Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 Review

Number of characters in the game Dragonball Z Tenkaichi 3 :

- 97 characters, 161 in total if we count the transformed forms and the fusions.
- Giant characters are playable.
- It is possible to customize the characters with potaras to make them more powerful.
- A character can begin a fight in his base form or transformed.
- More than 30 arenas / maps are availables.
- by collecting the 7 Dragon Balls, the player can make a wish and unlock additional stages, characters, potaras or money.

The game modes availables in Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 :

The classic 1VS1 duel mode is here of course and it includes the possibility to play against another human player or to let both characters being controlled by the CPU.

5VS5 Team battles can also be fought but with only two characters fighting at the same time. And by that I mean, when a character fight, he can switch with another character from his team. Also if Goku and Vegeta are in the same team (same for Kid Trunks and Songoten), they can fuse during the fight.

Another good game mode is the tournaments mode : It contains 5 differents tournament : The classic Budokai Tenkaichi Tournament with the ring out, the Cell Games which take place in the Cell Tournament Arena and in final you have to fight Cell, as well as some special tournaments like the Yamcha Tournament which take place on random maps and where the game choose randomly the character you will fight with in the tournament.

There are also the missions 100 which is a mode where you have to fight various team of fighters, some of them being balanced and some of them specialized (Evil Team, Swordsmen team, ect ...),

Another game mode is the Dragon Sim Mode where you have to choose a fighter in his base form, train, meet peoples and fight opponents. This is an excellent game mods full of mini games.

And finally there is the story mode where the player has to complete the Dragon Ball History.

PS : For thoses who have Tenkaichi 1 and Tenkaichi 2, it is possible to unlock additional missions and potaras with the Disc Fusions function.

How many characters the game has

Tenkaichi 3 has 97 playable characters (161 if you count all the transformations and fusions).
Most of the characters are from Dragon Ball Z but there are also characters from the Dragon Ball era, the movies and Dragon Ball GT too.
All the characters can be customized with Z-Items to make them more powerful and also if he wants to, the player can start a match with the transformed versions of the characters or with the fusion characters (but if you do so, the fusion characters will be nerfed, to keep the game balanced).

The characters of Dragon Ball Z Tenkaichi 3.

The maps of Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3

Tenkaichi 3 has 23 unique arenas and 36 arenas if you count their different versions as some of them are available during the day, the evening and the night.

And the time (day, evening and night) can impact the fights, especially for the saiyans as they can transform into Oozarus in the middle of the fights in the Night versions of the map.

The gameplay

The game uses a 3/4 view camera and the characters are free to move everywhere in large arenas.

As it is possible to lose sight of the opponent, when two human players fight each others on the same console, the screen is split in two.

All characters have a wide range of melees attacks : Each character's form has 180 punches and kicks plus two grab moves (one when the opponent is lying down on the ground), 2 special abilities (like the Taiyoken or the Kaioken) and three super moves (Like Kamehameha, Masenko,...).
The game isn't only famous because it has so many characters : It is also popular for its wide numbers of super moves and the quality of its gameplay.

Characters Customization

All characters can be customized by adding Z items into their skills tray.
You can give them various bonuses like slow life regeneration, more lifebars, boost their stats in all maps or only in some maps, etc.
For example, if you put the Z item "Namek Power" in a character's skills tray, if a match takes place in the Planet Namek arena and only in the Namek arena, he will have his stats boosted.