Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors I know what many of you are thinking, 'how come I've never heard of this game?' Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors was released on the Gameboy Color in 2002 worldwide. Quite a late release for a Gameboy Color game. Its release wasn't well publicized due to other DBZ releases during the same time such as Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku on the Gameboy Advanced and the popular Budokai series on PS2. It's real sad though, because many DBZ fans would've missed a real gem. Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors' story spans from the beginning of DBZ with Raditz's arrival to Earth right to the end of DBZ with the final boss battle against Kid Buu. The Battles within the game are a hybrid of a number of genres including Turn-Base, Card Game and Tactical. The in-battle graphics are brilliantly done for such an old console (Take a look at the image below). Attacks are made with the use of battle cards which you receive and collect during the game's story. You're probably wondering the only good bits about Dragon Ball Z is how it's fast paced... Well the developers of Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors have tried to make every DBZ fan happy by adding a "combo" feature. The combo feature involves you having to press certain buttons on your Gameboy in a very small amount of time. It actually gets quite nerving when you have to rely on a combo attack to finish off an enemy. The combo feature is also the best way to raise 'CC'. CC can best be described similar to something like PP or MP in Pokemon and Final Fantasy. Without CC using your big moves like Big Bang Attack and Spirit Bomb become a lot harder to use. The battles are what the game's all about, thankfully the battles are by far the game's strongest point. Battles can get really heated up sometimes and can even go on for over 10-15 minutes. Considering there are 30 battles all up in the main game, it certainly takes a while to complete the main story. It took me about 11 hours to finish the main story. The story in the game is told very briefly. If you're a DBZ fanboy and have seen the entire anime series, than you'll have no problems understanding the game's very brief text based cut scenes (Take a look at the image below to see what the cut scenes look like). If you've never really been into the anime/manga series, you'll most likely find the story to be very confusing. Understanding or not understanding the story won't affect the way you battle at all though. As long as you get the battling right, there's not much else to worry about. During the main game you only get to play with the main Z Warriors. But it's after you finish the main game it really gets interesting. You get to re-play through the game again to win characters to play with, including the bad guys like the Ginyu Force and the Androids to the really bad guys like Freiza and Cell. Once you've got everything unlocked, you've got 28 characters to choose from to battle with. That's just amazing for a GBC game. Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors' replayability, although sounds boring in theory, is actually quite fun practically. You get a number of options to do once the game's main story is complete. You've got the option to replay the story (To win other DBZ characters), you've got 'Battle Mode' (Which is just a random battle feature which allows you to train your characters), and you've got Multi-Player mode. Multi-Player mode is a feature of the game I literally haven't tried in at least 6 years, but from memory it was pretty good. The anxiousness between playing a friend that knows exactly what he's doing can get extremely high, where it can become an all out guessing game knowing when to dodge their big attacks. The game does sadly have its low points. The grammar during the cut scenes isn't great, quite ironic considering the huge number of game testers mentioned in the game's credits! The map walking in the game is terribly ugly, thankfully walking on a map is very minimal within the game. And probably the most annoying feature of the game is the ridiculous things you have to do to win extra characters in the game. Stupid things like having to open a pot 8 times, having to talk to someone 4 times, or even worse; having to rapidly press 'Start' at the end of the credits to win characters. These low points however don't affect the enjoyment you'll get playing this very surprisingly good game. Presentation- 7/10: Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors has a minimal amount of presentation overall. Its text based cut scenes wouldn't be too bad if it didn't have such a poor level of grammar and an overall brief and confusing story. Although, the mentioned negatives are quickly forgotten after participating in its brilliantly presented battles. Graphics- 8.5/10: The battle graphics in Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors is top of the line for a Gameboy Color game. It's animations during the battles are just great to watch. Although the battle graphics are top notch, it is let down with terrible graphics when walking around on the map. Thankfully walking around on maps are a rare occurrence in Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors. Sound- 8/10: The sounds and themes in Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors is the normal standard you'd come to expect from a Gameboy game. The themes aren't recognisable at all from the DBZ anime series, but it doesn't really matter as the themes are actually really catchy. And after playing the game for over 7 years, it's actually become a bit nostalgic for me. Gameplay- 8.5/10: The brilliance of mixing genres such as RPG, Tactical and Card based has worked a charm in Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors. There's a little bit of everything in this game for all DBZ fans. There's tactical gameplay, there's fast combo mashing and best of all the game packs a fair few tough challenges along the way. It takes a hard 10+ hours just to finish the main story. Replayability- 8.5/10: Replayability in Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors is one of its best features. Once you finish the main game a new feature called Battle Mode is added which allows you to randomly battle characters from the game. The fun part after finishing the game is the chance for you to win all the good and bad characters in the DBZ world. In my case, there was nothing more fun than playing with the bad guys like Recoome and Ginyu. Total Score- 40.5/50: It's been a game I've owned for several years now, and without fail I seem to want to play it every time the thought of DBZ comes to mind. It's a great game that is not only great for DBZ fans, but also RPG, Tactical and Card-based gamers. The greatest thing to happen to this game would be for a remake to be made either on the DS or 3DS.
Yeah, it really is one of those under-rated games that many gamers don't even know existed. Glad you loved it.
When I think older and DBZ, fun doesn't generally come to mind. This review has convinced me to give this game a go at some point though. It does sound pretty incredible for a GBC game, and especially good for a DBZ GBC game. Fantastic review though, great job.
Having played a lot of Dragon Ball Z card battle engine RPGs I'd say this one was way better than it's very annoying NES & SNES predecessors, so yeah thumbs up for this game & awesome, awesome review raysie
Yeah I agree. Other than a few negatives like the briefly told story and the dreadful walking around on the map, there is very little bad that could be said about this game. After typing up this review, I thought I'd check out if there were many others that enjoyed this game as much as I. Turned out Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors had/has pretty much a cult following. It'd be just great if a remake was ever made of this game. I really don't know why there hasn't, as developing a game similar to the likes of Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors is much easier than the average Dragon Ball Z game we see these days. Anyway, glad you liked the review and game.
