We’re technically jumping quite a bit ahead here, as the entire Budokai Tenkaichi (or “Sparking!”) games were released in between Budokai 3 and this game, plus the first 7th Generation game and true spiritual successor to the Budokai series in “Burst Limit” as well. This game was essentially a “make good” to people who hadn’t been able to jump to the next generation and were still on the PS2 and as such it feels very much like Budokai 3 with extra bits, and therefore it made just too much sense to have it follow on the Budokai trilogy in this set of four reviews rather than reviewing it all the way down the list. So is “Infinite World” really just Budokai 3 with extra bits or is it worth tracking down? Let’s take a look!
Background:
Not joking or anything, I would’ve loved to have seen Super 17 in the original Budokai games. Always had a soft spot for that arc, as undeniably bad as it is…
Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World was released exclusively on the PS2 on November 4th 2008 in America, December 4th 2008 in Japan and December 5th 2008 in Europe. As mentioned it was released to give fans who didn’t have access to an XBOX 360 or PS3 a new DBZ game for Christmas, reusing a good majority of Budokai 3’s framework to do it.
Roster-wise it’s essentially Budokai 3’s roster with four characters removed and then seven new characters added, removing Kid Goku, Supreme Kai, Uub and Cell Jr., while the new characters are Pikkon and Janemba (who were already essentially done in the Shin Budokai PSP games…) and GT characters Baby, Pan, and Super 17 along with GT versions of Goku and Vegeta, the latter being one of his few non-Super Saiyan 4-only appearances. I’m not sure what the reasoning was for the removals, given how many characters were in Tenkaichi 3 it’s not a hardware issue, so I imagine it’s a limitation of the Budokai engine itself.
Gameplay:
Frieza about to hit an arm drag on Super Saiyan Goku.
As mentioned more than once already, the fundamentals of the game are the same as Budokai 3, so everyone has a punch, kick, Ki blast and block button, its easy to do a simple string of strikes and some specific strings with cause you to do Special Moves. There are several attacks that will end in the same rock-paper-scissors mini games / cutscenes as before, locking your success behind random chance which is always a big no-no for anything like this, and when you enter “Hyper Mode” not only can you do more damage and such but you can do your Ultimate move, though how successful / powerful the move is will be down to how well you can do a yet another mini-game. You can pick and choose what moves/transformations your character has by unlocking or buying “Capsules”, with each character only having a certain amount of spots for Capsules, adding a tiny bit of strategy to the movesets. There are also Capsules that can give you more health, stronger attacks, more Ki that sort of thing, and unlike the Budokai trilogy you can actually stack multiple of the same ones to get a bigger buff. The biggest issue with Infinite World though is it adds the stamina system from Shin Budokai, where if you run out of Ki your character stops and catches his breath, leaving them open. This is pretty poorly implemented given the other systems in place and can leave you at the mercy of the AI on more than one occasion.
Baby-Vegeta mid-Big Bang Attack, that’s actually a Final Flash if the game done it correctly…
Actually, that’s the main issue with Infinite World I and many other have had with it: it’s too damn hard. This isn’t a “get good” situation, it’s extremely unfairly balanced in the AI’s favour and some story mode missions are downright evil, requiring such a high skill level and good luck to win that I don’t know why anyone would bother. The creators said something like they assumed it would only be played by Budokai veterans, which is an odd idea to begin with, but even if that’s so create a new difficulty level called “Veteran” or something, don’t make the default crazy hard, especially as a lot of us were returning to the Budokai engine after years away… Oh well. That’s the combat, but what about modes? Well, the main story mode is called “Dragon Mission” and allows you to travel across a map sort-of reminiscent of the board games from Budokai 2 and take part in both battles and tonnes of mini-games. Some of them remind me of the single mini-game from Budokai 1, where you had to move Raditz into the firing line of Piccolo’s attack, but a lot of them are Superman 64 levels of dull (but thankfully not to control at least!) blasts Ki attacks in first person, dodge Ki attacks fired at you from first-person, run across a barren and jagged landscapes and jump through the required amont of hexagons before the time runs out, and more… they’re just not very fun, and given the actual combat is often not very fun it makes for a real slog of a mode.
You can also unlock “Fighter’s Road” when you complete the Story Mode (or more like IF you somehow manage to complete the story mode…) but that’s just reusing the maps from “Dragon Mission” but you just fight opponents one after the other and then get Zeni depending on how many battles you win in a row. Other than that it’s just a versus mode, a practice mode and a Store to use Zeni to buy new Capsules. So it may have among the most detailed story modes in any DBZ fighter but boy is it ever dull and frustrating as hell to play.
Graphics and Sound:
Raditz runs out of stamina, the only reason he wouldn’t be able to beat Super Saiyan GT Vegeta, clearly.
The graphics are … fine, I guess. They’re obviously essentially the Budokai 3 models and by this time they were old hat compared to the Tenkaichi 3 models as well as having to unfairly compete with the Burst Limit models, due to its very similar engine and the timing of release. So even at the time for a PS2 game it looked rough, but it was made worse by the other games surrounding it.
Sound-wise though it’s fine, both English and Japanese voice tracks are here from the off this time (that had become standard from Tenkaichi 1 to be fair) and the soundtrack was good too.
Story:
I mean, he’s quite strong in the grand scheme of things, I guess…
Not really anything to say here, as there aren’t really any “What If?” stories here, instead a very detailed retelling of Z and chunks of GT. Having said that, maybe there are some What Ifs, I’ve never gotten very far in the “Dragon Mission” mode…
Thoughts Then:
First-person Piccolo zapping, only in Infinite World!
I brought it a while after Burst Limit had already become boring, finding it in a random shop extremely cheap and going “Why not? I have all the other DBZ games on the PS2…” and then proceeded to play it for a few hours, get bored/frustrated with it and then not really play it again. Oh well, it wasn’t aimed at me anyway, I actually had a 360 at this point, but still, it could’ve hooked me, it’s not like I’d already boxed by PS2 up or anything (far from it!) but it just wasn’t very good in several different ways.
Thoughts Now:
I already used the “I wanted Sauza in the game but was happy to see Coola have this move” story, haven’t I? Oh well, by this point he’d already been in two games anyway!
Funnily enough, not a lot has changed. I can’t say it’s a bad game, but if I’m going to play a Budokai game for nostalgia’s sake I’m going to pick B3, both because it’s more forgiving and I actually played it enough for it to be nostalgic in the first place. If you’re doing a run through of the PS2 era Budokai games and end of this you might enjoy it as a “final challenge” but even then you’ll have to put up with the naff mini-games and poorly implemented stamina system… Basically, not recommended.
Hogan Reviews 