintendo DS Lite since GBA games look way more colourful and more brighter then on the actual system. When the game is booted up you are treated to seeing the intro of the show with the FMV engine, during gameplay the environments are nice and sprite-work dispute some rough touches look impressive and their animations aren't bad. The two cons I noticed when playing it that some scenes like when Piccolo blasts both Goku and Raditz with his Special Beam Cannon you don't see the energy projectile at all and the same is said for when Krillin gets killed by Frieza. Also one thing I noticed which may sound like a game bug or programming error is that characters can go through solid walls during the cutscenes which is really bad for a game to have.
Overall Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku is just another bad attempt for a company to capitalize on a popular anime license. This Saiyan's pride is hurt by it's short length which consist of about 4 to 5 hours roughly, bad design, bad battle mechanics and also a unbalanced enemy design followed by it's bad hit detection and also some inaccuracies makes it not even worth a cash in with Camelots Golden Sun and also Capcom's Breath of Fire I and II also available at the time.
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The Good Points:
1. Sprite work is good and the FMV video is pretty good for the system as well as the music
The Bad Points:
1. Lousy hit detection
2. Poor side quest set up
3. Unbalanced damage from enemies and their AI is really bad
4. Other details look unimpressive and terrible to look at
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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