Dragon Ball Z: Buu's Fury for Game Boy Adv Reviews by Gamers

Though it offers up a new subtitle, Dragon Ball Z: Buu's Fury is an action adventure game that caps off the storyline established in Legacy of Goku and Legacy of Goku II. The game itself really is a "simple" continuation from last year's sequel, utilizing many of the assets to tell the next chapters in the story. But even though the game goes in a decent direction, it's ultimately a weaker sequel due to its extreme lack of focus and balancing in its newer ideas. These new elements make the game incredibly easy to beat, reducing the difficulty to a level that anyone with the ability to buttonmash on the A button can complete the quest.

Features

• Play as Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Goten, and Trunks
• Fusion characters
• Link cable support
• Cartridge save (two slots)

The Game Boy Advance sequel definitely starts out very promising, and if you go by the first couple of hours it's a very solid quest. Much of what Webfoot did right in Legacy of Goku has been retained and tweaked for the better in Buu's Fury. The developers worked to give this new adventure tighter combat and control, as well better collision detection during battles. The first couple of hours are fun because there's plenty of opportunity for enemy attacks and character improvements. The game's tight control gives off the impression of programming polish. At the very least, the game looks and plays like a solid action adventure on the Game Boy Advance.

The game's storyline follows the third and final portion of the Dragon Ball Z storyline first brought up in Legacy of Goku and continued in Legacy of Goku II. But this third portion almost works against the game since it alienates more casual gamers; it's made specifically for the Dragon Ball Z fan and really only the Dragon Ball Z fan. Even though the designers try to recap everything that's happened in previous episodes, Buu's Fury is a lot more confusing since it starts deep in the Dragon Ball Z storyline, and there's really no room for character development in the tale.

Unfortunately, it's the game's balance that is the real issue in Buu's Fury. At the point just before you meet up with Buu for the first time, some three hours in, that it becomes apparent: the game is far too easy. Levelling up and enhancing characters in the game is extremely unbalanced, which in turn affects the challenge of the game. Defeating the standard enemy becomes far too simple a task due to the ability to overpower your characters and the fact that their attack patterns rarely offer anything in the way of challenging attacks. And many boss characters, enemies that are supposed to give off an inkling of challenge, can simply be defeated by pushing him back against a wall and hammer down on kicks and punches.

It's a shame, too, since the developers put in a lot of potential for really awesome combat. The fact that you can switch out to different characters in your party could have given the game a lot more variety in the action, but realistically each fighter is extremely similar in capabilities. The new "block" function could have given the game a better sense of combat strategy with well-tuned counterattacks, but unfortunately the developers never realize the potential. The block button is barely even needed the way the enemies have been tuned.

And it's not just the characters that need some tuning, the design itself is flawed in places; defeating enemies offers up a scattering of coins that can be used to purchase items in shops. But when there's a randomizer in place that occasionally causes items to scatter with the coins, it makes the "Shopping" element almost worthless since you can simply take advantage of the system by returning to a room after clearing it and defeating those enemies over and over and over and over.

The third game in the series does offer something new for players: multiplayer. Using the link cable you can enter a battle dojo against a friend, and it's here that the battle system shows off its potential. A human controlled player definitely offers way more of a challenge than what the developers programmed into the in-game enemies. It's a shame this action wasn't entirely realized in the single-player quest.

©2004, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved