Dragonball Z: Extreme Butoden Review (3DS)
It’s nice to see Dragonball Z return to being a 2D fighter, especially since the fully 3D games haven’t sat too well with me, but is the 3DS the right home for it?
I can’t say handhelds are my go to platform for fighting games but Extreme Butoden makes a comfortable home on the 3DS with its accessible nature and its reliance on buttons rather than the D-Pad and analog stick. Don’t expect in-depth fighting mechanics that’ll blow your mind as you won’t find them here, but it’s satisfying to pull off bombastic moves simply for great results. With story, adventure, tournament and multiplayer modes, there’s plenty to do although the story mode is barebones and covers from the Saiyan Saga to the Buu Saga in only ten battles and minimal dialogue.
Story Mode covers most of the DBZ arcs quickly and when you’ve finished it in probably less than an hour, then you unlock a series of ‘what if’ stories focusing on different characters. These are pretty interesting and will give you a good few hours worth of gameplay, but Adventure Mode will likely appeal to more people with its mission-based gameplay and vast content. You travel around different areas on the world map and have to win battles whilst clearing set goals such as finishing your enemy off with a specific attack. Adventure Mode packs a whole lot more missions than the stories do but it won’t appeal to those that may become bored with the simple combat system.
Developed by Arc System Works, the developers behind the Persona Arena games and BlazBlue, are one of the finest fighting game developers around and their skill shows here although it might be on the smallest scale they’ve ever done. It’s as easy as mashing Y to do an auto combo, X for strong attacks and A for character specific attacks, with specials being activated by holding down L and one of the above buttons. DBZ has a huge fanbase and the ease of accessibility is welcome but as someone who’s fond of fighting games and has a lot of experience in them, I found myself getting bored rather quickly.
Sadly, there’s quite little to say about the gameplay due to its simplicity and I found that Extreme Butoden excelled where visuals were concerned – the sprites are fantastic. There aren’t half as many characters as there are in many of the other DBZ games, with many slots being filled by Super Saiyan versions of some characters, and so whilst it’s a shame to see so many characters omitted, it would seem that the effort went into the sprite work instead. There’s a decent handful of stages from memorable parts of the series though such as Supreme Kai’s World and Snake Way and due to being able to fly, the stages stretch out to be rather large!
Extreme Butoden isn’t very extreme when it comes to audio, with no English Dub being available (which is a shame considering how great it is) but very little dialogue is spoken anyway. There aren’t any memorable tracks from the anime making an appearance either and the music feels a little flat and doesn’t get me hyped like DBZ usually does. It seems that the Japanese voice-cast returned which I’m thankful for though, although the absence of the English voice-cast is sorely missed. Sound effects are pleasant even though the 3DS isn’t quite the best system for explosive and loud noises, but they all sound legitimately DBZ.
The small roster and simple combat will be a dealbreaker for many where only the main of the main characters are playable and fights are easily won by mashing Y – obviously this is different for when it comes to multiplayer but there’s no hugely in-depth mechanics to learn and so it becomes less of a battle of skill although there’s an emphasis on timing in return. Extreme Butoden is scarce on content and I don’t think the £24.99 price is fully justified but I’d love to see Arc System Works work on a sequel that comes with an abundance of playable characters and a more fleshed-out story mode (and an original one). As it stands it’s hard to fully recommend but it’s likely that big fans of DBZ will find a lot to enjoy here regardless.
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