The Saiyan children fell from the sky, brave and optimistic, and extremely strong in fighting. The journey of collecting Dragon Balls is full of joy and imagination. The oolong dumplings and Tianjin rice are not just on the table. Muten teacher’s kung fu, Kame Master’s yellow book, Galinzenta’s cats, and Penguin Village’s Arale; from the Red Ribbon Army to Piccolo, Goku married Chi-Chi as his bride. It was not until Raditz explained Kakarot’s life experience that readers knew the history of the alien fighting nation. The strength of the Saiyan prince and Nappa made “Dragon Ball” start a story of continuous explosive combat power.
I thought the Dragon Balls from Namek were the shipping price, but I met Frieza who evolved multiple times like Pokémon. The strongest man on Earth died at the hands of the villain, and Goku finally became a Super Saiyan…
The rustic opening ends here. I believe everyone is familiar with the subsequent story. With the appearance of Trunks, the future boy who becomes a Super Saiyan at the beginning, Cell who becomes thinner and more handsome as he eats more, and Buu who is in heaven and hell with one thought, Akira Toriyama’s creativity is further exploited. The territory of the Dragon Ball business empire has also expanded from comic serials and TV animation to almost every game console that every generation of players has come into contact with. The protagonist of this review, Dragon Ball Z Kakarot (hereinafter referred to as Kakarot), is another game that retells the classic story of Dragon Ball with current technology.
(Author’s note: Apologies to readers ten years from now, if you find this article in the mud of the future Internet, but have not yet watched “Dragon Ball” and have been spoiled by the opening, I can tell you one more thing as a gift – Bulma married Vegeta)
1. Technology has new and old, but classics have no time difference
Perhaps it is because the “Dragon Ball FighterZ” previously produced by Arc System Works has raised the quality threshold for comic-adapted games related to the “Dragon Ball” IP, so the copyright holder BNEI handed over the development of “Kakarot” to its elite department – CC2, which has won the reputation of players with the “Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm” series.
With the success of Warrior Z, Kakarot will also have to show some strength.
The biggest selling point that BNEI has promoted for Kakarot this time is the ability to recreate classic scenes from the original Dragon Ball comics through the high-quality 3D cartoon rendering that CC2 is famous for. As one of the first readers of the original Dragon Ball comics in China after the reform and opening up, I am also somewhat looking forward to Kakarot being able to “remake” the plots that have long been integrated into my personal childhood memories into the game in front of me.
The old ACG fans born in the 1980s may have had similar experiences: in the early 1990s when we were still in our childhood, a large number of Japanese boys’ comics that would later be defined as “absolute classics” broke into our lives in droves with the spring breeze of reform and opening up. Among them was “Dragon Ball”, which was sold in sets of five books in a “volume” and was often bundled with plastic ropes like snack boxes in grocery stores by book stall owners. At that time, because pocket money was limited, a group of us who played together usually played with our innate spirit of sharing and mutual assistance as successors of the communist cause, and each person and family focused on one work to collect. Originally, my task was “Ranma 1/2”, but after internal discussions, everyone reached a consensus that the fighting in “Dragon Ball” was richer and more exciting than that in “Ranma 1/2”, so I became the “Garlin Immortal” of our courtyard. (In short, he was a squinty-eyed fat boy, but he didn’t have Senzu beans, and he was easily caught by fast-running children when playing the game of chasing people)
At that time, comic books were cultural publications that children cherished very much. They read each one over and over again and understood it deeply, so the impression was particularly deep. My myopia was first exposed by waking up half an hour earlier every day and lying in my cypress nest to read “Dragon Ball”. This was the most personal experience of the art form of comics. In summary, when I play “Kakarot” today, I can clearly identify the degree of reproduction in the key battle performances and some cutscenes of the game. Previously, one of the highlights of “Dragon Ball FighterZ” that was widely praised was the restoration of moves, but that restoration was limited to the shape and movements of the characters themselves. On the basis of the original, even the angle of the storyboard and the distance of the lens are “ripped” according to the original comics with 1:1 high-definition modeling.
This is not the end. In order to cater to the nostalgic feelings of the audience of the original animated version of “Dragon Ball”, the game also specially sets some low-resolution and high-grained animation screenshots as collection elements on the map. Opening a picture is like opening a door to the window of time when you sit in front of the TV and watch animation. The original OP is very exciting, and the “next episode preview” at the end of each level is very realistic. It’s “Those Years, We Chased Dragon Ball Together”. As a knowledge accumulation for readers of the original work, you can also use the system called “Community Settings Board” to follow the prompts and piece together the collected character badges into a reward group related to the drama. This can be regarded as a kind of radio wave resonance with system gameplay elements given to “Dragon Ball” fans by this work.
The customization of the social grid is part of the game that tests the player’s familiarity with the original game.
It should be noted that the high degree of restoration of “Kakarot” is mainly based on the original manga by Akira Toriyama, which was completed up to the Buu arc, and it did not pay much attention to the new generation of “Dragon Ball” animation on current video websites. Some of the “original” plots of side quests only involve the degree of cameo appearances of comic characters and functional DLC.
2. There is no enemy that cannot be defeated by fighting. If there is, go and level up
CC2’s contributions to comic-adapted games include clear judgments and complete action explanations; high-speed combat that omits the “rubbing moves” link, is easy to understand, and retains the balance to the greatest extent; QTEs that serve the performance’s spirit; and special moves that are faithful to the original. The above advantages have basically been implanted into “Kakarot”. In addition to the common attack followed by special moves, the application scenarios of the two defense and counterattack methods are divided to encourage players to master emergency avoidance skills and the essential burst of energy set in the original. Each attack and defense module appears in the position where it should appear most, and also plays the most positive role it should play. In addition to the famous scenes triggered in the main storyline battle, the character fights alone can fully meet the requirements of “Dragon Ball” fans and action game players.
However, the game type of Kakarot is A-RPG, which means action role-playing. “Translated” means that BNEI probably does not want to see players rely on the superb fighting skills they have already practiced in other CC2 games and their familiarity with the original Dragon Ball to complete the main battle with Vegeta, Frieza, Cell and (bad) Buu, the four villains, in a short game time. Therefore, CC2 was required to produce some content in the RPG part that they were not familiar with before, which could effectively extend the game time and make players feel as meaningful as possible. However, the result was that CC2’s lack of relevant RPG game development experience was further exposed to players.
The beauty of the system interface itself is higher than the sophistication and originality of this system.
Generally speaking, in the more representative Japanese A-RPG games, such as the Kingdom Hearts series, or the Tales series that BNEI has been working on for many years, players are required to rely on operations in real-time combat to complete combat tasks smoothly when the character level (LEVEL) reaches a certain level. The operation is mainly responsible for some basic on-the-spot reactions, and the victory or defeat depends more on the comprehensive attribute strength of the character. Players with good hand skills can certainly defeat the strong with the weak, but the system does not encourage gambling-style play, and the game difficulty will still be set according to the character development track of RPG.
The detailed encyclopedia of the work is another place worth reading for readers of the original work.
The same peripherals as the original are placed in the display case window of the toy store next to me
Compared with other A-RPGs, the combat system of Kakarot has a higher degree of freedom. On the surface, if the player reacts quickly enough to the buttons for evasion and timely defense (which is not difficult to achieve under CC2’s looser judgment mechanism), it is possible to continue playing without leveling up until world peace. In order to avoid this kind of magic operation from destroying the balance, the development team set a rule threshold that after exceeding a certain level, the system will offset the damage of low-level characters to high-level characters. To put it bluntly, it forces you to level up. But perhaps CC2 is used to the PVP-oriented combat design in Naruto. In the PVE environment of Kakarot, the enemy’s strength is more often exerted by the unreasonable frequent burst of domineering state. Players have finally learned new skills, but either they cannot hit with a single shot, or the combo is roughly interrupted by the enemy’s domineering state halfway through, affecting the sense of pleasure.
Even if players accept the rationality of leveling up characters in RPG games and the strength of enemies, the character development system of this game only stays at the relatively primitive level of numerical improvement, skill learning, and item management. The path is limited by the plot needs and is very simple. There is no real character development system of its own. For the feedback of player character enhancement, usually only the output value is larger and the injury is less when being beaten (because many special moves need to be unlocked as the plot progresses), and there are four villains standing there with the players’ full expectations. Not only is the battle of miscellaneous soldiers as plain as water, but the value of training soldiers is also very limited. In short, CC2 is a development team with some “biased subjects”. Because there is no better coordination and innovation in the two core gameplays of ACT and RPG, the combat experience and character development outside the boss battle of “Kakarot” have not reached a satisfactory level. Perhaps due to the correct prediction of its own capabilities, CC2 introduced a seemingly more stable element-a semi-open world.
3. If one bottle is not full, find a few more bottles to swing back and forth
The adventure stage of “Kakarot” divides the map area, and then makes each area into a semi-open world.
These scenes generally restore the world style of the original “Dragon Ball”. The developers responsible for map editing are like the assistants in Akira Toriyama’s studio back then, presenting the mountains, rivers, and urban buildings in the background that are usually destroyed by the battle between good and evil. Some more representative check-in surfaces, such as Master Kame’s sea view island and the geek courtyard-style capsule company (30 years ago, Akira Toriyama pointed out the utopian road of electric vehicles + garden-style office space planning + bringing cats and dogs to work for today’s Silicon Valley technology companies), have also been faithfully restored.
Although the actual area of the map is nothing compared to the mobility of the Dragon Ball world, the somersault cloud combined with the air dance technique can achieve free movement, which is indeed an important operation that comic readers at the time always wanted to try (it is true that “instant movement” is convenient and fast, but it is not romantic enough and is too metaphysical).
In order to combine the map with the RPG type to play a greater role, a series of side quests and collection elements that require players to “lick the map” came into being – of course, you can also think that it is the rigid demand for RPG gameplay that prompted CC2 to make these semi-open maps. In short, the map exploration of “Kakarot” is still firmly at the “model room” level where we do as much as the company allocates. For example, fishing and hunting, the daily diet of the little Monkey King in the original work, are presented in the game one by one (the so-called “hunting with bare hands”). When the player’s character level reaches a certain level, there is no need to enter the battle screen separately on the large map. As long as you collide with the miscellaneous soldiers, you can directly gain experience points, which is more in line with the design of simplifying some battle processes in more and more Japanese RPGs.
In terms of side quests, the map design plays a role similar to “renting advertising space”. For example, characters such as Fried Rice King and Lan Qi, who have retreated to the background after the Saiyan chapter, will appear on the map in the form of various side quests. Although the quest gameplay provided is nothing more than finding things and fighting, the character soul badges that are usually rewarded as quests are definitely important collections that original fans cannot miss. The strengthening of the characters used by players in the community configuration system and the series of positive benefits generated are all necessary for assisting leveling or optimizing combat power. It’s just that some quests require multiple map switching, and the disk loading time of this game is relatively long. The retro phenomenon of fifteen seconds of dialogue and half a minute of disk loading still lingers in BNEI’s games.
Conclusion: Calling it a “love letter” does not fit the tone of a shonen manga, but rather a nostalgic invitation to the world of Dragon Ball
When there is no game creation direction that reflects both the fun of gameplay and the spirit of the original work like the “Batman Arkham” series, relying on mature technology to reproduce the original work to the greatest extent has become a safe card for comic-adapted games. Especially considering that BNEI’s overall development strength lags behind the industry, the overall completion of “Kakarot” is still at a relatively good level.
Finally, if we compare the three most representative Dragon Ball games on this generation of platforms: Xenoverse 2, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and Kakarot, although FighterZ has the highest overall quality, it has not received sales data proportional to its quality among domestic players due to its inherent attributes as a fighting game (besides, the Dragon Ball IP is still a major player in the two-dimensional consumer culture in my country). Therefore, after the appearance of Kakarot, the market position of Xenoverse 2 is likely to be replaced. Including the few days before the New Year, the sales in my store are also that Kakarot sells much better than Yakuza 7 released on the same day. (Editor’s note: Yes, the author of this article is “JS” in your eyes)
It can be seen that for the business of comic-adapted games, which is a business that is sure to make money, as long as BNEI does not suck subjectively and does not deceive fans objectively, everyone will be willing to actively cooperate and have fun together.
