No Vegeta, No Super Sayians, No Z, No problem
Written: Jan 09 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: an enjoyable platforming romp with lots of extras
Cons: a button mashing figthing system for the tornaments
The Bottom Line: Nothing like beating up enemies with a power pole
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| tommy_lop's Full Review: Dragon Ball Advance Adventure for Game Boy Advance... |
I got Dragon Ball Advance Adventures when I saw it in the good old bargin bin a month ago and since I had a short trip ahead of me decided to pick it up. I had heard good things about it and after all the DBZ games it’s nice to see a game that picks up on aspects of the original DB series. What’s the difference between Dragon Ball and DBZ well DBZ has Goku has an adult and it’s more about super power fights and blowing things up, the original DB followed Goku’s adventure has a kid and the series is more of a fantasy adventure romp with wacky martial arts thrown in.
Story
DB Advance Adventures follows the story of the series. Basically a young boy with a monkey tail and super strength named Goku is found by a teenaged girl named Bulma living alone in the mountains. Bulma is looking for Dragonballs and Goku just happens to own one so she asks him to come along so she can use his dragon ball to grant her wish for a new boy friend. The game then follows cliff notes of the series up to half way through the king piccolo fight, it doesn’t show Goku’s fight against Piccclo JR but that’s kind of understandable has that would mean the creators would have had to create and use sprites for Goku’s adult form for just one stage. Also the game cuts out a lot of other story elements and characters all together gone from the Dragon Ball story are Chi Chi and Launch and they are sorely missed by this Dragon Ball fan.
Graphics.
The graphics in Dragon Ball adventures by no mean push the GBA to it’s limit but they get the look of the original series. The character art is fairly simple but gets the job doen but the back grounds are amazing. Looking at the background for areas like the first stage perfectly represent the mountains around Goku’s house. The game graphics are just flowing with character.
Sound.
The music is fine if nothing really spectacular. There are VA’s are from the funimation dub of the series and they sound pretty good even though all the speech you hear are just short clips.
Gameplay.
The game play is rather simplistic and the game is done in a linear order you. Travel around a linear map with each area a part of an arc of the original Dragon ball. You have things like Pilafs castle and red ribbon army muscle tower. Each area you have to go through plays just like a linear platforming stage. To get past enemies you have to run up to them and beat them up with the B button a couple of hits and the standard ones go down. But if you have a lot of enemies to deal with you can smack them with your power pole by pressing the L button. You can also charge up a Kamahamea wave by holding down the R button.
The controls in the game are smooth and the stage design is pretty good so even though the game play is kind of basic the game comes off has fairly entertaining. The only time the game really falls flat is during the tournament stages. In the story of Dragon Ball Goku enters the world martial arts tournament 2 times (ok so in the real series it was 3 but the 3rd involved an adult Goku so it was cut). During these stages it goes into a street fighter one on one type system, problem is it’s pretty much button bashing. Once you beat an opponents guard all you really need to do is remember to press up and B on the final punch of your combo to send them air born to do additional damage and stun them for a while when they hit the ground. Then you can charge up a kamahamea wave for extra damage and then repeat the process. It wouldn’t be to bad but Atari went the extra step in put in multiplayer for this crappy mini game, oh well at least these moments are to quick to be really painful but if they went through the trouble of creating an actual fighting game in the middle of this game it would have been nice to have seen some thought put into it.
Of course that’s not to say all the games extras are bad, for one thing in each stage Goku can find magic pots that increase his abilities giving it a bit of an RPG. He can increase his power pole for extra damage when he combos, his health, and his special move bar. When he fills his special move bar to the max and released the final version of the Khamaeha wave you hear a small voice clip of him shouting the move. Plenty to look for in this game but that’s not all. Once Goku is done with his quest you can replay the stages has Krillian the difference is that Krillian has a bigger jump then Goku but he can’t finish combos using the power pole so he doesn’t have has a strong finishing move. His special ability with L isn’t the power pole but rather the solar flare (yes purist I know he doesn’t use that move in the original series and it originally belong to Tien) which stuns all enemies on screen temporarily.
Of course that’s not all there are 3 mini games that can be unlocked and an extra mode where the courses have more secrets to be found including dragon balls which can be used to unlock a whole grab bag of goodies.
Final Recommendation.
There are 3 things I like about this game, it has lots of stuff, it’s an enjoyable platformer, and it’s nice to see a game following the original dragon ball story line. While the game is not perfect it’s fun and enjoyable and any dragonball fan or fans of action platformer will get there money worth now that it can be found for less then 20 bucks.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
tommy_lop
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Member: tommy
Reviews written: 962
Trusted by: 119 members
About Me:
Ran over a grandma, punched a kid, and still diden't get a PS3. (just kidding.)
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