Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot Review

I’m confident that every American of my generation and their parents know about Dragon Ball Z. For those of you who don’t know, Dragon Ball Z is an anime telling the story of Goku. Goku is a simpleton with one goal in life: to fight the strongest opponents he can find. Goku is able to accomplish this goal, fighting shape-shifting aliens and murderous robots, thanks to the powers of friendship, believing in himself, and being born to a genetically superior race. That’s right, Goku is no puny human, he belongs to the Saiyan race and his birth name is actually Kakarot, a race of aliens that look almost identical to humans but have the ability to improve exponentially from working out and fighting. They basically have protein powder for blood. I loved Dragon Ball Z when I was a kid, and love it still in spite of all of the problems I see in it now, so when BANDAI NAMCO released Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot last week I was pretty excited to check it out. Sadly, I had set my hopes too high.

In Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, players step into the shoes of Goku and his friends, experiencing an abbreviated version of the show’s plot along with some non-canonical side missions and a variety of activities in a series of open world-ish areas. The main goal is to help Goku and his friends get ever stronger and there are several ways to do that. The first method players are introduced to is the gathering of items called “Z orbs,” which are used to upgrade existing skills and acquire new skills. Second, and likely the most obvious, is fighting enemies. After each battle, the player receives experience points that level up Goku and his friends, increasing their stats. Similar to fighting is training, where players face off against specific challenges to unlock new abilities. Fourth is what I consider to be the “most anime” way to level up, by making friends. The last, and most hilarious, way to grow stronger is eating. This quintuple-front approach to progress is what originally had me very excited about this game, unfortunately, the majority are terrible and really drag the game down.

Amazingly, in a game based on a series all about fighting, the fighting in Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is miserable. Everything in a fight, save for the flashy Super Moves, is controlled by a single button and there’s no technique to it, players just mash the same button over and over until the enemy retaliates with one of two kinds of nonsense. There are also Super Moves which players activate by holding down a button to open a menu of four options and choosing one by pressing one of the four corresponding buttons listed. The first brand of nonsense can be performed by any enemy and is signified by the enemy glowing red. While glowing, enemies enter a state where they can be damaged, but any knock-down, stunning, or any other sort of state-altering condition is completely ignored. Eventually, the glow will stop and the enemy will unleash a harsh blow that will interrupt whatever the player is doing. This frustrated me because it made me feel like I wasn’t fighting with my enemy, just fighting at them. This state removed interactivity from the brawl and severely disrupted the flow of combat. The second kind of nonsense can only be done by special boss enemies and is a bit like the first, but even worse. Instead of adopting a player-ignoring stance, the game will show a two-second movie of the villain doing some elaborate motion which nullifies any incoming player attacks, then the game’s camera will switch from a third-person behind-the-back angle to a completely useless bird’s-eye view where players have to avoid unpredictable attacks coming from off screen. This almost always did a lot of damage to me, but not because the villain was stronger or better than me, but because they’d turned the game itself against me. On top of the boring controls and disrupted nonsense, the combat is also a tedious chore thanks to every area being littered with roaming baddies who are itching for a fight, so players have to do quite a lot of fighting as they go about the game.

With fighting and training both based on the same frustrating system, that’s two of the five main mechanics in the pits. The third to join them is collecting Z orbs. There are six different kinds of Z orbs: blue, red, green, rainbow, silver, and gold. Blue, red, and green Z orbs can be found by wandering around the world and picking them up one at a time, or getting hundreds, if not thousands, of them in any given fight, making me wonder why they’re out in the world in the first place. Rainbow Z orbs can be obtained the same way, though in greatly diminished quantity. Silver and gold Z orbs can only be obtained by fighting especially powerful enemies, known as villainous enemies. Two or three of these dangerous foes can be found in every area of the game and more regularly appear. It doesn’t make sense to me why there are six varieties, I think there could have been only three and worked just as well. Not many Z orbs are needed to unlock and improve skills, I earned more than enough by following the game’s story and doing side quests. Overall, this feels like the developers came up with a totally serviceable idea and were pressured to spice it up, making it awkward and annoying.

Tragically joining the other three in the garbage can is the mechanic closest to my heart: eating. Though wonderfully faithful to the original Dragon Ball Z series, eating for more power just isn’t fun. The initial pitch for this system is admittedly cool. Each meal players eat will provide a boost to one or more stats for a limited time as well as permanently increasing their stats. However, the cost outweighs the benefits. If players want to eat to get stronger, they first must wander around the world retrieving ingredients, whether that’s gathering fruit from trees or “capturing” wildlife. Then, players have to find a professional chef or public campfire, where they can assemble the meal and either eat it or save it for later consumption. For a more powerful, but less portable meal, players can go to Goku’s house and ask his wife Chi-Chi, even when not playing as Goku, to prepare a “full course meal” which lasts longer and provides more bonus stats. I like the benefits it gives, but the eating system asks the player to divert too much from the main aim of the game to take part.

Mercifully, the remaining mechanic, the Community Boards, isn’t a frustrating mess and is instead genuinely cool. As Goku and his allies make their way through the main story and complete side missions, they will make friends which results in the awarding of a Soul Emblem for that person. These Soul Emblems have seven stats, each one relating to one of the seven Community Boards, which are a sort of game board with a number of open spaces to which Emblems can be assigned. The boards are representative of communities of people with different hobbies or abilities, there’s one for people who like to fight, one for those who like to cook, one for folks who are literal gods, and even a board for people who are unabashedly horny. When a Soul Emblem is assigned to a board, the associated stat of that Emblem contributes to the board’s overall level. When this level reaches specific thresholds, the player unlocks a new passive benefit. Additionally, when one or more Emblems of people with connections to each other are placed in adjacent spaces, players get additional points towards the board’s level. This mechanic delighted me because being powerful because you have friends is a big thing in anime, and Dragon Ball Z is no exception. I also love how players can choose which Emblems to put on which Boards to obtain the benefits they want most, supplementing their own abilities and even reinforcing areas where they might be lacking.

There’s more I want to say about Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, I haven’t even gotten to the bad fishing mini-game, the awful driving sections, the illegible in-game encyclopedia, how often you’re not playing as Goku in a game named after Goku, or how boring it is to gather the titular Dragon Balls, but this review is already too long. I imagine Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot was probably made by a passionate team saddled by the burdens that come with working on an incredibly popular license and the expectation to put every system and mini-game they could think of because in the mind of executives more is always better, but when you boil it down it’s a frustrating, boring mess. If you like Dragon Ball Z and absolutely need a licensed game, I say go buy Dragon Ball FighterZ, I hear that’s good, but otherwise, save your money and skip this entirely.

Don’t buy this game

I hate to say it, but there’s nothing here worth spending your money on