Thursday, October 1, 2026

Dragonball Z Kakarot Part 18 - -DAIMA- Adventure Through The Demon Realm PART 1

 

I thought Kakarot was done. This surprisingly deep action-RPG has had no less than EIGHT DLCs added to it at this point. Most of them are fairly lengthy, too, feeling more like expansions or standalone small games than mere updates. This is the biggest one yet (and might be the last, though they've said that before), covering the Dragonball Daima series. It's actually split into two DLCs (#7 and #8), costing $10 each (or $15 for both), with the first being the more RPG-like open world of the Demon Realm and the second being all of the major fights that occured near the end of the top-heavy Daima show. While the Daima Part 1 DLC is very middle of the pack for Kakarot DLCs, I've heard Daima Part 2 called the best DLC they've made.

Daima itself is a super ridiculous series full of plotholes, with a lighthearted plot and nothing really serious or dark happening. It was a fun thing to watch, even if I'm not really sure why it exists. Was anyone really demanding a mid-quel taking place between Z and Super at this point? And one that creates a bunch of plotholes in Super. Well, let's go.









This starts with, get this, a twenty minute long cutscene. They literally recreated the first episode of Daima in the game engine. That's unnecessary... and impressive effort.

To sum up Daima... It takes place after DBZ ends, and takes place in the Demon World (the source of Majin Buu, and the plane previously ruled over by Dabura). The clown dwarf is the main antagonist and new Demon King, Gomah, who is Dabura's brother (surprised he looks nothing like Dabura). His assistant is Degesu, Kaioh Shin's brother.

They're also joined by the seedy Dr. Arinsu, Kaioh Shin's sister. Where did she get her medical license? And why are all these people related?

In any case, these are the bad guys. When the Demon King is defeated, the title passes on to whoever killed them, or the next in line to it. Dabura was slain by Buu, so technically Buu became the Demon King at that point. Then Buu was annihilated by Gokou. So...Gokou should be the Demon King? But no, he isn't here, so I guess it falls back to Dabura's next of kin. Once Gomah became Demon King, he ushered in an ERA OF TYRANNY and the Demon Realm is now terrible to live in. ...was it Club Med before?

Not to spend too much time on the story because anyone interested in it should just watch Daima, but this is definitely the Dragonball show that people are the least-familiar with. I know it flew under my radar. Long story short, Gomah sees images of Earth's Mightiest Heroes defeating Buu, and worries that powerful folk like that could come here and overthrow him. So he decides to strike first by going to Earth, gathering their Dragonballs, and....

...wishing for all of our heroes to be turned into kids so they're no longer a threat to the Demon Realm. Yeah.

Annnnd now they're all kids. Which means now they have to go to the Demon Realm to get the Underworld Dragonballs and wish themselves back to their normal forms. So...Gomah just forced them to have to go to his realm when they were previously never going to know he existed. It's just like Highlander 2 and now General Katana brought about his own demise via Plothole.

Oh yeah, quick Plothole Patch here for another of the plotholes that are popping up by the minute. The Eternal Dragon says he only gives three wishes to his regulars, so Gomah only gets one. His second wish, to give himself a magical bullshit belt that makes him all-powerful, is going to have to wait until some other time I guess.

As for our heroes, their only guide on their journey is Glorio, this exceedingly-bored Majin who is basically the stand in for DBGT Trunks, since Trunks isn't gonna be in this. No Goten or Gohan either. Goten and Trunks are now babies because of the spell, and Gohan never even gets referenced LOL. The post-Cell Dragonball series sure hates Gohan's guts. He's like a new protagonist trying to get over in Hulk Hogan era WWF. Ironically his name is an anagram of Hogan, but make no mistake, Gokou is the Hulkster of this series Brotherr.

The first team going into the Demon Realm is Gokou, Kaioh Shin, and Glorio, via Glorio's ship. Glorio's objective is to lead them to the Dragonballs and hope they're strong enough to beat their guardians. A little later, Vegeta and Piccolo can follow via another ship that has to be repaired by Bulma.

Travel to the Demon Realm requires flying into the mouth of these giant floating puffer fish called "Warp-sama". Seriously, their name is Warp-sama.

The DLC finally gets started. First thing that jumps out is that the Demon Realm has oppressive atmosphere, so no one can fly here. In battles there's some limited "flying" from their leaping around great distances, but flight as a method of travel is out. This immediately makes the world a lot bigger, since you have to hoof it around.

Most of the random fights in this realm are against cave trolls and Gendarmerie (Gomah's troops) and nothing poses much of a threat. Grinding in this game is pretty unnecessary because boss fights give massive EXP, so I tend to avoid the random fights for the most part.

The Demon World is divided into three sections. It's like a Russian nesting doll where each world is inside of the next one, and only Warp-sama can go between them via a giant hole in the world.

The outer, and largest, plane of the world is the Third World, where all of the poor and destitute Majin species live. Like trolls and whatnot. Everybody here just sort of gets by and it's a lawless feudal land. A few kingdoms are the only place with any sort of order.

The Second World is basically Namek. It looks like Namek and it has the same ecology as Namek. It's basically deserted now, but it's where the Namekians lived before they left the Demon World and founded their own world on Namek. So this finally connects the "Demon King Piccolo" story in Dragonball to the Namek story in Z. Turns out the Namekians WERE demons!

The First World is the smallest, and the home of the richest and most powerful Majin. Supreme Kai's race is from here, so a lot of folks sorta look like Kaiohshin and Degesu. It's also the home of Dabura's species and the place where new Majin are created. It's a very lawful evil and orderly place.

Combat may be ground based, but it's a lot of fun thanks to Gokou's Power Pole and how you can whack everyone with it. This is the first time Kakarot has really had Original Dragonball-like combat/physics with Kid Gokou, since the only DLC based in that series was the final arc with adult Gokou. So I see why they chose this to be the last (?) DLC season.

Before long they meet Pansy, a Demon Realm princess who lives in one of the smaller outlying kingdoms. She's 100% a stand-in for DBGT Pan, with a very similar personality. At first glance I expected her to be annoying, but she's actually an unexpected delight and a likeable character.

So now we've got Kid Gokou, Not-Trunks, Not-Pan. It's a DBGT reunion tour! Shin being here is the only real difference, and his presence adds a lot. He's from the First Demon World (while the other two are from the Third World) and his knowledge of the Demon World can add a lot of context that they don't have.

::Spaceballs marching theme plays as our heroes march through the wastelands::

One thing that I was hoping wouldn't return from other DLCs: Horde Battles. These started being a thing in the Resurrection F DLC, and they're still annoying. Basically you're just fighting a huge pack of weak enemies all at once. They're easy fights and they just go on and on.

Luckily special moves can usually take out a few of them at once, plus this DLC adds some new Horde Mode moves that can clear out 40-70 foes in one shot once you charge a meter enough. Regardless, here's a decent shot of the Kamehameha.

In Kakarot there are several versions of the Kamehameha that unlock from story progression, each one bigger than the last. Daima here starts you with the basic one, and by the end of this DLC you can graduate to the Super Kamehameha. Part 2 has the even later ranks.

Here's Pansy's dad, King Kadan. Everyone is shocked that Gokou is strong enough to fight off hordes of Gendarmerie at once. He might just have a chance against Gomah! I mean, Gomah looks about as tough as Babidi, at best.

Gokou's next mission: Fight the Tamagami of the Third World. AKA the guardian of this world's Dragonball. Every time anyone says this I read it as "Tamagotchi"

Also, everyone is wondering what the seedy Dr. Arinsu is plotting during all of this. She's the "third faction" that adds a bit of intrigue to this story.

After Gokou's fight with Majin Buu, apparently the seedy Dr. Arinsu could be seen scraping Buu's DNA off of the rocks. I guess there wasn't enough of it for him to start to re-form or anything.

Maybe plot hole but don't worry about it

A significant issue with the rest of Kakarot pops up again here. The hardest fights in this game are the training fights that have to be done to unlock new abilities. Usually the fights far outpace your character on levels at the time they unlock. So you have to either wait a bit to get the new ability, or beat your head on a very difficult fight and try to get it done. These training fights are a lot harder than the main story fights, and it seems kind of backwards. The training fights should be pretty doable and just function as...training. like why am I fighting three clones of SSJ Gokou here when I don't even have the form unlocked yet? How about just... One clone?

Another issue: What is going on with food items in this game? They boost stats... Except your stat numbers are so incredibly high that adding +2 HP increments to your million HP pool just feels absolutely ridiculous. Even if one had lots of money to raid the shops and stockpile thousands of these, it would have almost no point.

Here's the key to winning in Kakarot, across the board, in the main game and pretty much any DLC: Stock up on healing items, put them on shortcut keys, and don't be afraid to use them up during fights. You can always get more heals than you need or can possibly burn through in this game, so go nuts.

In the main world heals are from medicines and Senzu Beans, here the heals are from these Energy Bugs native to the Demon Realm.

Overworld map. The Demon Realm is big, about the size of a particularly large WoW zone. And with a similar design: Most of the NPCs and things to do are clumped up in a few specific hub spots, with the rest being largely empty space roamed by enemies. This is just the Third World, so presumably the other two worlds will be in the second DLC. The First World is where Gomah resides. Also, for anyone just joining us: Each of the three worlds has a single Dragonball guarded by a super powerful machine that even Gomah can't do anything about. Combine the trio and that's all one needs for the dragon here.

For some reason the south most island seems to be off limits and greyed out. Looks like it's all mountains anyway. It might just be here for flavor. Why though? There would probably be other greyed out islands if that were the case. It feels like some sort of hidden area, or maybe unfinished content that got dropped.

En route to the Tamagami, we learn that Shin was spored from a tree. His entire race is born from this tree and only one birth happens every few centuries. They live forever though so that helps a bit with population numbers. This would have actually been some good world-building for the Realm of Gods if this show had happened before Dragonball Super did. We also learn that Kai's real name is Nahare. Which means Supreme Kai is just a title, and Kaioh Shin is just a badass-sounding name he calls himself so he can seem cool.

This leads to one of the two big battles in Part 1: A giant minotaur shows up to challenge our heroes! ...and then Glorio and Gokou fight over who should deal with it. Glorio is skeptical that Gokou is really as powerful as everyone says, and he's a fairly strong Majin in his own right.

The minotaur just sort of stands there feeling insulted and ignored while our heroes battle it out to determine who gets to face him. This is like a tournament where one member of the final round fluked their way to it and everyone knows the real championship battle is the semifinal on the other side.

Glorio is actually a pretty tough boss fight, and you have to fight him twice. Well, he would be tough if I didn't have so many healing items that nothing can possibly beat me. I'm still trying not to burn through those because funds are limited, so him putting me through the paces is notable. His deadliest move is this giant purple electric beam that looks awesome.

For the second fight with him, Gokou goes Super Saiyan for the first time in this story. From here on out, you can do this transformation any time in battles. And it...

...is...

...awesome.

The minotaur, at this point, is like "yeah I'm out of here"

Every move has 3 levels of power. The initial move, a 25% boost, and a further 25% boost. These levels usually cost almost nothing from skill point pool, so immediately upon getting any new move it's important to go to the skill tree and max it out at level 3 for the +50% boost. The requirements are so minimal that I'm not even sure what the point is, outside of making sure players go to the skill menu more often. Players who don't will just go through the game at a big disadvantage unnecessarily.

Speaking of which, I discovered here that pressing R1 on the Skill Palette (where you set which special attacks are active on shortcut keys) brings you to the "Know-How" screen, where passive skills can be equipped.

All this time, over the main game and all the other DLCs, I thought passive skills were just automatic. At least, I think I did...I played most of this years ago. Well, turns out passive skills aren't automatic, they have to be equipped. Oh, so it's a choice then? Have to decide which passives to go with? ...Except there are as many equip slots as there are total passives to learn, so you can equip literally all of the passive skills.


........why not just have them be automatic then? This means that I've been going through the game without any of my passives equipped for a while now, despite learning all of them pretty early because they're all good.

After more journeying, our heroes arrive at the town where the Tamagotchi resides. This place feels like something you'd find at the edge of the Sahara, a trading post built on an ancient ruin from an age no one remembers. The sunset always falling right in the town arch adds to the mystical feeling of this place.

Time for the second big boss fight of this DLC. I make sure to get the Super Kamehameha, and that plus the SSJ transformation should do it for this. The Spirit Bomb is also learnable at this point, but it isn't very good at base form. It takes too long to charge up and throw, and doesn't do nearly enough damage to justify the trouble of doing it. There are bigger, stronger Spirit Bomb forms later that become worth it, but I think I'll stick to the basics and the Kamehamehas for this DLC.

There's the Dragonball, in the chest of...

...Tamagotchi #3!

He wields an awesome mallet, and is exceedingly powerful - at least as powerful as Majin Buu, they make sure to point out. There's a reason nobody in this realm can collect these 'Balls. Maybe Buu could have on a good day but that's about it.

I waste no time and go right to Super Saiyan. In all honesty SSJ3 should have just been employed for this fight but we all know how Gokou likes to waste time.

It's a challenging fight, and with the sunset in the background, it looks awesome. I made it more challenging than I needed to by trying to hold back on my use of healing items... turns out there's no need for that, they're all lost when the DLC switches over to Part 2 anyway. So I could have burned through them all on this fight, which would have made it no problem.

Time for the SUPER KAMEHAMEHA.

...HA. Now that looks more like a real Kamehameha.

Kakarot really is a good game. An RPG/Fighting hybrid in a way that I'm not sure any other game has ever been. There's a reason I keep going back to it every time it gets new content added.

What follows is the Tamagami making Gokou play a shell game with the Dragonball before he can have it. I was hoping this would be a minigame that I had to play out and get right myself, but nope, it's all cutscene. The Tamagami are tricksy, and defeating them is never enough. Always have to solve some sort of puzzle or riddle as well.

If you're wondering who built the Tamagami, and how formidable they must be to build something so powerful... they were built by Neva, the one Namekian that still resides here. He knows all the tricks, like Dragonball summoning, and was the reason Gomah was able to get the Earth 'Balls so easily. Neva isn't a fighter or anything though, and he's quite old. He just sorta does what the Demon King asks him to do and then sods off back to his retirement home.

Elsewhere, Degesu delivers a report to Gomah. It looks like the super-powerful people they went and messed with for no reason...are now here in their realm and headed straight for them. WHOOPS.

Gomah regrets not going straight to his second wish and making himself all-powerful by summoning the Evil Third Eye Belt. Yeah, that probably would have made a lot more sense, huh?

As for what the belt is, it's a magical relic made by Dabura's father, and promptly lost forever, that gets a character from "last arcs of Z bad guy" power levels to "early arcs of Super bad guy" power levels. Like close to Golden Freeza level, or so. Well, this'll probably never come up again so don't worry about it.

And now...the seedy Dr. Arinsu:

What is she, and her magnificent breasts, up to? She's got the Buu DNA and is clearly bundling up something. Well, we'll see in Part 2.

One Dragonball down. Two to go. While our heroes head for the Second World and the second Ball, the seedy Dr. Arinsu seems to be trying to find a way to get the First World's Ball. For what purpose, though? Also, Vegeta and Piccolo are now on their way. With most of the bizarre plot explanations out of the way, in Part 2 I'll be able to just focus on the fights, as our heroes try to get their adult bodies back and overthrow Gomah. Supposedly Part 2 is the best DLC they've done yet. We'll see in a minute here.

Other Kakarot Posts - Wild how at this point the DLCs added to the game have more posts (and runtime) than the actual main game does.




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