The renowned Dragon Ball series and its incarnates, ranging from Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball GT and eventually onto Dragon Ball Z, have been one of the more popular anime cartoons over the past few years and has spawned more than a couple of games in its life span. The latest entry in the DBZ franchise is a slick and polished fighter brought to you by Crafts & Meister, the producers of the infamous Street Fighter II, which tries to reach back to the glory days of fighters, allowing you to take the guise of one of 18 fighters to beat the holy snot out of the others that get in your way on your way to fighting supremacy.

The game features a total of a meager 4 fighting modes; Original, which allows you to fight against seven opponents, one after another in rounds of three, on your quest to retrieve each of the seven Dragon Balls. Survival mode allows you to fight an onslaught of enemies, one after another while you recover no health after every battle, but does reward you for the distance you go. Training Mode is just as it sounds and allows you to practice the moves of each fighter, where as Versus mode lets you redirect the pain away from the AI opponents and lets you place the beating on one of your friends instead. In Super Dragon Ball, you also have the ability to create a character of your own. You can name it as you choose and are able to buy skills and stats for it using experience points you gain from battles. After each run through the Original mode and you have seven dragon balls in your possession, you will be given the chance to summon the Dragon Shenron. When you do this, you are able to gain new abilities, such as attack moves and unlock other characters to use to play through the game.

Once you get down to business and are ready to rumble, Dragon Ball has some remarkable battle grounds to romp around. Each environment you find yourself doing battle in is vast in size and includes destructible surroundings, which puts a giggle in your game as you toss your opponents through them. Arenas are large enough to make a break from your opponent and back off at a distance when you need to as well as letting you take the battle to the air for a limited amount of time.

Those familiar with the Dragon Ball series will recognize the characters that you are able to choose from. Goku, Piccolo, Vegeta, Cell and the Androids all make appearances and are available to fight with, each with their own moves and special attacks. The fighting style found in SDBZ is reminiscent of the old school fighters, such as Street fighter II, but just not quite enough to make you nostalgic. The controls for special moves are very similar – half circles and back/forward - but jumping and blocking requires, for some odd reason, button presses. Not being able to press up to jump or back to block makes the controls more perplexing then they really need to be when you have enough buttons to press for light and heavy strikes and other attacks like grabs and dashes, as well as homing attacks. As you land hits on your opponent, your Ultimate Gauge fills up and allows you to pull off some stunning special attacks, both damage wise and visually.

Super Dragon Ball Z boasts some pretty impressive graphics with its 3D cel shading style and it really makes the game feel as though you are playing a cartoon as much as watching one. It truly is a beautiful looking game although the environments really could have used a skyline backdrop to complete them and not just a curtain of color. The style of the game is slick and smooth, as are the animations of each of the fighters as they spring and strike their way through round after round and their encounters are a feast for the eyes. Unfortunately for SDBZ, fighting games need more than pretty graphics to make the experience an all around enjoyable one. The gameplay is very much on the shallow side and it could have used plenty of more features, such as game types, as would have a longer story mode. As well, after all your hard work of putting a beating on the tiny toons, it would have been nice to see some cut scenes or short explanations between rounds instead of just being thrust into battle after battle.

Once all is said and done, Super Dragon Ball Z is one gorgeous looking game and would be hard to find a 3D fighter with a more pleasing style anywhere else but there just isn’t enough meat found in the game to sink your teeth into and keep it playable over and over. Obviously enthusiasts of Dragon Ball will have a different outlook on the game than those unfamiliar with the series will, so it would be wise that if you aren’t a fan of the series, you should look for a fighter with more depth elsewhere. If you are a Dragon Ball fanatic, you won’t find a better looking DBZ game anywhere else and with the large battle grounds and familiar characters, you should definitely give it a run through.

Review by Jeff "Judasen" McAllister - courtesy of Gameshark.com