Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 review

Controls aside, Tenkaichi 2 piles on some cool new features. The battles are a lot more dramatic now that your characters can turn the tables by transforming into blond supermen, giant apes or other monsters mid-match. Pick the right tag team, and you'll even be able to combine them into one super-powerful fighter to kick colossal heaps of ass.

The only problem is that, even with a roster of 130 characters (which, to be fair, includes all those cool transformations), they all kind of play the same. That cuts down on the already steep learning curve, sure, and a few combatants are dramatically different than others, but unless you start busting out the special moves and combos, your fighters feel interchangeable.

The good news is that you can customize and beef up their abilities a bit by giving them "Z-items," which can either boost things like speed and attack power, or can grant special abilities like healing. The Z-items add a surprising amount of depth to the game; since they gain experience (rather than the characters themselves) you can swap them between fighters, and creating new Z-items by fusing existing ones plays a big part in unlocking new secrets and characters.