DBZ: Burst Limit Review

by David Daniels - 2008/06/07 6:05am

Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit is the first game from the Dragon Ball franchise to appear on the PS3 console. You can start the Z Chronicles, which is the story mode, go straight to versus, or mess around with the settings to change the voice language, brightness etc. The game adds a new online mode which lets two people from around the globe duke it out in a simple online set up. The new Z Chronicles lets you play through various integral fights from the Saiyan saga all the way through to the Cell saga.

The graphics are one of Burst Limit's strong points. Everything looks great, and it looks even better in motion because of the beautiful animations, which are very fluid and natural, as well as the bright and colourful enviroments. If you compared a screenshot of this game to the television series, the differences would hardly be distinguishable. The only niggling annoyance is that no matter how good the characters look, the environments spoil it. They look blocky in some areas, and look like they could be ripped straight from the older Budokai games. The one exception is the environment during the Goku and Frieza fight where Namek is in a complete destruction frenzy, one of the better portions of the game.

The cutscenes in the game can be awful at times. Less important scenes from the series have poor animation and voice work compared to the more famous ones. Some scenes actually use rehashed animations from earlier in the game to show scenes that should look good but don’t. Burst Limit also doesn't do any favours to gamers who are unfamiliar with the series by showing only tiny portions of storyline, which is also missing out on key information, and there seems to be a basic overall explanation of the storyline itself. Overall, it is incredibly short, and only takes one run through of the story to get all the characters and stages.



The gameplay is the one saving grace. It's fast, furious, fun, and above all, it's easy to understand. The special moves are now a lot more manageable to execute with having only to press O and up on the D pad to do your ultimate finish, which is your characters signature and most powerful move. Teleporting is now a lot easier as well as a mere press of X in the right direction works.

The controls are great, as they make it easy to perform just about every move in the game flawlessly. The game has mechanic called "drama sequences". These are special powerups you use during a fight that trigger a cutscene to give you things like; better agility, greater strength, faster ki recovery or you can call in a partner to deal damage to the opponent. These sound good on paper, but how they are executed is an aspect of the game that completely ruins the experience. For one thing, the cutscenes can’t be skipped and can last for up to a minute, effectively ruining any fun you had been having previously. This could be nice for a bystander to watch, but a nightmare for the player.

The lasting appeal of the game is basically finishing the Z Chronicles mode as this finishing this gives you every character and stage in the game. The game contains 21 characters which you unlock simply by finishing this mode. It also boasts online mode, which would be a good distraction for anyone who truly loves the gameplay and “drama sequences”. This is because the online only offers you to do a simple fight so if you want to do this you have to be comfortable with the fighting system because thats all you're going to be doing here.



In conclusion, die-hard Dragonball Z fans should just sit tight for a (hopefully) improved sequel of a game which had so much potential to be great, but ultimately fails to deliver what it promises. The number of unlockable characters is very poor, and unlocking them is also too easy. Burst Limit just doesn't have enough to keep you playing after you have finished the Z Chronicles. If they made unlocking characters harder, then perhaps there would be some replay value, but the game ultimately poses the player no significant challenge. As a result of this, Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit fails to live up to the anticipation of fans to have a truly great anime fighter.

DivDee: I think 've reserved the Ninja Storm review aswell lol, looking forward to it.

SamStrife: Guess i'm waiting for Ultimate Ninja Storm then. Great review, i agree completly.