The incredible improvement on load times alone (Budokai 2 loads about 3 times faster than Budokai 1) should be enough to excite its fanbase right out of the gate. Let alone its more balanced damage system, increased character roster, and better production values.
This was a huge improvement over the first one, with more characters and special moves, great graphics and sound, great controls, and a fantastic story mode and multiplayer and tournament modes, cool ways to customize your character and fantastic environments to fight in, make this a game that's easy to learn but difficult to master, add high re-play value, and you've got yourself a fighter that will keep you entertained for many hours still today.
The sequel raises the bar in the amount of things included, but the awkward use of Dragon Worlds and the Story Mode, not to mention the choppy and average fighting engine, makes this game a fan-only affair.
Improves on the original in almost every respect, from an enhanced presentation to superior controls and a broader set of skills. However, the fighting mechanics are still a little simple and the ability system is too restrictive, which makes the game feel rather shallow.
The fighting system is fairly shallow, and once you become callous to the flashy moves and explosive pyrotechnics, the action starts to feel repetitive. [Jan 2004, p.56]
Takes the shallow one-on-one fighting action of its predecessor and repackages it with essentially no noteworthy enhancements to the fighting engine or visuals... Disappointing. [Dec 2003, p.82]
Good fighting game for ps2 with a change in his art style making it more cartoon than the previous one. This new ´parchis´ story mode is not bad too. Very nice.
This is the first Dragon Ball game that i played and it was funny and entertaining, with some changes from the anime like Buu absorbing Freezer or Cell.
An overall pretty decent game. I'll break my review down just to look at a few major areas:
-General Gameplay: Simple but pretty fun. Simplification in activating some special attacks compared to Budokai 1 which makes using some moves easier, so you'll get to use all your favourites from the show. Also new interactive elements in fighting including button combos to power up certain moves makes the gameplay more engaging. Overall it's a solid Mortal Kombat-esque fighting game of its time.
-Graphics/Audio: BIG improvement on the plastic-looking Budokai 1 character models, with cel-shaded graphics making them look way better. The use of Finnish band Stratovarius' music for the soundtrack without consent may have made the gamemakers infamous, but the songs are pretty good :) Also all releases for an anglophone audience feature the voices of the cast from the Funimation dub of the show, which is a great improvement for fans.
-Story Mode: Probably the best remembered feature of this game, it's quirky and generally divisive. The story mode is set up like a board game where you move your characters around as pieces on the board, collecting power-ups and battling opponents. A disproportianate amount of the story mode focuses on the Buu Saga, and they play it pretty fast and loose with the story from the actual TV show/manga, which is a bit of a disappointment. Some bits aren't especially self-explanatory either, e.g. collection of the Dragon Balls, which I had no idea how to do as a kid playing it. But it's still fairly fun anyway, and has quite a lot of replay value as you'll need to complete it several times to unlock everything- different characters, moves and extras are unlocked by fulfilling specific scenarios and beating certain villains with certain heroes, and some can only be unlocked with wishes with the Dragon Balls.
-Other Modes: What you'd expect. There's a versus mode where you can battle other players or the computer, likewise on World Tournament mode. Some extras can be unlocked here too. There's also a Capsule Shop like on Budokai 1 where you can buy capsules containing attacks, transformations and items for characters (money can be found in Story Mode or won at the World Tournament.) There's also a tutorial/practice mode, and a hidden mode called Babidi's Spaceship which you can get from Shenron, and which also is needed to unlock some extras.
-Character Roster: 29 characters which is pretty good. Disappointingly some characters like Android 19, Kid Gohan and Zarbon don't return from Budokai 1, and Cell and Frieza don't have any of their early forms. But on the other hand there's plenty from the Buu Saga, including all of Buu's forms and new fusion characters. A lot of the character moves are admittedly fairly generic, but most have at least some unique or signature moves to keep it a bit more true to the show rather than just another beat-em-up.
Overall, if you want a game that stays very true to the DBZ story or dislike games where you need to go off-topic to collect extras along the way, this game will probably disappoint you, but in general it's a fun fighting game with plenty for the fans on top.
In my opinion this game is better then the first one. I know dargonworld is kinda stupid. But it had the boo saga which Budokai 1 didn't had. It also has more Characters and better Gameplay. But the Graphics even for 2004 it looks weird and strange also how i already mentiont the story mode ****
I love DBZ, really...I'm a huge DBZ fan. But..seriously. WHAT THE HECK WAS AKIRA THINKING?! The controls are **** not near perfect. The gameplay and story is horrible. The **** mean...I'm a 2008-era child, but this was a horrible game all in all. I mean...2008-era people are supposed to be all about great graphics and other ****, this game has it's name in dirt. Even the first one ****. Seriously, wanna play a good DBZ game..there are 2 (in my opinion): DBZ Devolution and DBZ Battle of Z. Just saying, you might want this game to die in the dirt later on. Overall, I give this game a 2.5.
SummaryThe time has come to go beyond the Dragon Ball Z sagas and experience the full force of the most powerful fighters in the universe. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 will challenge players like no other DBZ game before. Begin with an all-new single player "Dragon World" that opens the story to new match-ups, surprising character appearances, and ...