If nothing else, the Dragon Ball Z franchise has been a prolific one in the four years since DBZ Budokai hit stores. From the 3D stylings of the first title to the eventual transition to a cel-shaded format, the games have been a staple of every anime enthusiast and pre-adolescent's library for quite some time. Last year's Budokai Tenkaichi marked a departure from the previous games and a step toward capturing even more of the show's essence, through significantly vaster stages and progressive character damage. If the previous games felt like the five- or six-episode build-up to a climactic battle, then Tenkaichi was the first exchange of blows. Tenkaichi 2 not only manages to create a more confusing title for parents come holiday shopping time, but it also feels like another barrage of blows for fans of the games.

So, what's different with this new title? The development team, never to be underestimated, has upped the ante of characters to roughly seventy selectable characters, and somewhere in the range of fifteen different forms. Toss in some unlockables and players are looking at around 120 different fighters within the game, with a lot of cameos, including characters not only from the DBZ universe, but also from the GT and original Dragon Ball series.


Spike, in taking over from Dimps, pumped a lot of new blood into the Budokai franchise with the last game. One of the most noticeable changes came in the addition of both flight and enormous stages that rivaled the spectacle of the TV shows. Of course, any good sequel must build on its predecessor, and it appears that Tenkaichi 2 is doing just that. Not only has Spike doubled the size of the battlefields from the last game, they've added five more stages into the mix for a grand total of 16 stages. There's also a significantly wider field of vision in this game; the total amount of terrain on each stage feels much more epic in scope than before. Also, while previous games allowed players to destroy parts of the environment, the new game will allow players to destroy all of it. Players have the chance to not only throw their opponent into a canyon wall, they can now completely burn down entire planets. Scorched earth, indeed.

Gameplay is getting a tweak as well. In previous DBZ titles, players had to pick a transformed character. That meant that plain old Goku was just Goku unless players opted to choose his Super Saiyan form. Now however, players will be able to transform into each Super Saiyan evolution in the middle of a fight instead of picking a character in the menu and being chained to them for the entire battle. Also, Spike took extra care to make sure that each character moved proportionately to their size. This means that Great Ape moves slower after transforming than playing as Raditz, but he's still more powerful.

The controls themselves don't feel particularly different from any of the other DBZ fighters. It's still a button-mashing affair that doesn't necessarily have the depth of say, Soul Calibur III or a Street Fighter. However, the basic formula is one that has sold millions of games, and frankly, the series has always had a strong skew toward Dragon Ball Z fans more than fighting game fans; last month's Super DBZ pretty much proved that DBZ tends to be more about spectacle than the sort of convoluted move-sets of other fighters.