Product Description

Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit is the first game of the Dragon Ball Z series to hit the PS3. The game features detailed graphics and dramatic, seamless battles, expected from a next generation console. The plans are to have characters and movement reminiscent of the animation, and high-intensity battles.

During each battle, find conditions to create new dramatic scenes. After the battles, watch a unique story unfold each time you play. There is also a stronger element of offence and defence, due to added energy saving and fighting techniques.

• Online Feature: Competition grows with the ability to play online in both the Co-Op and Vs. modes.
• Unique DBZ Story: During each battle, find conditions to create new scenes and watch a unique story unfold at the end of each game.
• Higher Quality Gaming: Experience visuals and movement reminiscent of the anime due to Z3 shading technology and detailed effects.
• High Intensity Battles: Increased speed of charge and release on the field, free movement around the field, and increased speed and power of attacks.
• Energy: Use of special skills will no longer drain energy. The lower your energy, the stronger you get, making for a possible turnaround of the battle.
• Fatal Blow: Each character in the game has their own "Fatal Blow." If the player successfully attacks his opponent, this would be a finishing move, but if not, it will put the player in the disadvantageous situation, and he must battle with no Fatal Blow for the rest of the battle.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1908 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Atari
• Released on: 2008-06-06
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Platform: PLAYSTATION 3

Customer Reviews

Great fun, but...
Great fun, but this game has a few problems.

First off if you're not a Dragonball Z fan stop, go and watch DBZ then come back. If you don't the story mode will make little sense. For DBZ fans, it very briefly skims over the story up untill the end of the Cell Saga. There are a few extras such as playing as Bardock and Brolli, but even with these it wont take you long at all to complete, few hours max.

Second, when fighting the computer it tends to have what i have termed "Boss Hax". You know what i mean, it happens in every game but it happens more frequently in Burst Limit. You think you're winning then SUPRISE! Your computer oponent will do some sort of infinate super block/dodge and a move you've never seen before, never will again and will never be able to pull off as Player 1. On the later levels the AI gets pretty annoying and just guards constantly, even when you're not attacking.

That's all the bad stuff out of the way, now onto the good.

It looks better than the anime ever could, this is the height of cell shading.

Two player battles are way more fun than the computer battles and the in fight cutscenes are a cool (sometimes annoying) edition, they make the fight feel more like an episode of DBZ and not a versus battle. The cutscenes are initiated when something happens during a fight, say, you get hit by a special move then your parnter jumps in to block it or if you get low health you attack power is raised. You unlock the cutscenes as you play the story and can equip different ones for a versus fight.

For DBZ fans this is a must, although the combat isn't perfect it's still the best DBZ game made to date because it looks so great. I know graphics dont make a great game but when you're trying to emulate anime in 3D it really adds a lot. Non-DBZ fans, don't buy this thinking it's a great beat 'em up.

"I'll make you remember how terrible I am!"
The above is a quote from Frieza in this game, and for me, this one line sums up DBZ Burst Limit perfectly.

Some of you may recall this game's developer Dimps as being the creators of the ever evolving 'Budokai' series on the PS2(And later Wii), which went from a sloppy, slow clunky fighter with the first Budokai game, to being the absolutely definitive DBZ gaming experience by the time the insanely exhaustive Budokai Tenkaichi 3 came out. However, Dimps had nothing to do with the superior Tenkaichi spin off series, just the original one, which admittedly was still fairly decent by the end, when Budokai 3 came out and built on a poor foundation a solid, deep, varied game that offered countless hours of fun.

With Burst Limit, they really do just piss away all they learned making the Budokai series and go right back to square one. This is literally just the original PS2 Budokai 1 with nicer visuals, a basic online multiplayer facility, and NOTHING ELSE!

It's a 2D fighter with barely there 3D movements thrown in once again, and combat consists of either who can button bash the fastest or who can fire their Ki attacks first. This is next gen rock, paper, scissors more than it is a fighting game most of the time. Almost no skill is required to win fights, just luck, and while they made the wise move of including some features from Budokai 3 such as the 'counter teleport' to keep things moving along, there simply is no getting away from how clunky and outdated every aspect of this game feels. Characters retain the same moves they all had in the most recent PSP game, Shin Budokai 2, if that helps you get an idea of how this plays... like a stripped down version of a handheld game.

There are no more character customisations, no more Cell games/Hercule bonus tournaments, no more Zenny acquiring to buy new features... just story, versus and training modes(With unlockable survival and time attack modes in their somewhere I believe as well). This game is incredibly empty feeling after the embarassment of DBZ riches offered us by every DBZ game since Budokai 3. Even the story mode has no clever 'hook' to it like a board game layout style or explorable 3D world. It is just clicking pictures on a screen to advance the story. That's all.

Even in the story mode, everything is extremely shortchanged. The cutscenes reuse shots and moves constantly, with only the character skins changing between rounds to change who is making said movements. Most of these scenes feel incredibly lazy and static, and worse, they excise practically all of the story, making this a complete mess if you don't know the plot off by heart beforehand. There aren't even any appearances by members of the cast outside the playable fighters at any point in there either, with some scenes rewritten completely to remove them. Yes, the game has more or less the same character line up as Budokai 1 once again(Though swapping Hercule out for Broly this time around), with the same glaring omissions, and once again, for some BIZARRE reason, the game covers nothing beyond the Cell saga yet again, effectively leaving the character roster at half the size it could and should have been, and proving beyond any doubt just how rushed this game is.

Online multiplayer has it's moments, with an interesting 'power levelling' system, whereby the more you win, the higher your power level gets, and the more you lose, the lower it gets. It gives decent incentive to keep fighting online I guess, but even the most skilled players are still going to be playing a glorified game of chance here. To be honest, I think the Wii version of Tenkaichi 3 was far better as an online DBZ game, despite the bare bones nature of it. It was just a far better game.

Best thing about the game is the visuals though. While not doing anything taxing, they do look very vibrant and alive running on a HD TV, with nice effects for some of the specials, and cool animations on some characters coupled with impressive backgrounds(Though there are barely any of these anyways) to create a visual treat that will keep the novelty going for a little longer I guess. Voice acting too, is of a great standard, reuniting the original english and japanese voice actors for all the characters once again to recreate scenes from the show(Tell me hearing Vegeta shout "It's over nine THOUSAND!" doesn't make you smile a little), with a soundtrack that is a lot more faithfully 'eighties anime rock' than any previous DBZ game in the West has yet managed. The presentation on this turkey at least is faultless... which I guess is why those trailers so easily suckered in me and so many others into trying the game I guess... sigh...

Overall, you need to avoid it at all costs. You'll maybe play it for a weekend and then regret your purchase big time, even with the online mode. If you really MUST play a DBZ game online though, get Tenkaichi 3 on the Wii, it'll cost you half as much as this, and will prove far more satisfying in the long run(So long as you use a Gamecube controller to play it though, and not that annoying 'remote').

If Dimps are going to continue being allowed to make DBZ games in future, then I'll be sticking with the superior Tenkaichi games for the foreseeable I think, until they get it together and make something at least matching Budokai 3... but if this is the future of DBZ games, and we're not going to see Tenkaichi continue at all, then you can count me right out of this franchise from now on.

All gloss, no substance garbage.

Satisfied!!
This game is a really good game, but i was dissapointed by three factors which really needed to be put in the game, these are:-
1) It lacks a detailed story which leaves people who have not watched the series scratching their head from not knowing the story.
2) It lacks a variety of levels to choose from, for example i would have liked to fight on Kami's lookout, king kai's planet, Planet of the Ki's etc. Even if they were just unlockables.
3) fighting cutscenes at the beginning and the end of a fight is used repetively but one can deal with this annoying factor.

personally this game is excellent in all matters except for the factors i have mentioned, it keeps you satisfied. downloadble content should be created for this game!!!