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Game Review: Dragonball GT: Final Bout

Geek Specs:

Title:	Dragonball GT: Final Bout
Platform:	Playstation
Genre:	Fighter/Beat'em up
Developer:	Bandai
Publisher:	Bandai
Release:	1996

Introduction: After many games covering the Z series of Dragon Ball, Bandai decided to make a game about the story of the GT series. It is in many ways similar to the early Playstation Dragon Ball game, Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22, and it enhances its estetic side - graphic and sound. Like DBZ:UB22, however, it lacks something really related to the manga/anime side. Again, the image of Dragon Ball is crippled by a mediocre fighting game. To understand better what this means, continue reading the review.

Review: As with DBZ: Ultimate Battle 22, in Final Bout there's a beautiful and well animated introduction video, which presents the main characters. After the game begins, you can access the various modes of the game: Arcade, Two Players, Tournament and Build Up. The first defect that you find in this game is that you have only a few characters at the beginning, and you can obtain some new players after you beat the arcade; but there's not a save function, so, unless you use the cheats, you will be constricted to beating the game every time you want all the players. Returning to the main structure of the game, Final Bout is made by fixed, bad-drawn, backgrounds with a 3D floor and the characters, the only side of the graphic that reaches a good level, are completely in 3D.

These mediocre graphics accompany the gameplay, that is really poorly designed and, although is easy to use, is too slow and really worse than the one of Ultimate Battle 22. As I said, the charachters are really slow and they answer to the commands too late. Futhermore, you can easily beat the enemy by continuously repeating a few moves and he can't react to your attack. The best aspect of the gameplay is that you can fly wherever you want, as in the show, giving you the possibility to manage the battle in the best manner. The special moves such as Kamehameha and Big-Bang Attack are cool: every characther has got two special moves from the show, plus several combos. After a long time of using these special moves, though, they become really annoying. Also, the camera movements during these special attacks are well done. The sound is pretty good, and although the music has nothing special, it adapts well at every fighting scenario. Not to mention, the voices of the characters are really well done. They are in Japanese in the European and Japanese versions of the game, and in English in the U.S. version.

Conclusion: This game is surely worse than its prequel, and once again a mediocre game represents badly the image of Dragon Ball. Like DBZ Ultimate Battle 22 it has long battles and you can play it with your friends having lots of fun, but the single player mode is really annoying.

Ratings: (scale of 0.0 - 5.0)

Gameplay: 2.0

Graphics: 2.5

Gameplay is the worst part of this game: your characters response to commands is delayed, and they are slow! Also, the special moves are cool, but they are annoying after a long time of playing. The gameplay should be the most important part of every fighting game, but here it is really badly designed.

Graphics aren't good by any side: the floor is pixelated and made by big textures that give a bad visive effect; the backgrounds are monotone and they aren't inspired very much to the cartoon's scenarios. The characters are the only thing that is drawn well enough, but surely they can't compete with the ones of games such as Tekken 3. Although graphics doesn't make games, it always deserves to be designed well!

Sound: 3.5	Overall: 3.0
The music isn't that good, but each track fits in the fighting scenarios very well. The coolest thing about the sound are the voices: it is always cool to listen to Japanese voices (although you can't understand what they mean :).	Overall, this is one of the worst fighting games that I have ever seen, but it is still a good game to play with a friend. If you're a Dragon Ball fan or you find this game at a good price, it's worth it. Otherwise, leave it on the shelf of the videogame store.

Written by Coolvortex