Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3

The third annual Budokai game could have phon in a hardly any extra characters and backgrounds and, let’ face it, the thing still would have sold like crazy thanks to the license. Fortunately, the creators were a bit more ambitious than that, and Budokai 3 approachs to us as a feature-packed, streamlined version of the formula.

Pretty abundant every aspect of the series has evolved: The hand-to-hand combat is flashier and has a fresh countermove to add variety, the Dragon universe story fashion puts the pacing in the player’s hands and give permission tos you fly around freely and strip special items, you can customize your character with the items you find or trade them with your friends, and you can build up your character’s attributes as you advance exploring.

But like previous Budokai games, Budokai 3 still has the question of limited player movement. You don’t have plenteous control over where your character propels for most of the circular Without a jump button or an easy way to stir around freely, you’re often stuck with les freedom than a character in a 2D fighter has, and considering this is Dragon Ball—where characters regularly soar around and move quickly in each direction—there should be even more freedom than a typical 3D fighter offers

Still, Budokai 3 is a really useful version of Budokai, and it is the kind of game Dragon Ball fans can take pleasure in without feeling guilty. There’s actually a serviceable game here when you take away the license, which is more than we could say for the previous games in the series.

VERDICT: It’s the best and greatest in quantity evolved version of a Budokai game

Pub Atari Dev Dimps ESRB T MSRP $4999

Copyright ?© 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserv Originally appearing in Official U PlayStation Magazine.