Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot could have been amazing. His heart is in the right place and he has a lot of neat ideas, but the finished product feels rushed to disappointment. While it's not a bad game, and there are certainly elements that Dragon Ball fans will love, there are so many issues that hold back its potential. For every cool cutscene or extended story beat, there's an incredibly sloppy boss fight or another tedious quest. It's an adventure of constant ups and downs.
We're not done with Kakarot yet - which is why this isn't a full review - but after playing for nearly 30 hours, it's clear that the game's flaws aren't going away. But hey, let's start with the good stuff. What impressed us the most was probably the story itself. This is a remake of Dragon Ball Z in its entirety - and the title even throws some extra character scenes into the mix to give various events a bit more context. For example, early in the game, you go on a fishing trip with Gohan as Goku, and there's a later part where Gohan helps Chi Chi, his mother, with her cooking.
It's not like these storylines suddenly add a huge amount of depth to the Dragon Ball Z story, but they do give certain characters a chance to breathe. And to be clear, the main story itself rarely skips a beat - it has to be the most accurate and detailed Dragon Ball Z narrative ever committed to a video game, and that's pretty impressive.
But as mentioned, for every up, there seems to be a down. The cutscenes that accompany the story's most important moments are fantastic – they're pre-rendered and beautifully animated, capturing the spirit of the source material. In contrast, however, most of the other cutscenes are incredibly static - just characters standing there sputtering with almost no animation. There's a jarring difference in quality here, and it's such a shame we're still stuck with such boring PS2-era dialogue scenes in 2020.
This is where it starts to feel like Kakarot was pressured to break free. As mentioned, the game doesn't skimp on the story, which is great, but there are corners cut everywhere else. Outside of towns - which have moving traffic and lots of pedestrians - the game's open areas look pretty lifeless, as if ripped from an early PS3 project. They're also absolutely covered in orbs – large, collectible spheres that dot the skies and lanes of every location. After sucking them up, you can spend orbs to unlock new super attacks, but that's such a weird mechanic in 2020. We guess it gives you more incentive to get out into the world and explore a bit, but it feels uncomfortably old school.
And then there is the fight. At its core, it's like a simplified version of Dragon Ball XenoVerse. Each character has a basic physical combo that you can pound out with a single button, as well as four special moves that can be switched to suit your style. On the defensive side, you can block to greatly reduce incoming damage, or you can perform an evasive dash. Both techniques are effective – the latter can be spammed almost indefinitely – and that's a good thing, because you're going to need them.
One-on-one fights tend to be fine. Some boss battles can turn into intense cat-and-mouse games as you try to find openings in your opponent's onslaught. But the combat system completely breaks down when you have to fight multiple enemies at once. Grumpy enemies aren't that bad once you get used to their abilities, but bosses can be an exercise in pure frustration.
To put it into perspective, we had much, much more trouble fighting the Ginyu Force than we did Frieza - and that's only because Ginyu and his minions tend to fight as a team. Going up against Jeice and Burter was an absolute nightmare – they just kept attacking. You can only target one enemy at a time, and all you have to do when an opponent is offscreen is a threat indicator that turns red when they're about to strike. You spend most of these fights trying to establish some degree of distance between you and your enemies, which means some fights can really start to drag on.
Or you can just stock up on healing items and flush out the whole game. There are no difficulty options in Kakarot, so you'd expect it to be somewhat balanced - but that's not is simply not the case. Between having to hunt for experience points so you can actually deal damage to optional bosses and spending all your in-game cash on healing that immediately restores full health, Kakarot's difficulty curve is all over the place.
And that's about all we have to say right now. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot can be a lot of fun, especially if you're a big Dragon Ball nerd like this particular author, but it's crippled by a lot of issues - issues that, at least on the surface, could have been fixed if the game was given more time in the oven. Right now, Kakarot is a relatively unique and in-depth adaptation of Dragon Ball, but it's not quite a great video game.
Are you planning to try out Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot? Keep an eye out for our full review for the near future, but until then feel free to round up the dragon balls in the comments section below.
