May 17, 2002 For an RPG, Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku is barely worth a second look on the shelf next to Nintendo's Golden Sun and Capcom's Breath of Fire II. Nevertheless, for a product based on an. May 18, 2002 Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku Review Fans of the series will enjoy the subject matter and lengthy list of cameo appearances, but devout RPG players won't find anything to sink their teeth into.
Dragon Ball Z The Legacy Of Goku Review 2016
| Publisher: Infogrames | Developer: Webfoot Technologies |
| Reviewer: Mike Bracken | Released: 5/14/02 |
| Gameplay: 54% | Control: 53% |
| Graphics: 60% | Sound/Music: 70% |
| Story: 80% | Overall: 56% |
Before we start, let's just get one thing out of the way-I'm indifferent about Dragon Ball Z. I'm not one of those mega fans who watches the show religiously, nor am I one who despises it outright. My knowledge of DBZ is pretty limited (my girlfriend's son watches it and likes it) and has no impact at all on how I felt about Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku. Now that we've got the disclaimer taken care of, I'll just come out and say that Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku is hands down the worst Game Boy Advance game I've played. It's a monument to ineptitude, a complete waste of time, and a cheap way to cash in on the DBZ fans who're longing for a good game to be made from their favorite anime. Frankly, if someone had given me this game, I'd still feel ripped off. Just how bad is it? Read on and see for yourself. Goku must save the world About the only redeeming quality of Legacy of Goku is the story. From what I gather (again, not being a viewer of the show), it's fairly faithful to the series storyline. Super Saiyan Goku must rescue his kidnapped son Gohan and save the Earth from some guys who are out to destroy it. Nothing ground-breaking, but it's all right as far as stories go. Along the way, Goku will encounter lots of characters from the anime series, take on some sidequests, die and go to the game's version of Hell, and fight evil to save the planet. Again, it's not the most amazing story ever told, but if you're a fan of the series, you should be pleased with all of the references to the show's story arc. The story itself is presented in text, which is fairly well written and relatively free from grammatical errors. There's no real voice acting to be found, and the video footage is fairly simplistic in its presentation. All in all, it's not bad-or at least not nearly as bad as most of the other stuff in the game. Gameplay Needless to say, the real problems with Legacy of Goku turn up in the gameplay department. Simply put, this is one of the most poorly designed games I've played. The first flaw is in the combat system. Goku has several forms of attack-he can punch things with his fists, or he can use his ki attacks. Goku has access to three ki attacks by the end of the game, but starts with only one-a fireball. The fireball is somewhat weak as far as attacks go, but you'll find yourself using it time and time again since it offers one advantage-you can attack from a distance. Why would you want to use a weak distance attack when you can charge in and beat down the bad guys with Goku's bare hands? Because the collision detection in this game sucks-that's why. Running up to even a wimpy little crab and trying to fight it hand to hand is a good way to wind up dead-repeatedly. Why does this happen? Because the game consistently fails to recognize that Goku is close enough to the enemy to land his blows-despite the fact that he can be standing on top of his opponent. The funny thing is, the game always recognizes that the enemy is close enough to be damaging Goku, which leads to many instances of Goku hitting nothing but air while the nearby wolf picks him apart limb by limb... The only way to actually get through the early stages is by using the ki attack-no easy feat in its own right since you can only shoot it in straight lines. That's right-you can't move or shoot diagonally in this game. I guess that was just too cutting edge for developers Webfoot Technologies, or something... The only thing going for Goku is that the enemy AI is absolutely retarded. Monsters often just wander about aimlessly, and with a little luck they'll get trapped behind rocks or trees, allowing you to blast them repeatedly until they're dead. As Goku fights enemies, he gains experience. Earn enough experience and he grows a level. Completing sidequests will also earn him experience points, as will simply talking to certain characters. How lame is that? I get experience points for talking to characters? I should get experience points for playing this game...Anyway, the max level is 25, which you can reach with minimal effort. I stopped to do a little leveling up once, for about 10 minutes, and I was at level 25 by the end of the game-not that it would have made a difference either way. Luckily, Goku will eventually learn his second ki attack, which allows combat to go from difficult to insanely easy. Once you learn this attack, you can freeze enemies and get in a few punches (provided, of course, that the collision detection chooses to accept that you are indeed close enough to punch the enemy). You can use this strategy for the rest of the game-including all of the bosses-and not die again. Nice game design, guys. About the only positive in the gameplay column is that Legacy of Goku is incredibly short. I beat the game in well under three hours, thereby ending my agony in a relatively quick fashion. I probably could have beaten it in less than two hours, had I not died so often in the early going... Graphics While the gameplay is the biggest offender in terms of Legacy of Goku's failure as a game, the graphics aren't anything to write home about, either. Sporting a visual look best described as 'early 8-bit', the game's graphics are only slightly more impressive than the gameplay. Character sprites are small and bland, they don't animate very fluidly, and the color scheme is bland. Enemies are no better, as witnessed by the uber-lame snakes found in the early stages of the game. The game does feature a few anime-styled still scenes. These might have been impressive had they not been so grainy and pixilated. However, since they are both grainy and pixilated, they're just another place where the game falls well short of being anything good. Control I've already mentioned the major flaws with the control in the gameplay section, but I'll reiterate here. There is no diagonal movement in Legacy of Goku, meaning that you'll have to walk like an Egyptian to get anywhere. Couple this with the poor collision detection (which not only has Goku missing his enemies in battle, but also getting stuck on things in his environment) and maneuvering through the game becomes a constant source of aggravation. The control in this game is just as bad as the gameplay. Sound/Music Not much to say here, which is probably a good thing since it means the music wasn't so bad that I felt compelled to remember it. Play it with the volume down and the stereo on, that way you can at least avoid hearing Goku's death scream a few thousand times in the early going. Conclusions Well, it's finally happened-I've found a game that scores lower than Ephemeral Fantasia. While I disliked both EF and Legacy of Goku almost equally, Fantasia was a little more polished overall (man, I never thought I'd see the day when I typed that sentence). Legacy of Goku is a bad game, made all the worse because its motivations are so transparent. This is a game designed to cash in on the DBZ brand name, and no doubt thousands of copies will be sold on the name alone. However, this is not a good game-and it's not worth owning, even if you are a DBZ fan, unless you have some sort of masochistic streak that compels you to buy and play awful games. I wouldn't wish Legacy of Goku on my worst enemy, to be honest, and that's saying something because I can be vindictive. Pass this one up-trust me, you'll thank me for it later. |
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Future Generations Are Not Thankful
I wasn’t expecting much from Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku, but I knew that as a onetime Dragon Ball fanatic sampling the thing would have to happen one day. This was one of the early Western-developed games in the vast pantheon of the license, and reputedly Webfoot Technologies got better with practice. It had nowhere to go but up after this insulting flotsam hit the market, that’s for sure.
The Legacy of Goku purports to adapt the entirety of the Z series from Raditz’s appearance up through the destruction of Namek. That nearly 100-episode span covers a lot of territory, and anyone with no knowledge of its events will be flummoxed and confused constantly in this game. The plot sequences in Legacy of Goku take up less than ten minutes in total, and fail completely at acclimating anyone unfamiliar with the series to its ways. Dragon Ball initiates will meanwhile take great offense at the gigantic swathes of story eliminated by focusing exclusively on Goku’s escapades, and the jaw-droppingly idiotic filler additions will incense them further.
During this stretch of the Dragon Ball Z story, Goku is mostly in a tearing hurry to reach his friends and save the day. For some reason Legacy of Goku instead shows him meandering around the outdoors and performing such leisure activities as helping children gather flowers to wile away the time. For a game that can be completed in under four hours to have so much blatant padding is perplexing, and it will further mystify those with no knowledge of the series.
These fetch quests may be blatant filler, but many of them are mandatory. Finding misplaced magazines and guiding a stray cat home are actually rewarded with experience, usually more than the enemies in the area are bequeathing upon death. The aggravation of these fetch quests may not be completely worthless because of this payoff, but it doesn’t make up for how out of place and inappropriate that content is.
Look at all those wolf corpses – Goku’s been busy today.
At the beginning of the Dragon Ball storyline, Goku was capable of superhuman feats and knew no fear for his safety. After years of growing exponentially stronger through fighting ever more powerful adversaries, in Legacy of Goku he dies from a few wolf bites. How Goku ever expects to defeat opponents capable of obliterating entire planets when a single wolf can rip him apart is one of the unanswerable mysteries of the universe.
In addition to its terrible rendering of the source material, the game as an action RPG is a broken mess. Goku’s physical attack has such a miniscule range that it is impossible to employ without being counterattacked immediately. Fortunately he can simply use Ki attacks to hit from a distance while walking away from the enemy when it eventually pursues. The constantly recharging Ki meter makes this tactic applicable everywhere, and all enemies behave in the same manner so as to remove any thought whatsoever. A few can fly over obstacles, and bosses have their own Ki attacks that need to be dodged, but the same tactic will work against both Frieza and the dinosaurs at the beginning of the game. It can take a surprisingly variable amount of time due to Goku’s attacks dealing inconsistent damage, but with enough patience the result will not be in doubt.
The problem with dodging enemies comes from trying to successfully skirt obstacles in the environment while running away. Someone at Webfoot must have had a grievance with moving diagonally, because Goku is limited to only four directions. This makes clearing numerous passages far more troublesome than it needs to be, on top of the visuals being downright deceptive as to what is an obstruction. Based on the overhead view Goku should be able to pass behind many objects, but instead he will get caught on them if not steered with minute precision.
The way to make sure Goku can survive a pummeling after being caught on low-lying trees and pointy rocks is to constantly gain levels. A freak accident can lead to quick death from enemies, since there is no recovery period after being hit. Saving at any time would seem to remove this concern, but Legacy of Goku treats saving a little differently from most games. The convenient part is that the game fully restores Goku when the player reloads a save after dying, but in exchange for the bothersome aspect of being returned to an area’s entrance with all the enemies revived. While extremely helpful during the many instances when grinding is strongly advised, it is a puzzling occurrence.
