Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku Preview

By Miguel Lopez, GameSpotPosted Feb 14, 2002 4:16 pm PT

Read all about Infogrames' long-awaited DBZ GBA game.

Early on, you'll be fighting bad doggies.

Infogrames must surely realize that it has a Pokémon-caliber property in Dragon Ball Z. This makes it quite surprising that it has taken us this long to see the first actual fruits of it. In any event, we have a preview build of Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku for the Game Boy Advance, and we've been playing quite a bit of it. As you'd expect, the game is quite faithful to the series' mythology, and it incorporates a number of characters, settings, and conventions that will strike a chord in the hearts of devoted fans. The game itself is a Zelda-style action RPG, complete with a fairly robust character development system that allows your character to increase in both physical and spiritual power and learn all sorts of mystical attacks. Everything is drawn in a colorful style that is quite faithful to the look of the series, and for the most part, the game is pleasant to immerse yourself in.

The heroic Goku will find many opportunities to help those in need.

The game begins with Goku and his son Gohan visiting Master Roshi and company at Roshi's beachfront Kame House. After some catching up, though, things get a little hairy. The evil Saiyan Raditz appears on the scene, and, in an effort to coerce Goku into wreaking havoc upon the world (Goku's birthright as a Saiyan, according to Raditz), he kidnaps Gohan. Goku's longtime enemy Piccolo subsequently materializes and offers him the opportunity to team up and defeat Raditz. Given the circumstances, Goku agrees. Goku then rushes away on his faithful cloud, Nimbus, and begins his search.

The gameplay that follows this will be familiar to anyone who has played classic action RPGs in the vein of Zelda, Crystalis, and Secret of Mana. You traverse a huge colorful world from a top-down perspective, and you interact with--and, if the situation warrants, battle--whatever you may come across. Dragon Ball Z's actual environments are quite large and very organically arranged, and there are no discernable transitions, except when the tilesets for entirely new areas are loaded. The early sequences will place you in the area surrounding Goku's home, which, when all is considered, is quite expansive. Though you won't get much in the way of guidance, your job is to explore these environments in search of Raditz and Gohan. Though you'll eventually stumble upon the right path, the lack of any real clues or an auto-map feature makes it needlessly difficult to get on track. Hopefully, something of the sort will be implemented into the final game, as it would make the transitions between sequences that much more smooth and eliminate the rudderless feeling you'll surely get otherwise. As you explore environments, at any rate, you'll often meet characters on the field who provide you with opportunities to perform minor fetch quests, all of which are logged for you in the game's interface for easy reference. Completing these small quests will grant often grant you a small reward, as well as the personal satisfaction that comes from helping someone in need.

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