The Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series has made it a mission to illustrate just how manga-accurate a fighting game that represents this legendary franchise should be. With the first game coming out in 2005, the series has come a long way since then.
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 4 looks like a promising entry that will live up to fans’ expectations and desires for a long-awaited sequel to the last game. Although the video game seems like it’ll deliver graphically, we want to see some features of the prequels make a comeback.
10 Tight Cinematics And Controls
Nothing is as satisfying as overcoming the learning curve that comes with the combat system in a Budokai Tenkaichi game. The formula that Bandai Namco perfected in BT3 is still nostalgia-inducing for most fans of the franchise who’ve even played other games like Dragon Ball Z: Fighters, for instance.
With the camera focused on the back of your characters and surprisingly quick zoom-ins every time they launch a Ki attack, the payoff was surprisingly clean and innovative. That coupled with the intuitive controls elevated the gameplay beyond what any other fighting game had to offer at the time.
9 Loading Screen Mini-Games
One of the quirkiest things this series came up with was introducing the fanbase to unique mini-games that helped them pass the time while the game loaded in all the assets. Tapping away at the controller made these mini-games rather engaging, and they’d be perfect for the sequel.
They featured all sorts of different characters from the series doing tasks or activities the fans remember fondly. One of the best ones was Gohan pulling out the Z-swords and Vegeta doing as many push-ups as he could.
8 A Giant Roster
One of the best parts of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 was the immense roster. The character line-up featured all sorts of individuals from the entire series, from Dragon Ball to Dragon Ball GT.
Now that the anime series has come this far, we can expect Budokai Tenkaichi 4 to feature all sorts of new characters from both Dragon Ball Super and Dragon Ball: Heroes. Let’s just hope they offer the entire roster on release, rather than make us pay for DLCs.
7 Mini Games
Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World definitely had some major flaws to contend with, but the variety of mini-games this title featured were endearing and timeless for most fans of the series. They’d be an excellent addition to the newest Budokai Tenkaichi game.
Chasing after Bubbles on King Kai’s Planet, and the Tien Tri-beam Cannon mini-game with Imperfect Cell are perfect examples of iconic Dragon Ball moments interpreted right. Although tedious, even the Snake Way and Escaping Namek sequences were surprisingly fun.
6 A Detailed World Map
With an overworld that contributed to the overall story mode, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 featured some solid gameplay with its own unique flavor. The interactive maps, traveling with other characters, and the scope of the world made it a very immersive experience.
Unfortunately, the devs opted out of implementing a world map for the sequel and that really crippled the narrative focus of the story mode for BT 3. BT 4 definitely deserves its own map for its story mode, since the game has a lot of expectations to live up to already, especially with Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot showing us what it was capable of.
5 Ultimate Battle Game Modes
One unique feature Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and 3 offered you was the chance to tackle some impeccably hard missions, depending on the difficulty you wanted to tackle head-on. Z-level difficulty bots were capable of taking on any pro.
These were missions that pitted you against some truly evil AI that was capable of beating you with unique ways to use the game combos against you. Having the androids host the mode made it all the more thrilling, as it felt like you were training to beat Goku yourself.
4 The What If Sagas
Having something to distract us from the main Dragon Ball storyline is a refreshing respite from reliving the story repeatedly through all the different video game releases. The what-if sagas featured stories the developers cooked up to make things a lot more interesting.
With so many new characters and arcs, Budokai Tenkaichi 4 could potentially be a treasure trove of new engaging stories that keep fans hooked to the game. Featuring content from Dragon Ball: Heroes would be a huge plus, in this case.
3 The Detailed Destructible Stages
Whether fighting in a village on Namek, near Frieza’s ship, above the skyscrapers in West City, or on the World Martial Arts Tournament Stage, this game series delivered action-packed maps that felt like real-world places. The buildings and landmarks were destructible, and that really helped build up an immersive atmosphere during combat.
Budokai Tenkaichi 2 featured buildings in the story mode that housed a dragon ball, only to be found upon the landmark's destruction. This incentivized players to explore the area in more detail and appreciate the effort put into realizing these anime series-inspired places.
2 Team Battles
What’s better than having the chance to play with a whole team of super-powered individuals? Getting to switch between them during combat. The Budokai Tenkaichi series didn’t hesitate to pull out all the stops and deliver a game that’s action-packed.
This rings especially true for Budokai Tenkaichi 3 and its huge character roster. With the ability to play 5v5 matches, you wouldn’t feel bored anytime soon building your own team of heroes and villains alike.
1 Evolution Z
Getting to customize your character and give them additional attributes or abilities was a nice break from the action and story that these games had to offer. The Zeni you’d accumulate from all the battling was put to good use, by purchasing power-ups for your favorite character.
You could potentially make an overpowered enemy that would dominate anyone playing against it. Some Z items even granted the characters a significant health buff and super armor. This feature would be a beneficial addition to the sequel and a great way to increase bot difficulty.