Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[BFEL]

Yeah, I was grinding for something like 6 hours to get that stupid "Don't Underestimate Earth" Z-soul. Which was needed for the line of fusions that gets you my current Z-soul. Which is epic in every way.

If you decide to undertake the quest to get that one, if it doesn't say "you got equip" when piccolo ENTERS, RNG has not smiled on you, retry scrub.

[nenjin]

Likewise, for those who want to get Super Vegeta (SS form that is wtf broken..)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On the PQ Super Saiyan Legend, do the following:

1. Take no friends.
2. Kill all the schmucks at the start of the level.
3. When Frieza spawns, head through the portal to his ship instead of fighting him.
4. Get Krillian to come "help." Go back to the other area with him.
5. Defeat Frieza's 1st Form while keeping Krillin alive.
6. When Frieza goes into his Final Form (note that this is different than "Final Form Full Power" where he gets all muscley), let him kill Krillin.
7. Goku will spawn, and go Super Saiyan.
8. Defeat Frieza's Final Form with SS Goku.
9. Frieza will transform into Final Form Full Power.
10. Vegeta will show up. He will ONLY show up while Frieza is in Final Form Full Power.
11. Beat down Frieza to about 1/4 or so of his life.
12. Let him get a good power attack off on Vegeta (total luck when this will happen), so Vegeta is at like half health.
13. LET THEM KILL FRIEZA.
14. When Frieza goes down, Vegeta should go Super Saiyan, at which point you'll have to fight him to get the Ultimate Finish.
15. Do it all in under 15 minutes.

Notes: I don't know if Goku has to live through the whole thing too. I suspect yes.
If you, Goku, or Vegeta gets KO'd, that's it, it's either game over or you can't get the Ultimate Finish.
I did this about 10 times with not even having Vegeta go SS, until I made sure Krillin died during the second form. The big internet spoiler pages were a little vague on how to achieve this, so it took reading several forums before someone mentioned this as critical and easily overlooked part of it. If you just let Frieza kill Krillin while in his first form....Vegeta will not go Super Saiyan.

The general logic seems to be, above just the RNG, that to get all the special objectives to have to follow roughly what happens in the show. Ironically, Vegeta my Mentor showed up in my fight against Super Saiyan Vegeta so I could unlock Super Saiyan Vegeta. SUCK IT, TIME SPACE CONTINUUM.

Edit

Super Vegeta Form is, for Ki Blast characters, completely F'ing broken. What it says in game is "Ki Blasts will be fiercer than a normal Saiyan's!" Perhaps that's a poor translation or they're being cute, because here's what it actually does: your Ki bar starts draining. For as long as your Ki bar has Ki left in it, you can cast whatever the fuck you want in SS form. For me, this is about 3 to 4 Final Flashes in 10 or so seconds. Enough to wreck anyone but a boss character in two solid hits or less. (With I'm Elite! so Vegeta's powers are stronger.)

I'm guessing this doesn't scale all that well toward tougher boss guys, but then again, the invincibility frame is quick and so far I haven't seen it interrupted, so it's a good way to do maximum damage ASAP. On the downside, you're stamina drained after it's over, so, GL with that. If it's the right situation to use it, there won't be anyone left alive to trouble you anyways. I just did the entire Fierce Battle Ginyu Force! mission including Frieza, with just one partner (albiet Cell...) in under 5 minutes. Most of the Ginyu force couldn't even take one blast, let alone 6 in one and a half minutes. I suspect there's better SS forms out there that are more balanced, but fuck me if this one isn't great for clearing PQs in a couple of minutes.

Ok, just earned regular Super Saiyan (by blasting the fuck out of Goku, and it was still a close call) and that one actually describes what SS does. So I guess SSV, for now, is just better but I know there are other forums out there. I can push 5 Final Flashes in a row if I don't have to chase guys down. So. Broken.

[Neonivek]

The Super Saiyans just flat out breaking the game is unfortunately nothing new... it is rather typical of DBZ games and in my opinion one of the many nooses hanging around the series necks.

In that the series CONSTANTLY goes "Well, this character is stronger so we should make this FIGHTING GAME CHARACTER stronger... and this character is weaker we should make him weaker" or overvalues transformations.

I think Budokai didn't even attempt to balance itself until the third game... and Tenchaichi was flat out broken and under developed in spite its fanbase.

Hercule is probably the character I keep going back to because in the first Budokai game... he was actually amazing in that he was a joke character but a lethal one based around making sure you never had any guage. While Videl was also a joke character but one who had one great super move.

After that? NOPE!

[Putnam]

Yeah, it's actually kind of odd. You look at the best characters in Budokai 3, even, and it's:

Omega Shenron (final villain from GT, so OBVIOUSLY should be strongest)
Cell (he's tall n' got a crapload of charge moves)
Piccolo (see Cell)

So that's slightly varied, but Omega Shenron's still on top.

[Neonivek]

Don't forget that Cell and Piccolo both have transformations out the wazoo.

[Putnam]

Piccolo only got the two.

Also, they sorta tried with transformations in Budokai 3. In Budokai 1, Super Saiyan Goku was stronger than Super Saiyan 2 Gohan because Gohan only had two transformations while Goku had 4. They made it more consistent in 3.

...But transformations were still way important. Though Uub was pretty damn good despite not having any.

[Neonivek]

They always usually had 1 or 2 characters who didn't need transformations to be good.

Metal Cooler TENDED to be consistent in the games in terms of being good in spite of it... mind you usually not out of the gate.

Now if you want characters who were usually pretty bad I'd probably say the Androids 18, 17, 16... No transformations and no method of charging up blasts.

Or if you want a character who is almost always bad... Nappa and Raditz.

I am probably the only person who always wanted a sort of "Historical inaccurate Super Saiyan" form of those two. Even in a game like this which is ABOUT defying time and space... I am surprised there isn't any.

Seriously I'd love a "If this character was still relevant" versions of all the weak characters.

[nenjin]

Welp, Saiyans are even more broken.

Turns out if you use Full Power Charge while you're in Super Saiyan form (melee attacks in SS form do not generate Ki), you can keep the Ultimate Train rolling.....pretty much indefinitely. Downside is you need to stop probably every 20 seconds and power up again, or you risk losing the form. But it effectively reduces the game down to two moves for me. Although that's easier said than done in some of the later missions. (Cell games, OMFG. 8 enemies + Hercule, 4 of them SS2 or better.)

Funnily enough though, Picollo is the worst. I forget what the move is called, but I remember it way back from Budokai. The one that makes orbs everywhere then you freeze and they home in on you and explode you.

It's a little weird that I'm struggling on Late Cell Saga PQs but the story has moved on and back to....Early Cell Saga and Android. I'm not quite sure why the Cell Games trumped the Android Saga in the storyline, unless I'm misremembering things. I'll give the game credit though. Just when I think I've broken its back, it stacks up more and more stuff. I'm sure the Broly PQs are going to be absolute murder.

Seriously I'd love a "If this character was still relevant" versions of all the weak characters.

At least in the story missions, guys scale pretty well. Like I said, Picollo is still a monster. But you're right. In the end it's DBZ and a character's power level roughly equals what season they're in. FWIW, I think it's basically possible to make higher level versions of them. You may not look the same but you can have all their moves and use the same perks they do to even further super power their stuff. And then you add your levels on top of that. I don't think there's a way to play as the story characters and get to tweak their gear and stuff, unfortunately.

[Neonivek]

If I had to guess why Piccolo is so strong still... It would probably be because he is too popular for them to completely tank him.

[BFEL]

If you want mostly balanced characters you want the Raging Blast games. While transformations could still be totally OP it was more "you can build each transform as totally different and thus be more versatile" instead of just "now you're stupid strong"

There were still weaker characters (namely the unfortunate Nappa and characters like Chiaotzu) but characters generally could be played as 1000x stronger then they actually were if you have skills. Raditz is actually pretty decent in those games for example.

Actually you just want the Raging Blast games because they are amazing in every way. If they had character creation I never would have bought XV because they would just be better then anything else DBZ could ever be.

EDIT: just found the name of my Ultimate that I've been plugging "Explosive Assault" its pretty awesome.

[Cthulhu]

Man, I extended demoed this and it's really tough not to buy it.  I might see if there isn't a spring sale soon.

I'm a Saiyan named Kakakarrotkake, focusing heavily on melee and strike supers, but I probably would do something else if I actually got it.  It's pretty fun though I dunno, it feels kind of short?  That's not the right word.  Strike combos seem pretty limited and the charge attacks don't always work as intended.  Environmental damage is also pretty limited as mentioned and that's a problem in a game like this.  I don't feel like I ever have the opportunity to just go fucking ham on a dude.  I've come close, me and Goku slamjammed all over Vegeta in the second Time Patrol mission but still, I dunno

I'm gonna fire up the PS2 one again and see the differences, see if it's really as different as it feels.

Also you can't power up?  It's not a DBZ game without two guys screaming at each other until they catch on fire.

We could punch each other online though if I actually got it.  How fun is the multiplayer?  Good latency and all?

[ggamer]

My favourite dbz game is and forever will be Budokai Tenkaichi 3. I know a lot of purists absolutely despise it because it isn't a tekken style fighter like the Budokai series, but good golly gosh is it fun. IIRC there are somewhere around 150 characters, with almost every fighter shown in the series (every fighter, the weakest being hercule and chi-chi), as well as a few from GT and a handful from Dragon Ball.

And another thing: the characters are pretty fucking broken, but in a good way, I suppose. Each character has a set amount of raw power, which means that if someone is playing Burter vs SSJ4 Gogeta there's likely going to be a curbstomp incoming. However, this doesn't extend past raw damage for ki attacks and supers (and melee, maybe); so, if you understand how to play a character well then matchups like Android 18 vs SSJ4 Gogeta and Burter vs Super Vegeta become a hell of a lot more viable. One of my favourite matches was playing against a friend who stuck to Gogeta as his power player, and I picked 18 as a counter. Even though he could deal an absurd amount of damage with his basic super (IIRC big bang kamehameha x a gorillion or something), the fact that 18 didn't need to charge meant that I was easily able to wear him down through sheer force of attrition. I'd bet if I picked a better android (Super 17, 16 maybe) that fight would have been over quick.

TL;DR BT3 is the best Dragon Ball Z game ever. I don't really like the new ones, they place too much of an emphasis on cinematics for my taste. I'll need to check out XV to see what I think of it.

[Cthulhu]

That's what I'm playing right now, just to get a comparison.  The strike game is a lot tighter it feels like.  Nenjin was right, there's almost no point blocking in XFVCZVCJZVZ unless you can get into block before he even hits the button for his first swing.  Punchbattles last longer and feel more fluid, the powerup system is better and feels more like a dragonzball p game should feel.  And the ki stuff is all really fun too. 

This combat system and this terrain destruction along with the new one's metagame and character customization would make a weeaboo of me.

In the new one I picked Vegeta for my training cause Vegeta's the best, so now I have Galick Gun.  Having a bigass ki blast to use on knockbacks feels so much better than trying to wrangle with the wonky instant transmissions.  That reminds me, does the new one have beam clashes?  That's always the best part, I've had games in BT3 come down to beam clashes, best climax.

[nenjin]

-Energy Charge and Full Power Charge are skills you have to do PQ's to learn. They take up slots, too. So it's a trade off. Then again, between Super Saiyan and Full Power Charge, I'm only using one actual damage skill at this point anyways. When shit is so inaccurate, and in everything but the most desperate fights I can Ultimate my leisure, it just kind of invalidates every other ability except strike attacks to add into combos.

-Online has the crippling deficiency of introducing load times just for the sake of connecting to leader boards and loading in people's characters. Compared to SP where there are zero load times (for me at least) and you're not left waiting, it's kind of irritating. Two, if you disconnect from the server (which is god knows where) it boots you back to the main screen, and that happened within like 2 minutes of me going online. Release week overload, or shaky connections to a server across the world? Hard to tell, I haven't been back online since. I haven't actually tried MP yet.

-I suspect the blocking situation is more about online play than VS the AI. I think the desire was to give people the option to stamina dump everything and to be able to eat shit loads of ki blasts, but not teleport or just block spam away people's combos. Basically, I think they included block because it's an expectation, but gimped it intentionally to drive the kind of online competition they want to see, which isn't turtling. Maybe there's a lot of subtlety in the back and forth between players who are carefully reserving their stamina for that critical teleport dodge. Unfortunately, on the SP side, someone forget to tell the AI that blocking isn't something that works well for players. Possibly to enhance the difficulty. Blocking in the game now has its place, but it's almost exclusively about ki blasts. I dunno. Blocking is just so shit it has to be intentional.

-For getting a roll on a guy...it's hard to tell if they play by the same stamina rules as players do. Guys definitely get guard broken. But like, Goku Kaioken x20? That motherfucker will use Spirit Explosion pretty much every 6 seconds, truncating how much you can DPS him, and there's no way in hell you're going to guard break him. I ended up using Super Vegeta to just Final Flash his ass back to the stone age, it was the only way to win the PQ with keeping someone at x health when Goku is beaten. And he could STILL block 70% of it sometimes, guard break and take a little damage, then dive right back into the fight full power. Wailing on him would have taken forever and spirit explosion (god I hate those abilities in the hands of the AI) will just chip away at your HP and the best you can do is teleport dodge it. And then he can just drop a Super Kamehameha on you, and take 60% of your health.

-So whether or not some guys are vulnerable to long combos is kind of a matter of two things: is the AI tooled up to block half your attacks, and do they have redonk amounts of stamina to block all day with no problems, or fire off those defensive AoEs? You get the most ki from taking damage, I think, so eventually you have to expect that after a certain number of attacks, even the weakest character using the best AI that has one of those attacks will use it as soon as they are able. So they kind of built in the systems for players to escape getting a train run on them by other players...and the AI mercilessly exploits that too.

-Anyways, I can usually get a good roll going on guys by exploiting the heavy attack part of a combo, which I don't charge, and it seems to give me a nice finisher kick or punch that sends guys flying. You Dragon Rush after them and weak attack into them while rushing, that engages another combo you can start, which you quickly dump a strike attack into, or a point blank ki blast. If that sends them flying, you follow up and do it all again. But against harder guys (basically starting in the Cell Saga) that stops cutting it. Some guys aren't paralyzed anymore while you're hitting them, so they attack you back in the middle of your combo and then do massive damage with one of their's. If you can dodge out of it and not end up back in it, you can usually execute on a combo or move in retaliation before the AI flips the "fuck you" switch again. Sometimes they'll go flying and you can bounce them around a bit, sometimes they aren't having any of it. PQs tend to have easier AIs and characters in them, they're not broken for dramatic effect....usually. But basically any time you're fighting a pissed off Saiyan or a villain of the series in an important moment, their AI is probably tweaked and they're doing something crazy like what I describe above with Goku. At that point it starts becoming all about Ki Blasts and Super Attacks that won't leave you sitting directly in front of the enemy so they can hand you your ass. You combo because you have to, to build some Ki and open them up for a finisher. But it's a losing proposition to actually stand and fight a lot of them, because they will block, if they even need to, and you will not. You also have to start relying on consumables to keep up (Vegeta's last mastery test was painful at like Lvl. 37) because one well executed combo or ultimate can put you in danger.

-Charge attacks aren't broken per se to me, the AI is just excellent at exploiting the wind up. They also only guard break. They do not send guys flying. They are essentially worthless vs the AI in my mind. Another thing for online players to strategize around, but does you dick in SP that I've seen so far. I expected them to work like in Budokai where you could kinda seamlessly layer them into combos. But no. I just mash buttons and know to mash the RMB when I want them to go away.

-I have not yet seen beam clashes. Beam attacks in general seem to travel fast so it's hard to react to them too. I know that "super fast melee exchanges" or "burst fighting" or whatever you call it are literally just an animation, the weaker character seems to take a smidgeon of damage, and both combatants get a couple bars of Ki instantly. (They're also invincible while it's happening and anyone that makes contact with the AoE of the struggle gets slapped.) So it wouldn't surprise me if Beam Clashes just aren't a thing that can happen. There's definitely power superiority rules. Like beams will pierce through burst ki attacks, and Vegeta's Big Bang will cut straight through Galick Gun. In general though, the positioning is so loose in XVABC123ICUP, and it's really de-emphasized cutscene wind ups to the attacks, that maybe they just thought people wouldn't be standing still long enough for it to happen. It's something that could be tested in MP.

-I also went Vegeta first, because he is the best. You can move on to other masters when you've completed his training. After him I went to Krillin just to get his training out of the way, and the difference between their styles is just hilarious. You need a A rating at least before Vegeta thinks you're even worth a shit. Krillin will "Good job!" you for a C, and kiss your ass starting at like A.

I'll be playing Friday night probably, I'll hop on if you want to give MP a whirl. Some of those PQs would be way, way easier to get a Z rating with another human player, instead of AI.

[Cthulhu]

I kind of like that aspect of it, it's refreshing.  The last thing, that is.  Half Life 2 would be the epitome of the usual approach to that kind of thing, where Alyx cups your balls for flipping switches and shooting a thing with a gun that can't miss.

Then you get to this and ask Piccolo to train you and he's like "alright, let's fight, if you live you can be my apprentice, if you die then it doesn't matter" and Raditz pretty much calls you a useless asshole if you fail his mission.

I think your thing on charge attacks hits what I liked about Budokai more.  Combos can be very long and pretty freeform, this one feels like combos end up being five or six hits at most, usually ending with a launchaway that you can instant transmission into but it never tells you how to actually do that.  That's why I just galick gun or kamehameha them.

EDIT:  Another thing that disappointed me was the scouters.  As soon as I got one I was like oooh shiit this is gonna be sweet but it wasn't.  It seems like a pretty big oversight to not throw in some power levels like in the show.  The info is useful but just a fun "Power Level: 9001" for flavor would've been fun.

Also I really want Ginyu's milky blast.  That thing kicks all kinds of ass in close quarters.