Gathering all the characters of a determined franchise and pitting them in a game just because “party time, everyone’s here” isn’t anything new in the fighting genre. We saw it back in the days of the NeoGeo with The King of Fighters 98, and still today we can see it in games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Things go on a totally different level when we talk about videogames inspired in anime series. When an anime has been going on for +10 years, airing 500 episodes and producing more than a dozen movies, the amount of characters it could spawn and fit into a videogame skyrockets.

This is what happened with BT3. It was made as a dream match so characters from all eras of the Dragon Ball anime could fight against each other and relive all the anime and movie plots plus a few more, theoretically to keep the legend alive since no anime, manga or movie had seen the light in the last 10 years, something that (for best or worst) isn’t true nowadays. But how much of a dream it really was?

GRAPHICS: 10

Starting strong in this field, because the graphics were lovely. The characters were perfectly recreated, the environments felt realistic, the special attacks being overly flashy and cool-looking… In terms of looks, this game had absolutely no complains.

Some may say that the cutscenes could have been better. However, even modern-day games (though maybe not extremely important games or without the hype that the Dragon Ball franchise can produce) have worse cutscenes, and considering it’s been 10 long years since this game premiered I don’t think it really hampered it.

One of the best quirks were the destroyable environments and the time of the day. The former was perfectly simulated, with trees gone forever without a trace and buildings leaving some rubble at their base, alongside the main pillar of the bigger buildings that couldn’t be destroyed. The time was also perfect, being capable of displaying morning, dawn, night or afternoon depending on the stages, all of them with varying sky color and brightness, alongside the display of moons or stars during the night.

SOUND: 10

First off, the game sounds. After years of only having the original voices (mostly without subtitles) or the English voices, we now got the dual audio in full display because everyone’s here. I personally liked this, there are some voices which are better sounding in English than Japanese, so picking one over the other is kind of hard.

The rest of sounds were amazing as well. Whereas the anime series had always used and recycled a few sounds for attacks, hits and destructible things, we had some (though still not great) variety in this game. It would be great if there was some noticeable sound difference between destroying a building or a mountain, but we at least had the sounds arranged so they displayed loudly if we destroyed something bigger.

Lastly, we have the music. As an action-packed game, the music is generally fast-paced, leaning towards rock styles with almost omnipresent electric guitar riffs, even on the slower songs of some menus or the epic ending itself. Other rather uncommon instruments in rock style music, like trumpets and other members of the metal family, have their share of the spotlight, more prominently in the title song, and even electronic keyboards can appear at certain moments.

The immensely wide variety of sounds made this game superlative, it’s very hard to find any other game with such characteristics. Maybe some menus could have a more electronic approach even if the riff was slow, but keeping the style of the full game also has its touch.

ADDICTIVENESS: 9

The huge amount of characters in a dream match game not always means one more reason to play the game over and over by changing the main fighter, and this game was one of those moments. We only had the different tournaments or other “minor” modes to pick whichever fighter we desired, but mainly we were bound at following the anime and movies, and not always the way we wanted to handle characters.

However, the game does offer a great level of addictiveness. In order to unlock all fighters you need to complete all the tournaments, almost the whole story mode and sometimes even make a wish to the Dragon Balls. No joke here, you can collect Dragon Balls in the game and call upon one of the three magical dragons and they can award certain bonuses not available otherwise.

The downfall is that the anime has progressed a lot, and early characters don’t feel as usable as more modern ones, meaning that despite having lots of chances to use them they’re basically wasted because competition is fierce. This means you don’t really get to use 1/3 of the roster or more just because of that, and for some people it can be a big letdown.

Something that greatly helps addictiveness is character tweaking, the many different modes and, more importantly, the ever changing rules of those modes. You may not use all fighters, but no fight will be the same as the one before and that will keep you glued to your controller.

STORY: 5

The only real story the game has is following the plot of the anime series, the movies and the then-already popular what-if saga which explored new heights with hypothetical scenarios (that episode in Budokai where Cell absorbed Krillin was hilarious, and probably the start of every subsequent what-if inclusion in Dragon Ball videogames).

While following the whole anime series was an unexplored field until then, there wasn’t much to add. In fact, they even took out a few battles here and there to make room for new content. Following the plot of the movies was a nice quirk to give a few characters some of the spotlight in story mode as well, but the what-if saga killed it by being just 4 battles when it could have been easily expanded by just pitting random characters against each other in those special sequences that tend to occur.

The great downfall of the story is that we already know how will it end. Some battles are even scripted, in which you will unleash a one-hit KO attack to emulate the finishing move of that scene, meaning that you have an easy win if you just let enough time pass by so the battle progresses until its last act. Disabling a true fight this way, with the crappy excuse of following the plot, clearly makes the story mode the weakest of all the modes this game offers.

DEPTH: 10

More than 10 years worth of anime and movies offer up tons of battles to relive, and while it may not be the most interesting adventure it at least offers a lot to do. We also have tournaments, which can only be played one at a time and at a random level of difficulty, meaning you may need to play more of the game so other tournaments become available.

The rules of some battles may need character tweaking, whenever possible, and that means a lot of testing could be done until you find the perfect character. This also allows you to explore the many tweaks a character can receive and give you a reason to collect them all, giving them a true meaning.

How much time can you invest into doing all of that? Simply put, a lot. I can tell you it’s no game you can clear in a day besides the chance factor of the Dragon Balls, so be ready for several days and weeks packed with fighting action.

DIFFICULTY: 8

While the main mode isn’t that difficult (some battles are scripted, meaning they’ll end at a certain point with a predetermined outcome), the tournaments can get quite tricky, though not with the proper preparation.

I’ve had great difficulty with the Cell Games and Yamcha Games. The former doesn’t allow for health to be recovered between battles, so at the highest difficulty setting this can be quite the burden. The latter picks the character randomly, so you either try several times for a lucky pick or try your fortune with whatever you’ve been given.

If you have prepared most characters and have upgraded them for tough challenges, these tournaments, while still hard at high settings, become doable. I haven’t faced any utterly impossible fight in this game, so that’s why the rating isn’t as high as in the other fields.

OVERALL: 8.5

One of the most complete Dragon Ball videogames ever, if not the most. The full history including the movies, all the main characters of all eras and plots, basically the full might of this legendary series condensed in a single optical disk. It was also one of the last games before the series started including brand new content to the games, like in Raging Blast, and I personally feel we could use another dream match like this now that Super is over and new movies have come out, and maybe also include some content of the Dragon Ball Heroes videogame now that it has been made a promotional anime. Maybe for 2019, to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the franchise, but sadly I don’t see it happening with Xenoverse and FighterZ being around and healthy.

POSITIVE

-Large roster. It features a grand total of 160 characters, including transformations, making it the largest roster in a videogame, only topped by the almighty Tobal 2 (though a new Dragon Ball dream match could easily surpass it, another reason why we would need it). True is that not all those characters are unique because some transformations make little difference, and it could even be argued that not that many characters/transformations were needed, but I guess that a true dream match should have literally everyone even if differences are very slight.

-Attack variety. With the jump to open 3D battles the controls saw a massive expansion, which bloomed in BT3. There are dozens of melee combinations for close combat, and also more than a dozen kinds of Super Attacks, each of them with their own characteristics. Of course, there are also several methods of defense to counter almost everything being thrown at you (pun intended), but in the offensive field is where we see the widest variety of commands.

-Transformations and Giant Characters. Transformations were nothing new, but in this game we had them all and they were easier to access (and impossible to be transformed back to base through sustaining damage, though you could do it on command instead in certain cases). Giant Characters were also a good quirk, impervious to some attacks but lacking a great dose of speed are among their traits. Some characters could transform into Giants, something almost never before seen, or in one instance become a normal character to trade health and defense for better offense and agility, which gave another strategic touch to battles.

-Customization. We put the characters, you can then tweak them as you wish. The customization is just for battle buffs, like increasing health or offense, decreasing energy consumption and other goodies, though sometimes it allowed for a few visual changes. I preferred this customization a lot more than the current standard to create your own character, because Dragon Ball has more than enough characters to play as and it’s better if you just customize them to fit your battle style.

NEGATIVE

-Wii Remote. These controls could be fun to use, like when emulating the Kamehameha, but in reality they weren’t useful. The motion to perform Super Attacks takes way more time than just pressing buttons, so a regular controller is much quicker at combining attacks, and that means a lot when playing on high difficulties or experienced opponents. It may make the battle more realistic since it’s almost you being the fighter, but the old-school style of mashing pressing buttons is easier for players and allows for more intense battles.

-Advanced commands. While you could get very far without learning most of the advanced controls, they’re an absolute need to complete the game or try the harder difficulties. The advanced commands can get very complicated, requiring very precise timing and anticipation, and if you fail to see them coming you can get totally overwhelmed. In a sense it kills the fun, as you spend more time with the “flawless” defense rather than attacking, and so battles can get very long and boring.

-Unbalanced. Only King Piccolo and Goku can somewhat be saved from the Dragon Ball representatives, the rest have been heavily outclassed even by third-tier characters of the later animes. Character tweaking can only do so much, so we’re basically discarding two rows of fighters due to anime progress. They may still be paired by characters already outclassed in their series, like Videl, Mr. Satan and the ridiculous Frieza Soldier, but even characters like Yamcha or Krillin show to be superior.

-Mid-battle cutscenes. My most hated aspect of the game. Out of nowhere, the action gets cut off to show some animation detailing what’s going on and what’s coming up, then the fight resumes with the characters re-spawning in another position or even initiating some kind of attack right off the bat. Even worse is the fact that, in some cases after that animation, the battle resumes just for your character to perform the finishing move. Also, sometimes you can pick mid-battle when exactly will things happen, meaning a dirty trick to get out of a pinch. So many things killing the flow of a battle, but luckily happens only in the story mode and we can enjoy full battles everywhere else.