Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Dragonball Z: Kakarot Part 8 - Mystical Brohan

 Moments after this picture was taken, Vegeta went on a blistering media scrum and buried Gokou and Gohan!


Following Sopovich beating down Videl, our heroes fly off to find the Majin base. At this point I was fairly checked out of the game so I did a lot of skimming. The game also flies from this point.

Here's Dabura, who I think is supposed to be Satan in this world. He's just as strong as Perfect Cell for some reason. Not sure if that means regular Perfect Cell or the SSJ2 version of him.

But first! Our heroes must battle...Pui Pui. Who? I'm glad you asked. It's that guy from the show who looked like a fusion of Cui and a Freeza form.

Vegeta easily dispatches him (really, all of Vegeta's fights are easy) and it's on to the next Babidi challenge:

Yakon? Now I'M going "who?"

This might be one of the most forgettable minibosses in the show, despite Dabura hyping him up like he's the Ginyu Force. "Are you sure you want to unleash...Yakon??"

After that we get Dabura himself, and Gohan at least gets to do something here.

It's a quick fight, and Gohan doesn't go past SSJ1 for some reason. So I guess Dabura is equal to pre-SSJ2 Perfect Cell. Which means our heroes should be able to team up and annihilate him right about now, along with Babidi, instead of just fighting these guys one by one and then letting them run away.

And what is Kaio-Shin doing during all of this? Standing around smugly again?

Course, things finally get interesting when Vegeta succumbs to the Majin powers of Babidi. Though it can be argued that he allowed himself to succumb, because he misses his old evil self and needed an excuse to fight Gokou.

Majin Vegeta proceeds to kill the crowd, much like a Hollywood Hogan world title retention.

It's worth noting that both guys are SSJ2 now, and they take every opportunity to point out how they're stronger than SSJ2 Gohan. ...and also stronger than Gohan was against Cell, back when he didn't suck.

Yeah, they're just dumping all over Gohan, as if Videl getting beaten half to death in the previous part wasn't enough of an "lol f u" to people who liked Gohan at this point. They're making sure we know whose show this is.

Gokou vs Vegeta II. Good fight. In the show, I used to like the Saiyan Saga fight between them more, and then for a while I liked this one more. Now I'm back to liking the Saiyan Saga fight more. This one feels kind of restrained in comparison.

Vegeta is all "being evil is awesome!"

Meanwhile, all the damage output from their fight has awakened the force of nature known as...

::large cosmic shitting sounds are heard::

Kaio-Shin: "How could I have let this happen??"

I don't know, maybe by spending episode after episode standing around smugly and not telling anyone anything while Gohan and friends got brutalized in the tournament? I mean he literally let the bad guys drain Gohan.

Look at this f*****ing guy. If he were any more smug he'd disappear up his own ass.

If an ancient world-ending evil is about to be unleashed, I'd look at least slightly concerned.

The fight continues in cutscene! We have some sweet electricity here. Nowhere else in the series do you get two SSJ2s in combat, and SSJ2 is my favorite Saiyan form.

Unfortunately in the show, most of the fight is inexplicably in SSJ1. They go to 2 at the beginning, then they're 1 in all the animation until towards the end of the fight when they're 2 again. Not sure if inconsistency or if they were just holding back or what.

Next, Vegeta fights Buu. It's an easy fight like all of Vegeta's fights, but unfortunately...

...once it's over we get the cutscene where Vegeta blows himself up to stop Buu. Maybe this is some sort of attempt at redemption for all those audience members he blew up. We never get any kind of a follow-up on that. There should be an episode in Super where Vegeta is confronted by the families of a bunch of people he slaughtered, and must come to grips with the monster that he was.

This is a good scene, at least. Piccolo informs Vegeta that he won't be going to the same place as Gokou. He murdered too many people, so it's hell for him.

Probably the best scene in this whole saga.

Vegeta explodes, taking Buu with him, as everyone else somberly looks on.

And that's it, Buu is defeated, and Vegeta made the ultimate sacrifice as repentance for all of his terrible deeds.

Good game, good series.











::giant shitting sound::

Nevermind Buu is fine

One good thing about the continuation is that we get this cool scene with Gokou demonstrating the Super Saiyan forms for the bad guys.

Super Saiyan 2 has slightly different hair than 1 (spikier), bigger aura, and electricity. It's basically what SSJ should look like, fully-realized.

And then there's SSJ3 which quite literally looks like an overflow of power.

This is a very cool fight, and playing as SSJ3 is enjoyable in the rare games that allow it. Back in the 1990's we had a bunch of DBZ fighting games, and for some reason only one of them had SSJ3 (Ultimate Battle 22)

The afterimages on attacks are particularly rad to look at.

Another of the really cool things about this fight is that it plays a rendition of the "We Gotta Power" opening theme from the Japanese version of the Buu Saga.

Once Gokou fails to beat Buu, it's GOTENKS TIME. This saga is basically just a procession of increasingly-powerful characters fighting Buu one at a time and losing.

Gotenks is capable of going SSJ3 right out of the gate.

.....aaaaand SSJ3 is dead.

Buu shows up and he's getting more powerful and more evil. CAN GOTENKS STOP HIM?

Well, no, but we get a couple of good battles here. First is SSJ Gotenks vs Buu. Gotenks is even more OP than Vegeta, and can unleash this homing ghost attack that does incredible amounts of damage while also being nearly unavoidable.

Next is SSJ3 Gotenks. Has the same basic moves but does a lot more damage. Matter of fact this guy way outguns Buu. Course, he finds a way to F it up and lose.

Next up: Mystical Gohan vs Buu! They whipped out a new form to make Gohan a threat again outta nowhere, mainly so Buu could defeat him. Regardless, we get another fun fight here.

...not a whole lot else to say. This last saga is just a bunch of fights, pretty much. The RPG components went out the window once the Saiyaman part ended.

Buu proceeds to absorb Gotenks and become...Buutenks?

Imagine if Gogeta and Gotenks fused to become Gogitenks. That'd be like the ultimate character in all of Dragonball continuity.

Gohan fights the new Buutenks. It's another fight, no big whoop, no major differences. Only thing now is that Gohan actually loses the post-fight cutscene. So yet again our heroes failed to stop Buu as he just keeps absorbing them. What's next, Vegeta letting Buu power up more on purpose?

...naw, this saga is dumb, but not that dumb.

Speaking of, Vegeta has joined Gokou in the afterlife. Wait, weren't they going to two different places? Regardless, this allows the now-humbled Kaio-Shin to equip them with fusion earrings and become...

...Vegeto, the strongest character in DBZ. He's generally regarded as stronger than Gogeta, despite being the same basic thing, due to using the Potaru Earrings to fuse instead of a basic Fusion Dance.

Vegeto is a lot of fun to play as, like SSJ3 Gokou. You only get to do it for this one battle....but it's a damn good battle.

I wish more games let you play as Vegeto. As much as I don't like this saga, it has a couple of characters who legitimately feel really special to play as.

Once Vegeto fails to stop Buu (because of course he does) you get a few final battles with different characters against Kid Buu. Ultimately it falls to Gokou to finish the job (of course).

Buu unleashes a massive Death Ball! It's worth noting that we're fighting on Kaio-Shin's planet because Earth can't contain a battle of this magnitude. Also because F Kaio-Shin

I unleash a Genki-Dama of my own!

Here's the actual final battle. It's a fight, like all the others in this saga. No big whoop.

Afterwards, Buu's silly-putty lookin' ass gets annihilated with a giant Genki Dama.

I like how you see a few rarely-spotted characters lending their power to the Genki Dama, like Bora and Upa from Dragonball. Upa is now grown-up. That's great.

Then they revive everyone, as Kakarot limps to a close.

BUT WAIT! There are some DLCs to check out, so I'm not done yet. Wasn't planning on it, but I don't really want this to limp across the finish line. It's a good game and deserves a solid ending.

We've got:

-History of Trunks: The future story about the android scourge...and a whole lot more. That's right, this one takes off into unexpected territory and covers quite a bit, as a side-quel to the main game.

-Battle of Gods: Unsure if this is based on the movie or the first saga of the Super TV show that it spawned. Regardless, it picks up at the end of the main game and increases the level cap.

-Resurrection F: Again, unsure which version it's based on. This is the endgame DLC, with the highest levels and the toughest opponents.

$25 gets you all three which is a bit high for DLCs that take a combined 5 hours or so to get through. However, this game built up enough good-will that I'd say it's worth it. We'll see how that goes.


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