Available on: Xbox 360, PS3, and PC
Played it on: Xbox 360 and PC
Played it for: 150 hours
RATING: 8/10 on console, 6/10 on PC
Ah, Dark Souls. The famously obscure, infamously hard, not-to-be-trifled-with lovechild of Hidetaka Miyazaki and Kentaro Miura. The series has gained plenty of attention over the years, but let's go back to where it all began. Well, not counting Demon's Souls, of course. Or King's Field, for that matter...
Dark Souls isn't a direct sequel to Demon's Souls. Atlus published the latter, and there's been plenty of discussion since about IP ownership, so FromSoftware instead made a game with the same mechanics that's set in a different universe, this time published by Bandai Namco. The universal currency of the game is "souls" that are collected from fallen enemies, which can be used as both experience points and as gold. Business as usual, then. But the premise of Dark Souls is much more fleshed out than the previous game. In Demon's Souls, the protagonist, the "Slayer of Demons," was a pioneer adventurer who wanted to kill some demons. That was that. But Dark Souls paints a deep story for the protagonist. Cursed with the fate of the undead and branded with the feared Darksign, the protagonist is locked in a remote asylum to await the end of days. But unlike other undead, the protagonist still retains their human will, and sets forth on a date with destiny to become the Chosen Undead that would alter the course of history forever. Sweet!
The game still plays in a similar way to Demon's Souls, but overall it has a lot more polish than its older sibling. The first Dark Souls is the slowest of the Souls-borne games, but this goes miles in terms of building a tension that is inherent to the world of Lordran. Every weapon swing feels purposeful, like a commitment. This makes combat much more challenging, as poorly-timed swings could quite easily end up being fatal. Smaller weapons swing much faster, but don't deal the poise damage required to stagger most enemies like the massive zweihander would. But both are viable, as are all the other weapon classes.
Casting, too, has been revamped to allow viability from the start, instead of asking the player to invest 60 intelligence or 60 faith and just hope for a payoff that would still often require a melee fallback when one runs out of MP. MP has been removed in Dark Souls, and spells are instead limited to a certain number of uses that cost stamina to cast. You'll still see the most damage out of a spell when you max out its appropriate stat, but it's perfectly viable to be a split physical and mental character this time around, pushing 40 Strength and 50 faith to get the most damage out of your lightning spears while still hitting like a truck with your blessed longsword. The possibility is massive in this game.
The rolling system has been re-tuned to a tiered metric. Increasing your endurance increases your equip load, which affects how your roll. Demon's Souls simply revolved around the 50% equip load mark, but Dark Souls adds a "mid roll" between 30% and 70% load. The addition of the mid roll is huge, as it's not too good and not too bad. It's significantly more difficult to get your character to the ridiculous hyper-speed Brushwood Set meta from Demon's Souls, although it is still possible with the right commitment. It is instead much more plausible to simply mid roll in the heavier sets, and this still requires a focus in Edurance. This means players need a much more careful balance of damage stats, Vitality, and Endurance, and is much better for gameplay overall.
Now, onto the story and such. The focus of Dark Souls was on an interconnected world design instead of the "hub-and-spoke" design of Demon's Souls. The game drops the Chosen Undead into Lordran with the basic objective of ringing the two Bells of Awakening in order to progress to the mysterious Kingdom of Anor Londo. Accomplishing that goal is left to the player, and while there is a standard order of bosses, there are many ways to unlock doors and potentially cut corners. As the player works through their quest, they'll meet quite a few NPC's that are all attempting to complete their own quests, most of whom the player can help as the game progresses.
The game slowly unveils the story as the player moves forward, and builds a genuinely complex history through environmental clues and item descriptions. It's a fascinating passtime to really piece everything together and come to the ultimately sad conclusions about the world of Lordran. And it feels absolutely fantastic to triumph where so many others failed. It builds a wonderful and coherent world that feels satisfying to play. It's a solid experience.
The game, of course isn't without flaws. The PvP experience is... less than stellar, with faulty netcode that often means completely off-model hitboxes. Backstab scamming is an important tactic, even in high-level PvP, and the weapon and armor balances were meant almost exclusively for PvE. They become far too easy to exploit in the PvP scene. Parrying is incredibly easy as well, and again becomes an important and easily exploitable mechanic when fighting other players. So while PvP is an ingrained and important part of the universe, it's a pretty terrible experience overall.
The PC port is also... well, it's atrocious. The mouse and keyboard controls are horrendous, the mouse isn't even hidden on-screen, the netcode works even less reliably than it does on console, the framerate is grossly underwhelming, and if you click to summon somebody whose name is too long, the game outright crashes. It takes no less than three heavy mods to get the game working right, and even then it doesn't fix the mouse or control issues, and it's far better to just plug in a controller. The game itself is good, but the disgusting port seriously docks points.
Overall, it's a great experience. Even on PC, if you can get all the mods to work right. It makes seriously beneficial improvements from Demon's Souls, builds a fantastic, breathing world, and feels great to play. Starting with this game is a must if you're a Souls-borne fan, or even if you're just interested in trying it out. Demon's Souls is optional. But not this one.
Showing posts with label Fighting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fighting. Show all posts
Friday, September 23, 2016
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Demon's Souls
Only Available on PS3
Played it for 100+ hours
RATING: 7.5/10
"I want to get off Mr. Allant's Wild Ride!" my character seemed to say as he was fighting the final boss of FromSoftware's famously difficult Demon's Souls. First of all, if readers don't know what Mr. Bones' Wild Ride is, please look it up immediately. Second of all, if you have a PS3, go out and purchase this game. If you're not a Souls fan, it's the first and best welcome. If you are a Souls fan, it's a beautiful history lesson.
The game is just as punishingly hard as you've always heard, that's for sure. The game begins with a tutorial that ends in a boss fight that is impossible to win. Or, at least, if you're lucky enough to kill the Vanguard Demon with the minimal amount of room the game gives you to move around, the second boss will kill you in a cutscene. So it teaches you early on that you will die. Often. The game proceeds to resurrect you in "The Nexus," a central hub that will transport you to one of five worlds that are all around the kingdom of Boletaria. Your simple mandate is to eliminate the demons that now control the world of man. Simple, right?
The first level is fairly straightforward. It's the outside of a castle, and you must find a way to open the portcullis to proceed. Complicated? No. Easy?... No. The game doesn't have an indication of what enemies are more or less difficult, so it's easy to stumble into an area that's impossible to beat at the start, such as the dragon outcropping or the red-eye knight's bridge. Additionally, if you don't explore the whole area, you'll miss the most valuable item in the whole game: the Cling Ring. Normally, death reduces your max health to 50%, and this can't be changed until a boss is killed or a finite item called a Stone of Ephemeral Eyes is used. The Cling Ring, however, boosts your health back up to 75%, which is significantly more manageable. And if you don't fully explore the very first area of the game, you won't have this item for the other four and half worlds.
However, getting past the first boss, the Phalanx Demon, is a treat. As a first boss, it's simple and pretty boring. But it also gives the player access to Stonefang Tunnel, The Tower of Latria, The Shrine of Storms, and The Valley of Defilement, all of which are unique and fascinating areas that, at least in the lore, are all tied together. By reading the item descriptions, you can begin to peace together tiny bits of information until a picture begins to emerge. It's never told to the player exactly what the story of Demon's Souls is, or what the accurate history of Boletaria is. Instead, this is left to the player and their imagination. Who is Yurt, the Silent Chief? Why, when the player digs deeper, is he working for Mephistopheles? What is the Order of the Soul? None of these questions are ever fully answered, and this is part of the charm of the game. When you get down to it, the biggest question throughout the story is simply, "why?"
This is why Demon's Souls is such an interesting game, and why it spawned so many spiritual successors in the Souls-borne games. On the surface, it's a simple RPG about stamina management and strategic upgrading, but the world is incredibly rich and deep if you're willing to do some digging, and it paints a tragic story of a kingdom cyclically inviting the same demon invasion countless times, each time causing so much destruction that it takes a thousand years just to rebuild to medieval technology. Each world that the player visits has its own theme, and each holds its own piece of the overall story. And the player isn't just told this, they discover it themselves while being an adventurer.
Now, mechanically, this game is... lacking. In several areas. For one, a lot of the game feels incredibly floaty a lot of the time. Hits don't have much of any real impact, falling is slow, and the player can only roll in four directions: forward, left, right, and backward. This makes combat significantly more tedious, as rolls often shoot off in unintended directions, and many fights just aren't that engaging. Most of the bosses are great, but end up as gems in the mud as players trudge through the chore-filled areas of the game, which becomes especially true later on in the Tower of Latria and the Valley of Defilement.
Balance-wise, the game is also not stellar. Later Souls games would introduce the concept of a rolling gradient, which allowed players to roll very fast when they were lightly armored, roll decently most of the time, and "fat roll" only when they were heavily encumbered by their gear. Demon's Souls did not have this, it was either rolling fast or rolling badly. This meant that a reasonable investment in endurance would see you rolling all over the place in even the heaviest of armor sets. High mental stats, like intelligence and faith, would see absolutely devastating damage increases on spells, and of course the now famous "Purple Dragon Smasher" meta forced FromSoftware to rethink how weapon buffs would work in later games.
But, despite the problems, it's still a fun game. And, like I said at the start, it offers both the best welcome for newcomers and an interesting history lesson for veterans. It may not be worth playing multiple times, but it's absolutely worth playing.
Played it for 100+ hours
RATING: 7.5/10
"I want to get off Mr. Allant's Wild Ride!" my character seemed to say as he was fighting the final boss of FromSoftware's famously difficult Demon's Souls. First of all, if readers don't know what Mr. Bones' Wild Ride is, please look it up immediately. Second of all, if you have a PS3, go out and purchase this game. If you're not a Souls fan, it's the first and best welcome. If you are a Souls fan, it's a beautiful history lesson.
The game is just as punishingly hard as you've always heard, that's for sure. The game begins with a tutorial that ends in a boss fight that is impossible to win. Or, at least, if you're lucky enough to kill the Vanguard Demon with the minimal amount of room the game gives you to move around, the second boss will kill you in a cutscene. So it teaches you early on that you will die. Often. The game proceeds to resurrect you in "The Nexus," a central hub that will transport you to one of five worlds that are all around the kingdom of Boletaria. Your simple mandate is to eliminate the demons that now control the world of man. Simple, right?
The first level is fairly straightforward. It's the outside of a castle, and you must find a way to open the portcullis to proceed. Complicated? No. Easy?... No. The game doesn't have an indication of what enemies are more or less difficult, so it's easy to stumble into an area that's impossible to beat at the start, such as the dragon outcropping or the red-eye knight's bridge. Additionally, if you don't explore the whole area, you'll miss the most valuable item in the whole game: the Cling Ring. Normally, death reduces your max health to 50%, and this can't be changed until a boss is killed or a finite item called a Stone of Ephemeral Eyes is used. The Cling Ring, however, boosts your health back up to 75%, which is significantly more manageable. And if you don't fully explore the very first area of the game, you won't have this item for the other four and half worlds.
However, getting past the first boss, the Phalanx Demon, is a treat. As a first boss, it's simple and pretty boring. But it also gives the player access to Stonefang Tunnel, The Tower of Latria, The Shrine of Storms, and The Valley of Defilement, all of which are unique and fascinating areas that, at least in the lore, are all tied together. By reading the item descriptions, you can begin to peace together tiny bits of information until a picture begins to emerge. It's never told to the player exactly what the story of Demon's Souls is, or what the accurate history of Boletaria is. Instead, this is left to the player and their imagination. Who is Yurt, the Silent Chief? Why, when the player digs deeper, is he working for Mephistopheles? What is the Order of the Soul? None of these questions are ever fully answered, and this is part of the charm of the game. When you get down to it, the biggest question throughout the story is simply, "why?"
This is why Demon's Souls is such an interesting game, and why it spawned so many spiritual successors in the Souls-borne games. On the surface, it's a simple RPG about stamina management and strategic upgrading, but the world is incredibly rich and deep if you're willing to do some digging, and it paints a tragic story of a kingdom cyclically inviting the same demon invasion countless times, each time causing so much destruction that it takes a thousand years just to rebuild to medieval technology. Each world that the player visits has its own theme, and each holds its own piece of the overall story. And the player isn't just told this, they discover it themselves while being an adventurer.
Now, mechanically, this game is... lacking. In several areas. For one, a lot of the game feels incredibly floaty a lot of the time. Hits don't have much of any real impact, falling is slow, and the player can only roll in four directions: forward, left, right, and backward. This makes combat significantly more tedious, as rolls often shoot off in unintended directions, and many fights just aren't that engaging. Most of the bosses are great, but end up as gems in the mud as players trudge through the chore-filled areas of the game, which becomes especially true later on in the Tower of Latria and the Valley of Defilement.
Balance-wise, the game is also not stellar. Later Souls games would introduce the concept of a rolling gradient, which allowed players to roll very fast when they were lightly armored, roll decently most of the time, and "fat roll" only when they were heavily encumbered by their gear. Demon's Souls did not have this, it was either rolling fast or rolling badly. This meant that a reasonable investment in endurance would see you rolling all over the place in even the heaviest of armor sets. High mental stats, like intelligence and faith, would see absolutely devastating damage increases on spells, and of course the now famous "Purple Dragon Smasher" meta forced FromSoftware to rethink how weapon buffs would work in later games.
But, despite the problems, it's still a fun game. And, like I said at the start, it offers both the best welcome for newcomers and an interesting history lesson for veterans. It may not be worth playing multiple times, but it's absolutely worth playing.
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi
Played it on: Xbox 360
Available on: Xbox 360 and PS3
Approximate Playtime: 25 hours
RATING: 3/10
Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi is not a fighting game. In fact, it's not even really that much of a game, and even though it can be an interesting way to pass an hour or two, it quickly looses its appeal.
If you're a fan of Dragon Ball games, you'll recognize the "Tenkaichi" in the name from the Budokai Tenkaichi series, a classic example of what perfect Dragon Ball games are. They had epic fights, good story modes, a great selection of iconic characters, and they felt amazing to play. This was especially true of Budokai Tenkaichi 3, and Ultimate Tenkaichi, on the surface, promises an even grander version of the PlayStation 2 classic. The fights are the most cinematic they've ever been, the stages are varied and well designed, and for the first time in a big North American release, it was possible to create your own Saiyan to be the hero of his own story. It sounds too good to be true. And that's because, unfortunately, it is
To begin with, the most important feature of any fighting game is, of course, the fighting. The base mechanics aren't too bad. At long range, pressing the attack button shoots ki blasts, and at short range it causes melee attacks. You can charge your ki at any time, and getting combos increases the super attack meter to unlock two super moves, such as the Kamehameha or Special Beam Cannon. It's then possible to use up some ki to either block a super and reduce its damage, dodge it, or intercept it and deal damage to the attacker. Ultimate attacks are only unlocked when one fighter reaches critical health so that nobody can start a fight with an ultimate attack and win automatically. It's also possible to enter a powered up mode at 100% ki, which tips the balance heavily for a short time at the cost of 25% of total ki and a short period of being completely unable to charge up. Unfortunately, most of that means absolutely nothing, as fights end up being a glorified match of rock-paper-scissors. After executing one combo (actually, only the last hit of the combo needs to land, so letting go of the block button half a second early still causes this) the game enters a quick time event with two buttons. If the defender picks the same button as the attacker, they dodge. If they pick the other button, the game enters what amounts to a cutscene where the attacker pummels them for huge damage, reducing the defender's ki and increasing their own super meter. It would be fine if this didn't happen often, but this glorified click-to-win is what the entire "fight" is. It may be satisfying and cinematic to see the first few times, but it's quickly evident that every battle is exactly the same thing. None of the characters even feel different other than their super attacks, and evolving or going super saiyan amounts to a change in character model and available supers, nothing more. Some computer controlled characters will be harder to predict when the quick time events start rolling out, but all it takes is a little memorization and suddenly every single fight is winnable. Use the QTE to max out your super meter, use it again to reduce their ki so they can't block your super attacks, then use the power up mode and hit them until they're at critical health. Once that's done, use an ultimate attack and the fight is over, usually with an explosion that could level North America or a beam shooting off into space that's wider than the Atlantic Ocean. There is nothing tactical, no strategy, and no nuances. Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots is more entertaining.
Then there's the story mode. Now, all told, the Dragon Ball saga spans 508 episodes including Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT, with 20 movies and a soon-to-be fourth series entitled Dragon Ball Super. This should provide a long story mode with plenty of iconic fights, locations, and costumes. But what it yields in Ultimate Tenkaichi is a small collection of only the barest essentials in Z, a few movie villains that often have scripted boss fights, and the fight between Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta and Omega Shenron in GT. That, coupled with the lifeless combat, makes for an incredibly boring run of the story. Most of the actual plot is summed up in walls of text with frequent grammatical and spelling errors, and skips over some of the best parts of the series. It does win a few points back by introducing new animations at some of the most iconic points, such as when Goku becomes a Super Saiyan and when Gohan goes toe-to-toe with Cell. But while it's nice to see the animations in a crisp, updated way more than a decade after the original show premiered, they don't do nearly enough to make up for all the other problems the game has. But they're a nice addition, so they do earn some score back for the game.
The biggest asset that Ultimate Tenkaichi has is Hero Mode, which finally gives fans the chance to make their own Saiyan, with his own story. It should be a chance to make a unique hero with all the best qualities of DBZ characters: the brawn of Broly, the power of Super Saiyan 3, and the ability to fire Kamehamehas at will. But again, what it should be is nothing like what it presents. It's possible to create three separate characters, a heavy type with big muscles, a standard type with good all-around stats, and a light type with strong ki blasts. But there isn't nearly the customization that there should be. There are only a handful of outfits and hairstyles available across the three types, most of which are directly copied from other characters in DBZ, with no option to mix and match. The colors are customizable, given the usual arbitrary color wheel to give a false sense of some originality, but that option doesn't do enough to make the characters unique.
The different ki auras are available to all character types, but the super attacks are restricted to specific body types. The standard hero is the only one who can use a Kamehameha wave, while the light hero is the only one who can use Masenko. It might be better if there were a decent amount of options for all characters, but while the standard hero gets just about all the memorable attacks from the series, the heavy and light heroes are left with a meager five or ten, most of which are downright boring, involving an excruciating buildup when the attack begins - the hero charges menacingly towards the villain, the villain marvels at his power, the villain chooses which defense option he wants, it goes through a quick time event - and then when the actual super attack hits, it's just a headbutt or something similarly dull that ends in less than a second. Why? The attack itself shouldn't have been a super ability, but giving it 15 seconds of buildup for the worst payoff imaginable is utterly ridiculous. It makes many of the attacks not even worth using, which almost guarantees exactly which super attacks the heavy and light heroes will use. and makes the standard hero the only real "hero" worth using. Even still, while fans of the series got to see Goku achieve Super Saiyan form, and improve it through all its power-ups and ascensions all the way to Super Saiyan 4 in Dragon Ball GT, the custom hero only unlocks first level of Super Saiyan and somehow manages to beat the most powerful villain in GT, Omega Shenron, a creature so powerful that it takes the fused power of Super Saiyan 4 Goku and Vegeta to beat in the show, after just a handful of fights with some big name members of the DB cast. All said, it falls immensely short.
Lastly, one of the most depressing parts is the dismal show of graphics and engine power. I understand that translating something like Dragon Ball into a bunch of three-dimensional, polygonal character models and environments isn't easy, but it can be done. In fact, it can be done extremely well. Just look at the original Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm. It looks incredibly crisp and fluid, and plays amazingly. In contrast, everything in UT is washed out, stiff, and cardboard. Raditz's flowing mane of hair stays disturbingly stiff throughout fights, and there's not much of an indication of a windup or even of choreography at all. This becomes even more apparent during some supers, when it becomes obvious that all large, medium, and small characters have identical skeletons with different meshes. Some supers involve a grab or series of punches that look completely off when hitting some other characters, like when Broly "grabs" a young Gohan by holding onto the air near his body. It can be assumed, then, that the attack was meant to hit Goku and only Goku, as it looks similarly weird on other large characters when Broly stabs his hand into their chest and presumably crushes several vital organs, but looks decent when used on medium-sized characters. You know, like Goku.
I think this is the biggest problem with UT as a whole. It feels half-done, or maybe even less than that, and plays like garbage. Never mind the dismal campaign. Never mind the awful scripting. Never mind the dirty, underdone graphics and the broken netcode that makes PvP the worst thing since getting Hadoukened into a corner repeatedly. The fact is, we've seen this done better. Not theoretically, either, we've seen some amazing, fluid fighting games in recent years that have done wonders with their limited art styles and super-strong ultimate attacks. And for a game like Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations to be immeasurably better than a Dragon Ball fighting game with this kind of pedigree? It's disgracefully shameful. Don't torture yourself or your wallet with this game. Just don't.
Available on: Xbox 360 and PS3
Approximate Playtime: 25 hours
RATING: 3/10
Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi is not a fighting game. In fact, it's not even really that much of a game, and even though it can be an interesting way to pass an hour or two, it quickly looses its appeal.
If you're a fan of Dragon Ball games, you'll recognize the "Tenkaichi" in the name from the Budokai Tenkaichi series, a classic example of what perfect Dragon Ball games are. They had epic fights, good story modes, a great selection of iconic characters, and they felt amazing to play. This was especially true of Budokai Tenkaichi 3, and Ultimate Tenkaichi, on the surface, promises an even grander version of the PlayStation 2 classic. The fights are the most cinematic they've ever been, the stages are varied and well designed, and for the first time in a big North American release, it was possible to create your own Saiyan to be the hero of his own story. It sounds too good to be true. And that's because, unfortunately, it is
To begin with, the most important feature of any fighting game is, of course, the fighting. The base mechanics aren't too bad. At long range, pressing the attack button shoots ki blasts, and at short range it causes melee attacks. You can charge your ki at any time, and getting combos increases the super attack meter to unlock two super moves, such as the Kamehameha or Special Beam Cannon. It's then possible to use up some ki to either block a super and reduce its damage, dodge it, or intercept it and deal damage to the attacker. Ultimate attacks are only unlocked when one fighter reaches critical health so that nobody can start a fight with an ultimate attack and win automatically. It's also possible to enter a powered up mode at 100% ki, which tips the balance heavily for a short time at the cost of 25% of total ki and a short period of being completely unable to charge up. Unfortunately, most of that means absolutely nothing, as fights end up being a glorified match of rock-paper-scissors. After executing one combo (actually, only the last hit of the combo needs to land, so letting go of the block button half a second early still causes this) the game enters a quick time event with two buttons. If the defender picks the same button as the attacker, they dodge. If they pick the other button, the game enters what amounts to a cutscene where the attacker pummels them for huge damage, reducing the defender's ki and increasing their own super meter. It would be fine if this didn't happen often, but this glorified click-to-win is what the entire "fight" is. It may be satisfying and cinematic to see the first few times, but it's quickly evident that every battle is exactly the same thing. None of the characters even feel different other than their super attacks, and evolving or going super saiyan amounts to a change in character model and available supers, nothing more. Some computer controlled characters will be harder to predict when the quick time events start rolling out, but all it takes is a little memorization and suddenly every single fight is winnable. Use the QTE to max out your super meter, use it again to reduce their ki so they can't block your super attacks, then use the power up mode and hit them until they're at critical health. Once that's done, use an ultimate attack and the fight is over, usually with an explosion that could level North America or a beam shooting off into space that's wider than the Atlantic Ocean. There is nothing tactical, no strategy, and no nuances. Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots is more entertaining.
Then there's the story mode. Now, all told, the Dragon Ball saga spans 508 episodes including Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT, with 20 movies and a soon-to-be fourth series entitled Dragon Ball Super. This should provide a long story mode with plenty of iconic fights, locations, and costumes. But what it yields in Ultimate Tenkaichi is a small collection of only the barest essentials in Z, a few movie villains that often have scripted boss fights, and the fight between Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta and Omega Shenron in GT. That, coupled with the lifeless combat, makes for an incredibly boring run of the story. Most of the actual plot is summed up in walls of text with frequent grammatical and spelling errors, and skips over some of the best parts of the series. It does win a few points back by introducing new animations at some of the most iconic points, such as when Goku becomes a Super Saiyan and when Gohan goes toe-to-toe with Cell. But while it's nice to see the animations in a crisp, updated way more than a decade after the original show premiered, they don't do nearly enough to make up for all the other problems the game has. But they're a nice addition, so they do earn some score back for the game.
The biggest asset that Ultimate Tenkaichi has is Hero Mode, which finally gives fans the chance to make their own Saiyan, with his own story. It should be a chance to make a unique hero with all the best qualities of DBZ characters: the brawn of Broly, the power of Super Saiyan 3, and the ability to fire Kamehamehas at will. But again, what it should be is nothing like what it presents. It's possible to create three separate characters, a heavy type with big muscles, a standard type with good all-around stats, and a light type with strong ki blasts. But there isn't nearly the customization that there should be. There are only a handful of outfits and hairstyles available across the three types, most of which are directly copied from other characters in DBZ, with no option to mix and match. The colors are customizable, given the usual arbitrary color wheel to give a false sense of some originality, but that option doesn't do enough to make the characters unique.
The different ki auras are available to all character types, but the super attacks are restricted to specific body types. The standard hero is the only one who can use a Kamehameha wave, while the light hero is the only one who can use Masenko. It might be better if there were a decent amount of options for all characters, but while the standard hero gets just about all the memorable attacks from the series, the heavy and light heroes are left with a meager five or ten, most of which are downright boring, involving an excruciating buildup when the attack begins - the hero charges menacingly towards the villain, the villain marvels at his power, the villain chooses which defense option he wants, it goes through a quick time event - and then when the actual super attack hits, it's just a headbutt or something similarly dull that ends in less than a second. Why? The attack itself shouldn't have been a super ability, but giving it 15 seconds of buildup for the worst payoff imaginable is utterly ridiculous. It makes many of the attacks not even worth using, which almost guarantees exactly which super attacks the heavy and light heroes will use. and makes the standard hero the only real "hero" worth using. Even still, while fans of the series got to see Goku achieve Super Saiyan form, and improve it through all its power-ups and ascensions all the way to Super Saiyan 4 in Dragon Ball GT, the custom hero only unlocks first level of Super Saiyan and somehow manages to beat the most powerful villain in GT, Omega Shenron, a creature so powerful that it takes the fused power of Super Saiyan 4 Goku and Vegeta to beat in the show, after just a handful of fights with some big name members of the DB cast. All said, it falls immensely short.
Lastly, one of the most depressing parts is the dismal show of graphics and engine power. I understand that translating something like Dragon Ball into a bunch of three-dimensional, polygonal character models and environments isn't easy, but it can be done. In fact, it can be done extremely well. Just look at the original Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm. It looks incredibly crisp and fluid, and plays amazingly. In contrast, everything in UT is washed out, stiff, and cardboard. Raditz's flowing mane of hair stays disturbingly stiff throughout fights, and there's not much of an indication of a windup or even of choreography at all. This becomes even more apparent during some supers, when it becomes obvious that all large, medium, and small characters have identical skeletons with different meshes. Some supers involve a grab or series of punches that look completely off when hitting some other characters, like when Broly "grabs" a young Gohan by holding onto the air near his body. It can be assumed, then, that the attack was meant to hit Goku and only Goku, as it looks similarly weird on other large characters when Broly stabs his hand into their chest and presumably crushes several vital organs, but looks decent when used on medium-sized characters. You know, like Goku.
I think this is the biggest problem with UT as a whole. It feels half-done, or maybe even less than that, and plays like garbage. Never mind the dismal campaign. Never mind the awful scripting. Never mind the dirty, underdone graphics and the broken netcode that makes PvP the worst thing since getting Hadoukened into a corner repeatedly. The fact is, we've seen this done better. Not theoretically, either, we've seen some amazing, fluid fighting games in recent years that have done wonders with their limited art styles and super-strong ultimate attacks. And for a game like Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations to be immeasurably better than a Dragon Ball fighting game with this kind of pedigree? It's disgracefully shameful. Don't torture yourself or your wallet with this game. Just don't.
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