You might love Dragon Ball: Raging Blast – that is to say, if you already love the Dragon Ball franchise’s attempt to churn out a videogame roughly every ten months. Admittedly, the titles appear across multiple platforms, but that doesn’t distract us from the feeling that the Dragon Ball video game franchise isn’t particularly deep and isn’t evolving much – for fans of the series this might not be considered a bad thing. However, for gamers unfamiliar with the franchise, there isn’t much to grab onto that isn’t already done significantly better in other titles.

In many ways Dragon Ball: Raging Blast is a love letter to the fans of the series. The scope of the game is immense, including numerous customizations for characters as well as a massive selection of play modes. The Dragon Battle Collection allows you to play through key brawls in the numerous Dragon Ball sagas: the Androids Saga, the Frieza Saga, and the Saiyan Saga. Fans of the series will undoubtedly enjoy reminiscing over these interactive versions of their favorite TV show moments – carrying with them the emotional heft and back-stories necessary to feel fully engaged in the action.

There are also special “What-If” scenarios that set up clashes between favorite characters that never actually fought against one another in the series cannon. In addition to the Dragon Ball Collection the game also includes standard fighting game fare in the form of the Super Battle Trial which includes Arcade, Time Attack, Survivor, Score Attack, and KO attack challenge modes. Of course basic versus fighting makes an appearance, in online and local forms, along with as tournament gameplay.

In terms of presentation, the environments leave a bit to be desired, though they are partly redeemed by some of their destructible elements. The character animations, however, have never looked as clean, crisp, or as carefully matched to the actual animations of the TV production. During gameplay, it’s easy to feel as though you are in fact enjoying an interactive version of the show, especially when your character transforms or performs an ultimate attack – the majority of which look incredible.

This Dragon Ball offering was developed by Spike - which previously developed a number of other Dragon Ball titles including: Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 1-3. The main problem with this particular title is that visual aesthetics and scope take precedence over depth and overall experience. As Spike refined the Dragon Ball format, they seemingly sought to replicate the experience of the cartoon by offering an overwhelming number of storied fights to take part in, as well as more than seventy playable characters. They tightened the presentation of the combat into a carefully replicated version of the cartoon – and then built the actual gameplay around these improvements.

It’s as if the game were built out of love for what has been, not what could be - looking backward instead of forward. As a result, the game plays like a PS2/Xbox title. Combat is shallow and uninspired, relying mainly on simple button presses – ala Super Smash Bros. – quickly building up to the overly powered special and ultimate attacks which, as previously mentioned, look great but don’t carry the kind of satisfaction they might if they were more difficult to access.

The balancing is off, and as a result, the gameplay provides an experience over-saturated with explosive special attacks. Rather than making use of the every move at your disposal, melees and ranged attacks are weak and simply build-up your Ki meter until it can be released in an overcharged special move. In the end, the majority of the gameplay experience is stunted, locked into a long waiting cycle, not actively engaged in the moment.

Dragon Ball: Raging Blast simply tries to be too grand. The seventy-odd characters are mainly differentiated by their skins and specials, because the content isn’t deep enough to actually take advantage of their diverse fighting traits. As a result, the number of characters actually hinders enjoyment of the game, especially for those unfamiliar with the franchise. In the same way, the amount of story-specific fights offered in the sagas is a great offering but it’s too bad the same love wasn’t shown to the cutscenes that appear before each match in the single player campaign as was the actual gameplay. Instead of the same great animations, the cutscenes simply present a text story summary instead. Maybe the developers felt fans of the series would be familiar enough with the different back-stories that fully animated sequences would have simply interrupted the fighting; but again, this is where gamers unfamiliar with the series get shortchanged.

Ultimately, this is a fun but brainless game with little lasting appeal (and hardly any appeal for franchise newcomers). Fans of the series will undoubtedly appreciate the care that Spike put into the Dragon Ball world. They’ll enjoy the saga modes and what-if scenarios, unlock characters and customized outfits, but in short time will likely tire of the unbalanced gameplay and return to a previous Dragon Ball title, or wait another ten months for whatever the franchise already has in the pipeline.

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The Good:

-         Dragon Ball: Raging Blast looks great and brings the gaming experience in line with the visuals of the anime show.

-         The game captures the scope of the Dragon Ball universe and offers fans of the series an incredible amount of content and customization to explore.

The Bad:

-         That said, the scope of the Dragon Ball universe is too much for this game to handle and the gameplay suffers more than anything else as a result.

-         In a fighting game, it’s unfortunate to see so little effort put into actual fighting mechanics and gameplay balancing.

The Ugly:

-         Pre-match cutscenes that rely on Zelda-like text in a game that focused on presentation over gameplay are unforgivable.

-         With so many great fighting games on the market, ignoring the needs and expectations of non-fans is just plain lazy.

Recommendation: If you’re a fan of the series there’s a lot on offer, in terms of fan-service and television-true fights and backstory. Still, why would you want to diminish your love for your favorite Dragon Ball moments by playing them while hampered by lousy gameplay mechanics? If you’re unfamiliar with the series – well, I’m sure you’ve got the point.

Playthrough Details: 7 hours of single player (Dragon Battle Collection and Super Battle Trial) and 3 hours of versus play (local). A copy of the game was provided by the publisher.

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