Budokai 3 is the “peak” of the Budokai series of games, although some handheld versions and a sort-of reboot happened after they all had little issues that dragged them down to below this game. I was definitely excited about it at the time and I was looking forward to replaying it for this countdown and I can say it held up exactly like I knew it would, sadly didn’t exceed my expectations but thankfully didn’t drop in my estimation either. Want to know more? Let’s take a look!
Background:
This is the only game series that has “Inside Buu” as a stage, which makes sense, it wasn’t exactly super important to the plot or anything…
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 was released first in the US this time, on November 16th 2004, with the PAL territories getting it on December 3rd 2004 and Japan getting “Dragon Ball Z 3” on February 10th 2005, all exclusively for the PS2. The game was re-released with a “HD” upscale as part of the Budokai HD Collection for the PS3 and XBOX360 in November 2012. Like with the original game I didn’t own the HD collection but it doesn’t seem like it added much beyond the wider aspect ratio and some polished visuals.
The roster has all the Budokai 2 characters (minus the made up fusions and forms) plus brings Kid Gohan, first form Frieza and the earlier Cell forms back from the original game, but nobody else (sorry Dodoria, Zarbon and Android 19 fans!) Then it made the Saibamen and Cell Jr. playable after they were just non-playable opponents in the past and pushed the story right to the end of DBZ by adding kid Uub, making pretty much his only playable appearance in a fighting game. Then it was finally time to pull characters in from outside of Z as we got Kid Goku from Dragon Ball, Bardock, Cooler, Broly and Gogeta from the Z Films/TV Specials, and Ii-Shenron/Omega Shenron from GT, plus Vegeta and Goku got their Super Saiyan 4 transformations (as does Gogeta, for the record) from the same series. From here on out I’m pretty confident in saying no other fighter and very few DB games in general have been released that doesn’t include one of Bardock, Broly or Cooler, they’re sort of the go-to trio for content outside of the key series. It should also be said that both Mecha Frieza and Metal Cooler are in the game as well but as transformations for some reason, and ones not easy to pull of so I rarely, if ever, bothered…
Gameplay:
I remember thinking “Man, Sauza would be great in one of these games, shame he’s too low down to make it, at least his move is in this!” I would be proven wrong on that a few games later…
The core gameplay still has the same structure from the past two games in that it’s a 1 on 1 fighter that primarily uses the face buttons with a punch, kick, ki blast and block button assigned to each. Special moves are done by pressing a combination of the face buttons and sometimes a single direction push, and you can dodge left or right and fly into the air as well. The good thing about Budokai 3 is that they finally decided to add a bunch of new things to the gameplay system and improve others, like a constant nit-pick of mine has been how easy it is to lose a transformation because the Ki drops so quickly and once you take a strong hit with low ki you return to base form, but now every character has a set level of Ki and by transforming it ups the base level, plus transformations don’t drain Ki any more so while you still revert with a strong hit at low ki you’re less likely to be in that situation. It’s not perfect (and fusions are still a mini-game and a timer which this time will revert you back as soon as it runs out, so I rarely bothered with them…) but I’ll take it. You can now completely run out of Ki as well and become fatigued, forcing you to tap buttons to snap out of it as it leaves you vulnerable. They also added some little things like dodging an attack at the last second will do a teleporty dodge, which can also turn into the classic teleporting behind an opponent to attack (which they can do in turn, though not much more than that as it drains Ki…) plus they added a beam struggle mini-game when two beam attacks meet and both sides have to rotate their sticks and the person to fill up a bar first wins the encounter.
The biggest new addition though is “Hyper Mode”, which is activated by pressing L2. It gives your character a red aura, makes them immune to weaker attacks at the expense of no longer being able to block, and it lasts as long as you have Ki but when the Ki runs out and if you haven’t done one of two special things I’ll talk about in a sec then you enter the fatigue state I mentioned earlier and lose any transformations to boot. The main two reasons you’ll be entering Hype Mode though are the Ultimate attacks and Dragon Rush. The former is obvious, same as in the last game they’re very flashy and cinematic finishing moves that do a lot of damage though this time a timing-based minigame is played between both you and your opponent that if you fail could mean the move fails or is even reversed back towards you. Dragon Rush on the other hand is just nonsense, something I hated at the time and have not grown to appreciate with age. Every Rush is the same three part cut-scene cinematic but at each of the three stages you and your opponent each choose a face button to press, if you press the same one the attacker loses and that’s that, if the attacker and opponent hit different buttons the attack “wins” and continues to the next phase. It does pretty good damage as well, which means an attack that could swing the direction of a match could come down to not skill but a game of chance, so not only are you seeing the same cutscene over and over but upon seeing it you know gameplay and skill are now off the table and its down to random button presses…
Goku gets the advantage! … by pure luck. Hooray?
Returning from the previous games is the capsule system, which is always fun. Every character has a “tray” of seven slots where you can put capsules that contain moves, transformations, stat buffs and items that can do stull like restore your health or poison your opponent so their life slowly ticks away (a handy one for the harder fights) meaning you have to do some prioritising certain moves/forms with the buffs you need, once again with the exception of later when you can get a “breakthrough” capsule that gives you all the moves and transformations in one capsule. You get these from wishing with the Dragon Balls that you can collect during story mode, and you can also wish for “Memories of…” capsules that give you voice lines and such for each character, so something to go for after getting all the relevant stuff…
Speaking of story mode, this time round it’s called “Dragon Universe” and sees you pick one of eleven characters and run through their story from the show via an (understandably small and barren) open world map to fly around in and not only land to do fights based on battles from the show but also land and find items and Dragon Balls. It’s a very fun concept, both doing the story from the POV of the likes of Tenshinhan, Yamcha or even Uub rather than the usual lot, and just hovering in the air, searching out Ki or items and flying over and landing. Obviously in 2024 Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot has taken that concept and used modern technology to perfect it, but twenty years ago it was pretty cool to fly around the map. There are also hidden paths and secret missions that appear in repeated play throughs which has non-canon characters like Cooler and Broly appearing allowing you to unlock them, while on the other side you get bonus money or sometimes special voice clips if you faithfully recreate the events of the canon story, granting you a “Story reenactment” bonus. Overall it’s a fun mode, and actually sounds very similar to the story mode in the upcoming Sparking! Zero, minus the “flying around the world map” part.
Waggle those analogue sticks! (and try not to look at the blurry in-motion models!)
The new mode in the same vein as Babidi’s Spaceship from the last game is “Dragon Arena”, which is set at the Red Ribbon Army base complete with Commander Red (B3 loves its original DB!) and is unlocked by completing all the Dragon Universe modes. Basically you pick your character and level them up by fighting characters from a long list, the higher a level your opponent is to you the more EXP you gain. Simple. This is also where you can unlock some of the extra characters like Cell Jr. and the Saibamen as they can randomly “break in” in the middle of the mode and fight you. For an extra single player mode to give you something to aim for post-story it was fine, I know I tried to build up one fighter a lot as you could export them into the first Budokai Tenkaichi game, though it ended up barely counting (I swear that was a thing but I can’t see anything about it online…) Beyond that you have the same Tournament mode as last time, with three difficulty levels and a Cell Games mode, though this time with potential money modifiers thanks to “Sparking! Capsules”; your basic Duel mode (a.k.a. versus mode) which can be 2 player or vs. the CPU; and finally your Capsule Shop, where you can spend earned cash to get new Capsules and the like, this time the shop is ran by Lunch (both nice and angry), so yet more original DB stuff!
So yeah, it was an overall impressive package and even now it still holds up… mostly. Dragon Rush was bad back then, so I guess it’s safe to say “it hasn’t gotten any worse” anyway…
Graphics and Sound:
Always like a good bit of stage interaction, even if the idea of someone like SSJ4 Gogeta struggling against a dinosaur is rather nuts.
Graphics are good for the console, the same cel-shading as last time but with more impressive lighting, especially with auras and such.
Sound is good too, though like the last game the music was composed by noted plagiarist Kenji Yamamoto, so I don’t know if it’s a good thing it was good or not, but it was! Once again you’re stuck with the American dub unless you buy the Collector’s Edition or the Greatest Hits re-release, then you can switch to the Japanese voices (plus get some bonus costumes!) This becomes the norm from here on out, so hooray! Sound effects and such are ripped from the show or at the very least well imitated and do the trick nicely too.
As mentioned last time the game features another fully 2D animated intro with a new track by classic adrenaline-fuelled intro creator Hironobu Kageyama (here in the UK/Europe and Japan only) Pretty much the last of its kind. Well, Kageyama will return for intros, but the traditional animation side anyway…
Story:
Free flying across a map is always good fun in a Dragon Ball game.
As mentioned the story covers all of Z this time, the Saiyan, Frieza, Cell, Buu and End of Z stuff as well. There are What If’s including Cooler appearing on Namek with Frieza and Broly and Ii-Shenron being written into the Buu and End of Z arcs respectively, but they’re all text boxes and one-off fights, so not super exciting. It’s a great mode, but not much to write here!
Thoughts Then:
Always nice to see Goku’s original house represented! (in a screenshot I found online after I waffled on so much I needed an eighth image and couldn’t be bothered to set it all up again for one shot…)
Budokai 3 gave me everything I wanted in a Dragon Ball Z fighting game at the time as it built on top of the simple but fun Budokai 2 and gave the game some depth and added a really fun story mode and some characters that I never thought we’d see to boot (the idea I didn’t think they’d put movie villains in these games because of roster space… oh how wrong I’d end up being, even just on the PS2!) I played it right up until Tenkaichi’s release, but once that came out I knew which game type I liked my Dragon Ball games to be, and never really went back…
Thoughts Now:
Pretty much the only game where End of Z is actually part of the story, young Uub and all. (well, I guess the Kakarot DLC now, but hey-ho…)
Now it’s still a blast. The combat is easy to play and fun to master, single player modes are good and just in general package feels very complete. That being said the Budokai games now feel like they don’t fit any more as I prefer the Tenkaichi/Sparking! style for recreating the series and FighterZ has given me the perfect Dragon Ball 2D fighter, so this falls in the middle. Still a fun blast of nostalgia and still a perfectly good game, but I doubt I’ll be returning to it too often.
Hogan Reviews 