DBZ: Kakarot is one of the more faithful adaptations we’ve ever received of Toriyama’s shonen classic. That’s why despite fans having experienced this several times before, they still checked in for this game.
But there’s plenty in this game, which spans a potential thirty or forty hours just for story mode alone, without all the side content like training and story development for characters from the original Dragon Ball. It’s easy to miss some pretty cool parts to the game, but this list will take a look at some of the things people either missed or were unaware was in the game, from tricks to level up your Soul Emblem to inserted memes everyone loves.
10 INSTANT VICTORIES
This isn’t something the game will tell you about, so you’ll have to figure it out on accident or by looking it up elsewhere. The DBZ: Kakarot map is absolutely filled with random enemies from Saibaman to Frieza’s goons to so, so many Red Ribbon robots. It’ll get old facing them, especially when this won’t be a primary method of gaining XP. Players can outspeed them by moving as fast as possible, but if they hit one of them head on?
They’ll instantly take them out, resulting in a gain of the same experience AND orbs as if they hadn’t. The enemy can’t be your level or higher and you can’t be chased by other enemies when this happens. Doing this 50 times will eventually unlock the “Can’t Touch This” trophy.
9 BLOWING UP MOUNTAINS
Though it’s not a permanent change to the topography, by now people are aware that flying around at maximum speed will destroy pieces to the environment. It’s something most people have no doubt tried numerous times before in an effort to resemble the anime as much as possible.
But there’s a bigger purpose to it than that—often, some key minerals and resources are hidden in caves behind certain boulders. Some side quests can’t even be completed without obliterating small mountains. And doing it often enough will reward the player with two trophies: “Demolition Artist” and “Excavator”.
8 HIGH LEVEL COMBOS
It can’t be under-stated how broken Rapid Fire Ki Blasts are. Though they rarely did any damage in the series, in the game they hit just frequently enough to take off decent chunks of health. Even better?
They can be chained together, as long as the player has enough ki. Each time a combo can hit for 30 blows, meaning chaining two of them together will get things towards 100 hit combos, guaranteeing an S rank there, making it easy to S rank even the toughest boss fights.
7 ULTIMATE AWAKENING WATER
This is a little trick Bandai Namco hopefully won’t patch out because it’s all too helpful. Leveling up the different Soul Emblems players get can be a real hassle, especially as even doing a bunch of side quests it can take forever to max out all the different aspects they have.
But there’s a wind tunnel near Gingertown that will offer the only gift the player needs: Ultimate Awakening Water. It offers +8 to all attributes and +20 to their friendship level. Fly through the tunnel, fly back to its entrance, then save the game. Re-load the game, fly through the tunnel again. Rinse and repeat to gain an infinite number of Ultimate Awakening Waters.
6 THE COMMUNITY BOARD
Players are introduced to the community board, but it’s something they only spend a brief amount of time in. This is unfortunate as the board can affect how long meal bonuses last, the amount of XP gained after each fight, and even how expensive items are at shops.
Every Soul Emblem has multiple different combinations with other Soul Emblems in the game: these can be checked by looking at an individual Soul Emblem while leveling it up. Collecting as many of these as possible will make the game that much simpler for players.
5 YAMCHA GETS YAMCHA'D
In the sub-story One Cool Dude, Bandai shows their awareness of how Yamcha is viewed in the community once again. During the first major intermission before Frieza comes to Earth and after Namek, Gohan can take on this sub-story that involves helping Yamcha. The former thief winds up getting caught by two women who notice he’s been two-timing them, and as a result they attack him with some giant robots.
Gohan and Yamcha fight the robots off and this almost makes them like him again, only for a robot to grab him, self destructing and leaving him...well. This is an easy storyline to miss, but worth every second.
4 TIME MACHINE
One of the things looked to be added is the ability to use Trunks’ time machine. This helps out for those who hadn’t had the chance to beat all the sub-stories during each individual quest.
With Trunks’ time machine, they can go back to any previous saga without restarting the game, giving them the chance to beat all those missions one might have skipped over in their hurry to beat every DBZ villain. This can be done doing a brand new DLC quest featuring Arale and Gatchan, two characters from Akira Toriyama’s previous comedy series, Dr. Slump!
3 CHECKING THE Z ENCYCLOPEDIA
If you never look at the encyclopedia, it’s easy to miss this. There’s no reason to ever check it and you aren’t really prompted, but there’s plenty of information within it. Not only are the cutscenes for previous missions there, but they’ve got things like BGMs, a proper bestiary, plus a giant map explaining how every character matters to another.
The best part though is that opening the Z Encyclopedia will give you rewards based on how much you complete in the game.
2 BEAM STRUGGLES
This one can be easy to miss depending on how you fight. It never has to happen, because it’s got such a unique trigger. In the middle of battle, the player can make a beam struggle happen by getting off a long-range beam attack at the same time as their opponent. When they’re charging up to do theirs, simply do yours at the same time and you’ll wind up locked into something where you’ll button mash as fast/hard as possible to win, dealing damage while protecting your character.
This will be particularly obvious as it’ll tell you where their beam is going usually. There’s no reason to do this—in fact, it makes more sense to simply dodge their beam and respond with your own. This is simply about creating a gaming experience that feels like Dragon Ball Z.
1 SUPER SAIYAN FULL POWER
One of the things mentioned about the transformations in this game is that they increase the amount of damage dealt, but they also drain your ki at a faster rate. That said, the whole point of Gohan and Goku going into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber was to master Super Saiyan, figuring out how to maintain it without constantly bleeding energy.
The game was clearly programmed for this, as during the Cell Games both Goku and Gohan aren’t losing energy at all while they remain in their SS state.