Budokai Tenkaichi is a great fighting game especially if you like the television show, which makes it even better.
Budokai Tenkaichi has great story. It has all of the sagas form the Dragonball Z TV series. There’s the Saiyon saga, the Freiza saga, the Android saga, the Cell saga, the Majin Buu saga, and a bunch of other sagas that were movies, or just weren’t release to the public, I guess. Anyways, in each saga, you can be anyone, fighting anyone that happened in the show. Example, remember when Goku was fighting Vageta, then Vegeta transformed into a giant ape? Well, in the story, you have to fight Vegeta as a giant ape. Everything from the TV series is here. I have to say though, they can get really short. Some of the mini-stories from the movies are 3 fights long, and can take you seriously 10 minutes to complete. Everything is still awesome though.
Tenkaichi has pretty well perfect cell shaded graphics. The beginning video, when you first start the game up, has absolutely amazing graphics. But even in gameplay the graphics actually look like cartoons, which is really cool, because I think they’d look kind of weird in 3-D realism graphics, don’t you? But, yeah, the graphics are very well done in this game. The environments also have a nice cel-shaded look to them which makes you feel like you're in the TV show. I really like how each bend anywhere has a black line representing the line, like on Goku's arm, he has a line representing a muscle. I find that really cool because that's exactly what's like in the Television series. Way cool.
The music isn’t too, too bad in this game. It’s just that they used the same music from Budokai 3, and just transferred it to Tenkaichi. This was kind of a let down, but the music isn't extremely horrible. But, they also added a little more music, which are basically the only songs I like. The characters have the actual voice actors/actresses they had in the TV series. They sound excellent. You can also put the voices to Japanese voices also, which makes it even that much cooler if you're used to watching the Japanese series.
I love the fighting in this game. First you start off right in front of your opponent, then you can fly anywhere basically. You can jump, and fly in the air. You can go on top a mountain if you really wanted to. You could do anything. Also, when you’re fight, you can destroy things that are in your path, like buildings and mountains to name a few. You can also go in water and fight, but you don’t loose your breath. The buttons get some time to get used to, but I was fine in an hour or two. The destructable environments are awesome, makes it even closer to the real thing. The only thing this game is missing is online pay which would be a huge advancement over the other Dragonball Z games, let's hope for it in the next installment.
There isn’t really a point of starting over and unlocking everyone again. Some of the missions in the story mode are really hard, and you don’t want to do them over again. It takes a pretty long time to unlock everyone anyways. Some of the missions are extremely hard like fighting Vegeta as the giant Ape, so it's not like you want to go back and face him again, I had to get my brother to do that.
This game kicks butt. There’s no reason why to not buy this game if you are a Dragonball Z fan, which I am. Over 50 characters to unlock, and hours of gameplay, who can go wrong with this game? Not me, that’s why I bought it first day. I can't wait for Tenkaichi II. + Great stages with lots of destructable environments.
+ Awesome cel-shaded graphics.
+ Able to switch between English and Japanese voices.
+ Tons of characters to unlock.
- Gameplay gets repetitive.
- Music also gets repetitive.
- Story modes can get short from time to time.