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There have been a lot of crappy Dragon Ball Z games released in the past and only a few fairly good ones. Obviously this puts anything you could call "great" out of the picture. Perhaps the curse of the popular license is to blame - as licensed video games have had a less than stunning history. But the cause is irrelevant. What matters is that DBZ fans (which includes yours truly) have been somewhat left out in the cold. It's a darn shame too, because the show has all the potential to translate into a very kick-ass game. But sadly, this has never quite been achieved. Dragon Ball Z Budokai (and Budokai 2) on PS2 and GCN actually did many things well, but was seriously lacking in the depth of its fighting system. Unfortunately, Supersonic Warriors is very much the same. Many things are done right, but the most important piece of the puzzle seems to be missing: the fighting system. It's a huge improvement over last year's Taiketsu, but that's not saying much. Much like Budokai, Supersonic Warriors does a great job of representing the cartoon show from which it's made. Graphics are bright, vibrant, and altogether cartoonish. All of the characters sound and act as they do in the show. Animations are very fitting, and cause the fighting to look just as it might in any episode on TV. Every part of the presentation feels very much "DBZish" and extremely faithful to the source material.
One of the coolest things about Supersonic Warriors is its focus on in-air battles. After all, that's just how the action always goes down on the show. So why not be able to do the same in the game? Banpresto seems to have recognized this, as you'll spend most of your time in the air. And fortunately, the in-air controls feel super-smooth and natural. In just seconds you'll already be accustomed to flying through the atmosphere, bouncing off your opponent. The camera even zooms in and out on the action, always keeping the very best possible view. Nice touch. As mentioned earlier, Supersonic Warriors has just one major design flaw. But that's just the thing, it's major. The fighting system lacks any reasonable amount of depth that would be needed to keep things interesting for more than half an hour. Budokai was pretty bad, but Supersonic Warriors is even worse. The actual controls are very solid and responsive, but that doesn't mean a thing when you're so limited with what you can do. Your entire moves list consists of a very small number of basic attacks, and only one special move. This special move - your most powerful attack - can be executed by simply holding R while you press A and B. Not the most difficult thing to do. And the only way to achieve combos is to hit B (weak attack) over and over, and maybe throwing in a strong one toward the end. Can you say button mashing mess? And to make matters worse, the 13 playable characters pretty much only differ in two stats: speed and power. Yeah, I know. But like I was saying, Supersonic Warriors does a lot of things very well. Its modes are certainly up to par. There's a story mode that follows the events of the show for each character (even if those events come off as more than a little rushed), one on one battles, team battles (with nifty mid-battle character swapping), 2-player mode, training, a decent tutorial, and a point driven shop used to unlock a variety of things. But despite all of Supersonic Warriors' rights, its one, huge wrong is unforgivable. Without any depth, it's impossible for the fun to last any longer than the trip home from the game store. No challenge and no depth does not make for a good game. But any DBZ fan should be able to understand. Even if you've got six Dragon Balls all lined up and ready to go, they're useless without that seventh one. And Supersonic Warriors is missing that last Dragon Ball. Oh well. Better luck next time.
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