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Dragonball Raging Blast 2 Review

Genre: Anime Fighter

Developer: Spike

System I Played On: Xbox 360

Year: 2010

I have a lot of memories over the years with DBZ, but something I haven’t talked about before is my past with it’s games. But truth is I didn’t watch the show constantly as a child, but I did play the games a good amount. I played just about all the DBZ games on the PS2, and finished pretty much all of them. Now going into the next console generation, the DBZ games were a little more shaky, the number of DBZ followers weren’t as many kids by that time. So then there was Burst Limit… one of my least favorite DBZ games next to DBZ sagas. I even rented Raging Blast one, but I didn’t get into enough to buy. However, the next raging blast looked promising. It had a good amount of characters, SS3 Vegeta and Broly included, and it looked pretty god damn good. Now I don’t research my games that much, so I went in a little blind besides the roster and the demo, which is actually a lot less blind than how I go into most games. But Raging Blast 2 was mostly what I wanted. Before I break it down I want to say what you get: a good but not grand roster, a great fighting system better than any other DBZ game before, and a story mode that… I can’t call that a story mode cause it’s not. You basically get two fighting modes, one where you pick a character and fight some guys and another where you fight off a bunch of the same characters along paths of your choice. That’s the best I can do to explain them, but although they are pretty fun, they aren’t enough to replace some of the past modes or story modes in the place of old DBZ games, and by next console generations, what you should be doing is improving it. Although these two modes do last you a long time (when I was really into the game I beat eighty percent of the story mode and over the next two years I slowly completed everything) I don’t disapprove of the "galaxy mode,” but it was a little bit of a let down when I wanted a real story mode like in the Budokai or even Budokai Tenkaichi games. But I would like to talk more about the roster. Sure the roster isn’t as big as it was in the Tenkaichi games, but a lot of that is for good reasons. Characters who slowed game-play by either being gigantic or couldn’t fly are nowhere to be seen, and although it’s sad to see them not be there, it improves combat greatly. Sometimes quality beats quantity. Another noticeable thing is that it is exclusive to DBZ characters, and the characters from Dragonball and DragonballGT aren’t there, including Super Saiyan 4 Goku and Vegeta. This is somewhat ironic considering the game series eliminated the Z in DBZ but only include DBZ characters. I don’t care to much for ninety percent of DBGT characters being in the game, but the Super Saiyan 4 characters where there since Budokai 3, so for me personally it’s weird they aren’t there. But I still have SS3 Vegeta and Broly, and I’m still psyched whenever I see them in the roster. Also there are a few new faces, and that’s the personally long anticipated Android 14 and 15, and the rest of Cooler’s men, who I personally really wanted. It’s still not really grand, but maybe it’s for the best. In the end the roster is solid, maybe a little bit lackluster to those who want more and more characters, but oh well. Also I want to talk about another lackluster thing, and that’s the stages. Raging Blast 2 has so many few stages it begs to get repetitive. Other unique stages like Inside Buu or Freiza’s Spaceship still haven’t been included, and at first it’s not a problem, but eventually it gets really old. But the thing that stops the stages from getting repetitive is the combat. I like all the DBZ combat, except maybe in DBZ sagas, but Raging Blast 2 is probably my favorite. With the improved graphics not to mention quick fun fighting it really is bad ass. The fighting isn’t super fast, but feels very edgy when going up against somebody strong. It’s better than a lot many traditional fighters, and the fact that it’s DBZ only makes it a million times better. You can assign super attacks, so now you can choose between more attacks rather than being restricted to selected ones like in the past. Although it’s awkward at first to Tenkaichi players, it’s more than worth it once you get going. But there are two small let downs. One, the explosions suck. I don’t know about you but when my Big Bang attack blew up planets, that was a lot more satisfying than practically nothing happening. Sure the environments like buildings break, but that’s a necessary thing for DBZ games. The explosions being undermined make the moves undermined, and ultimately not as satisfying as landing a super move in the old games. Also, the second let down for me personally, they went with the DBZ Kai voices… don’t fuck with my voices. Now when I choose Teen Gohan, and fight off Cell in Super Saiyan 2 form, my Gohan sounds more stupid than before. Sure before it was just Kid Goku’s voice, but that’s better than the winy voice I heard when I turned on this game. No offense to whatever his/her name is, but they don’t sound like Gohan. I know they aren't voice impersonators, they are voice actors and actresses, and aren't suppose to imitate their old voices, but that fucks with my nostalgia when that happens, but I guess this isn't something I can whine about to much. Before each matches the characters talk, this is actually really neat because you can see short interactions between characters who never spoke like Future Trunks and Kid Trunks, I like that. It gets you psyched before the match! But don’t use Kai voices! Anyway another great thing about this game is it’s in game collection. I mean the picture collection of course. After many matches in the Galaxy mode and other modes you get a picture from the anime. These seem small, but you know what it gives purpose for wasting all those hours with all the modes! I love the picture collection, and it’s up there with my favorite in-game collection of all time! I’m not nearly close to finishing, nor will I ever finish it, but I don’t care! Finally I’d like to talk about the dueling, and interactions with other people with the game. Now if you know me you’ll know I’m not a big multiplayer guy, I don’t even go online at all really. However, I did play some matches of this online, and it was a pretty fun time killer. I don’t know how much it works online but I do remember the matches were pretty short, and that was bad for how long it took from match to match. What you should do is bring people over to play Raging Blast 2. I played with my brother and some others, and it was pretty god damn fun. If you fight somebody who knows what he’s doing, than it really feels like a DBZ battle. In the end multiplayer is better with real people, but that’s how it is with all games to me. Anyway I did have a lot of fun with this game, I put it up with the best of DBZ games, and although it’s nothing new I still really like it, even with it’s disappointments. I haven’t played some of the new games since, but I think this one looks a little better than them. Raging Blast 2 could have been better, but it’s still a lot of fun. It’s not a full price thing, but I think it’s a good game for me to go back to over the years, so it’s still worth a high price to me.

Dragonball Raging Blast 2 gets a 4/5