Whilst diehards will revile my blasphemy, I couldn’t have made it through such a comprehensive campaign with subtitles if there wasn’t an English option. It’s driven by a delightfully faithful art style with a blend of fully voiced cinematics, in English or Japanese, classic RPG in-game text chat and snippets of narrative overlaid on still images. The audience is already acutely familiar with the narrative, so there’s no need to get bogged down in the detail. While it can feel abrupt at times, this fast-forward retelling was the right way to go. Having not revisited the full story in years, it served its purpose to jog my memory - especially with some of the smaller details that are still highlighted - but there were a few moments I was anticipating, only to have them pass by in an instant or be omitted entirely. It knows when to slow down for the goosebump story beats, but for the most part the main missions move at a frantic pace and skim over key plot points either through text between cutscenes or single lines of dialogue that summarise events in 12 seconds that spanned 12 episodes in the anime. So whilst it’s largely familiar material, it’s a somewhat new way to experience it - at least new on this scale.Īssumed knowledge is mandatory, and developer CyberConnect2 doesn’t attempt to retell a story you already know, but rather recap it.
This approach puts the world of Dragon Ball Z and evolving relationships between its characters at the forefront, nudging ahead of the conflicts and story we’ve seen before. It’s distinctly split into the Saiyan, Frieza, Cell and Buu Sagas, with smaller arcs filling gaps, and clear intermissions between each with encouragement to take a break from the main story to gain EXP and delve into the considerable optional extras. Kakarot does an admirable job of condensing 291 episodes into a more palatable 30-35 hour single-player adventure - considerably more if you choose to heavily invest in side missions. That allows us to absorb the larger world of Dragon Ball Z that was so prevalent in the anime, but often overlooked in the games, in a fully fledged action role-playing game.
Yet, it steps back and removes the magnifying glass from the frantic fighting that normally dominates game adaptations. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot finally delivers the console experience I always wanted playing The Legacy of Goku series on Game Boy Advance. It retreads a familiar story and reconstructs iconic battles we committed to memory in childhood.
0 kommentar(er)
