YMMV / Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi

• Accidental Innuendo: In Budokai Tenkaichi 3, Babidi's strongest attack has him holding his lamp in front of him and... er... rubbing it vigorously until a laser shoots out of it... Okay...
• Awesome Art: The graphics for Sparking! ZERO look incredible, where it is taking cues from Dragon Ball FighterZ and Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, giving the characters cel-shaded textures that make them pop against the background and give a crisp anime-styled look.
• Awesomeness Withdrawal: Both the Sparking! ZERO trailer (which was just a little over a minute) and teaser (which was under a minute) managed to set the fanbase on fire and truly show what to expect.
• Broken Base: Which is better, Tenkaichi 2 or Tenkaichi 3? On one hand, the story mode for 2 is seen as significantly better due to being similar to the Budokai 3 story mode with fun What If? fights that are surprisingly deeper than one would expect, while having several gameplay elements that are easier to get in to, and has superior music. On the other hand, 3 is seen as the best roster, fun inclusions to the story mode that are more authentic to the story of the series, while still having fun What If? fights, and having to some the best gameplay in a Dragon Ball for a while. The debate rages on without end. Except in Latin America, of course, where the debate was settled a long time ago with 3 coming out on top.
• Fandom Rivalry: A minor one with fans of Budokai 3. Fans of Budokai cite its more polished combat engine and better balance, while seeing Tenkaichi as bloated by comparison, while fans of Tenkaichi favor it for the larger roster and better simulation of the series's combat, while claiming that Budokai isn't that much better as a fighting game. They're mostly content to say that both are good games, though.
• Fan Nickname: Before Sparking! ZERO's title was officially revealed, many had referred to the game as Budokai Tenkaichi 4 (despite the name already being used for the fan-made mod) as the marketing referred to the old title in the reveal trailer.
• Fountain of Memes: The Latin American modding community for Tenkaichi 3 is flooded with this. While there are some mods that are genuinely impressive, such as the fan-made Budokai Tenkaichi 4, which overhauls the story mode to include Super content up to the Broly movie as well as Dragon Ball Heroes-themed mods filled with characters from that series, a lot of them run under nonsensical Cool Versus Awesome matchups that takes Refuge in Audacity, with numerous Crossover mods adding in characters from other franchises like Naruto and Pokémon as well as Serial Escalation mods that lets you play as Super Saiyan 10 Vegito and the like. A lot of these mods are also entertaining as they are either hard-locked to Japanese voice clips from the original game or use badly compressed Spanish voice clips that can and will clip your speakers. There is no in-between.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In the first two games, Beam type Supers/Ultimates pass right through and destroy most Ball type Supers/Ultimates instead of beam struggling with them, as a result characters with Beam-type attacks tended to far outpace those without. This was fixed in 3, where beams can now struggle with ball attacks.
  • Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta, due to having very good all-around stats, a fast Rush Attack, and two of the most powerful beams in the series. Given that it's Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta, it's probably intentional.
  • Fusion characters have their own slots in 2. If you decide to have Gogeta or Vegito with Goku and Vegeta on the same team, you can potentially have two Gogetas and two Vegitos. You can have two Gotenkses if you have Goten, Trunks, and Gotenks in the same team as well.
  • In 2 the Kiss of 18 is one of the best equippable items in the game, boosting all stats by four. Good on its own, but amazing when stacked in multiple copies. The drawback is that it can only be obtained through Shenron's wishes, requiring a fair bit of patience and Save Scumming to obtain several copies.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 is beloved in Latin America, so much that there is a huge modding community for the game.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • If you play Future Gohan against Goten, he is baffled to find out that he has a brother since Goku died in his timeline before Goten was conceived. If Future Gohan beats Goten, we get this little gem.
    Future Gohan: "Even if it was just for a moment, I'm happy to have met you. Take care."
  • Ditto for if you put Goku against Future Gohan. If Goku wins, he says this:
    Goku: "Stand tall, Gohan! You’ll have to protect everyone in the future!"
  • Chi-Chi's description for Grandpa Gohan in the character viewer.
    "This is the wonderful man who took Goku in and raised him. I sure would like to have met him."
  • Chi-Chi's getting nostalgic over both her younger self and Goku's childhood self is a rather fuzzy moment, showing that despite how he may frustrate her, she still fell in love with him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: To make up for Future Gohan's limited moveset, the developers gave him access to the Special Beam Cannon attack despite there being no opportunities for him to properly learn it in the Bad Future. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero wound up giving Gohan the ability to use the Special Beam Cannon for real, with Gohan explaining that he was teaching himself the move in secret.
• Memetic Mutation: Outside of Japan, Chi Chi's commentaries in the third game became this due to her sheer overuse of the word "delinquent" thanks the localizers translating the idea in Japan where coloring one's hair blond indicates being a troublemaker (a stigma that persists in Japan). Because this idea was lost to many in the English speaking world, especially children playing the game, numerous comments roasted Chi Chi constantly saying the word delinquent and memed the idea it was just another word for "Super Saiyan", except for Super Saiyan 4 where one can't use that word since there's no blonde hair.
• Narm: BT3's story mode has a system that allows fighters both watching and participating to spout off lines based on how the character is performing in battle or under certain conditions, but due to the lines triggering a few seconds afterward can get ridiculous because they tend not to match the action on screen (e.g. a fighter making a Badass Boast while getting their ass royally kicked).
  • This can be quite apparent with the battles based on Dragon Ball GT. In this game, Super Saiyan 4 Goku is now a transformation for the newly-included GT Goku. If the deep-voiced SS4 Goku is getting beat up in a story battle, there's a chance that he will comment on this situation in his much younger voice that he would've otherwise had in any of his other forms. This isn't a noticeable problem in Japanese voice track, as Goku's voice remains the same regardless of his age, while the English dub has different voice actors for Goku depending on how old he is (Stephanie Nadolny voicing the kid version of GT Goku and Sean Schemmel voicing Goku while he's in his adult body as SS4). Since the game is programmed to use a catch-all line for the character currently in battle, it will always play the same line used for GT Goku (which is while he's in his kid form).
  • The player can set the game to be in either Japanese or English. The English voice actors give it their A-game, while the Japanese seiyuus just read their lines out loud. In a fighting game.
  • In Cell's What If? story from the first game, every single opponent (except Super 17) says the exact same line in a rather disinterested voice after you beat them.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: All three games are considered to be competent, if simple, fighters, with many considering their gameplay to be the most faithful to classic DBZ action, and the sheer amount of content helps add to their appeal. 2 and 3 in particular are in the running for the best Dragon Ball game ever.
• Pandering to the Base: The developers took in suggestions as to what or who should be in the games, which resulted in fan favorites like Nuova Shenron making it in, as well as some alternate costume choices (such as Goku's Yardrat outfit and Gohan's orange Gi from Bojack Unbound.)
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Unlike the previous and future games, Budokai Tenkaichi 3's World Tournament mode uses an in-game timer that goes up by 10 minutes if you even so much as enter and exit a menu screen. Depending on the time, a new Tournament will be open in World Tour mode (World Tournament, Cell Games, Martial Arts Big Tournament, Otherworld Tournament, and Yamcha's Game). However, while the Tournament times are pre-determined, the difficulty you play them on is not, so trying to unlock that one character or stage for 100% Completion could be made unnecessarily difficult. There is a Free Mode where you can choose any tournament you want at any difficulty, but completing a tournament that way gets you jack squat.
  • In the Budokai trilogy and Tenkaichi 1, Ginyu's Body Change ultimate was a Game-Breaker, being able to switch positions with a stronger opponent to gain the upper hand. The Body Change fell into this come Tenkaichi 2 and 3, where it was nerfed horribly to the point where it became useless, borderlining Ginyu in the Joke Character zone. Rather than switching bodies with the opponent, Ginyu will randomly switch with another character off the field (mostly from the Frieza Saga). However, not only are his stats worse than before, he loses access to all of his special attacks, even from his original body.
  • In Tenkaichi 1 and 2, Goku has some... archaic conditions in order to use some of his attacks. In the first game, his Kaioken Attack was locked unless you were in Kaioken Mode... which requires 3 Blast Stocks and constantly drains your Ki at an alarming rate (which in turn, can make the battle with Nappa in Z Battle Gate more troubling than it's worth). In Tenkaichi 2, you couldn't use his Spirit Bomb Ultimate at all unless you spend at least 2 Blast Stocks to do one "Please Share Your Energy With Me!" to charge it. Thankfully, these restrictions were dropped by the time 3 rolled around.
• Shocking Moments: After nearly 13 to 16 years of silence following the last major Budokai Tenkaichi game, fans had rightfully came to terms that the series had long since passed, especially after it looked liked Xenoverse would be here to stay... then everything changed with a special announcement from Dragon Ball Games Battle Hour 2023. A teaser trailer showing gameplay footage from Tenkaichi 3, before shifting to modern footage of Goku transforming into his Super Saiyan Blue form in the style of the Broly movie. The ending image then informed us that, "A New Sparking/Budokai Tenkaichi Begins." (The title for this would later be revealed as Sparking! ZERO.)
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Tenkaichi 2 compared to the first one, which was considered a step down from Budokai 3, whereas Tenkaichi 2 is considered just as good if not better than Budokai 3.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Unsurprisingly, the first Tenkaichi game is rife with this due to its soundtrack (in the International release) being lifted wholesale from the Budokai trilogy, in itself was infamous for housing Kenji Yamamoto's plagiarized tracks despite their popularity.
• Tainted by the Preview: While Kakunsa's reveal in Sparking! ZERO was a pleasant surprise to many, there is a subset of fans who are worried that she, a fairly minor and obscure character from Super, is a sign that the game will primarily focus on characters from Z and Super at the expense of one's from the original series and GT.
• That One Attack:
  • The first game had Captain Ginyu's Ultimate Attack "Body Change" function almost exactly as it did in the Budokai series, making him a formidable foe to fight if he lands the attack while he's at critical health and you barely even have Scratch Damage. However, this is only in the first game, as it quickly nosedived hard into the Scrappy Mechanic territory starting from 2.
  • "Mystic Combination", Kid Buu's Rush Attack, in Budokai Tenkaichi 2; the length of time in which he charges at you lasts an absurdly long time (enabling him to use it even at a major distance), and it homes in on the opponent. Exacerbated due to the fact Rush Attacks in 2 are unblockable and costs no Ki if you did not land the attack, as well as Kid Buu being one of the game's many Buus, which means he can charge his Ki up quickly and start the attack all over again after knocking the player across the stage, while they're still struggling to get up. The attack was significantly toned down in 3, lowering the time of the initial rush, requires half Ki consumption for the initial blast, the amount of damage given, the way the character lands prevents it from being used as frequently, and characters being able to block Rush Attacks at the risk of losing Ki.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The Japanese version of the games featured Shunsuke Kikuchi's score from the anime. Due to licensing issues, the international versions did not keep this. This irritated some fans. On the other hand, most people will agree that the score for Tenkaichi 2 was quite good.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: This trope does not apply to the characters in the roster but definitely towards some of the moves some of the characters are given. An overarching observation is that characters who have displayed numerous attacks or participated in many battles have some of the more generic attacks for one reason or another (See Moveset Clone on the main Video Game page for examples of these attacks).
  • A downplayed example. Tien Shinhan's moveset fits well but there are many attacks that he could have been given. Examples of these techniques are the Volleyball Attack (which is given to SSJ3 Gotenks), Multi-Form technique and the Four Witches Technique (technique where Tien grows another set of arms). A Dragon Ball version of Tien which uses his more unique attacks from the original series similar to how Goku has multiple playable forms in Budokai Tenkaichi 3 would have solved this issue.
  • Chiaotzu has the Psychic Rock Throw, a relatively generic attack. This attack was likely given to Chiaotzu to showcase his telekinetic abilities, despite other telekinetic attacks that Chiaotzu did use in canon existing. An example of a more fitting telekinetic attack would be the combo he did to Krillin in their first battle in the 22nd World Tournament.
  • Third Form Frieza has the High Speed Rush attack.
  • Cell Saga Vegeta's base form and all his Buu Saga forms in Tenkaichi 3 all have the Super Energy Wave Volley attack. Justified as Vegeta is known to use this type of attack the most in the source material that Goku (and the fandom) identify the attack as "Vegeta's Technique™".
  • Super Trunks has his Blast 2 specials be identical to his base form while his ultimate is the generic Super Explosive Wave.
  • Kid Trunks (both base and Super Saiyan) only have unique ultimates while their Blast 2 are both quite generic attacks: Full Power Energy Wave (base)/Full Power Energy Barrage Wave (Super Saiyan) and High Speed Rush.
  • Base Gotenks's two special attacks and his ultimate are the same as Kid Trunks: Full Power Energy Wave and High Speed Rush with Big Tree Cannon as his ultimate.
  • Despite using the Chocolate Beam attack the most, Fat Buu does not have the Chocolate Beam attack in 1 or 3.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Tenkaichi 3's story mode is heavily condensed, often skipping fights entirely like Piccolo's first encounter with Cell and Ultimate Gohan's face-off with Super Buu, and whatever fights are included are often victims of Broad Strokes, thus featuring inaccuracies such as Goku killing Super 17 in his Super Saiyan 4 form (in the anime, he reverted back to his base form and killed him with a Dragon Fist before firing a point-blank Kamehameha). Considering the changes to the gameplay engine that allows for more dynamic transitions mid-fight, as well as the lack of unique in-game cutscene animations for certain interactions (Goku's thumbs up at the end of the Buu Saga being a more egregious example of this), it can make the entire story mode system feel underutilized and makes Dragon History more shallow compared to the Z-Battle Gate and Dragon Adventure modes.
  • Tenkaichi 3 also marks the first time the Classic Dragon Ball story became playable in a main-line Dragon Ball fighting game. Unfortunately, it was fumbled hard, as many of Goku's more interesting fights like his first encounters with Yamcha, Tien, Mercenary Tao or his climactic duel with Jackie Chun were skipped. What were adapted for Tenkaichi 3 basically amounts to filler fights, like his fight against Nam and his brief clash with General Blue in Penguin Village. The only plot-important battles Tenkaichi 3 included were the rematch against Mercenary Tao, and the final fight with Demon King Piccolo, and even in the latter's case, it still passes over the epilogue battle between Goku and Piccolo Jr. at the 23rd World Tournament.
• Tough Act to Follow: Being the grandfather of all anime arena fighters, Budokai Tenkaichi is seen as the golden standard all anime fighters should attain to in quality and Fanservice. As a result, it's not uncommon to see people use this as a measuring stick whenever a new arena fighter gets announced, even more so when they end up following the same template to a lesser degree as the more recent Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm series. Even later Dragon Ball games suffers from this as Spiritual Successors such as Dragon Ball: Raging Blast and Dragon Ball Xenoverse gets unfavorably compared to Tenkaichi almost every other day. Predictably, ZERO itself , a straightforward new entry in the Budokai Tenkaichi/Sparking! series, suffers from this, being compared to the previous entry, Budokai Tenkaichi 3, during the prelaunch lead-ups by fans unsure if it will stack up.
• Unexpected Character:
  • There are plenty of these to go around, given how big the roster is (3's in particular is enormous) but the most notable is probably Grandpa Gohan and Selypa/Fasha, with the latter not even having on-screen fight scenes in her only appearance, making the game's moveset original. Ironically, Fasha's Great Ape form has the most unique ultimate attack compared to other Great Ape forms.
  • Sparking! ZERO's official reveal trailer shows off the regularly expected characters like Goku, Vegeta, and Frieza, but then shows flashes of its playable roster. While some people expected Dragon Ball Super characters like Jiren and the Dragon Ball Super: Broly version of the titular character, Bergamo was among those quickly shown. Bergamo isn't that popular of a character despite his unique build, powers, and frame, not even making an appearance in Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 at the time of Sparking! ZERO's reveal (though he was a potential character addition based on an in-game character poll and his clothes were added to the game in a post-launch content update). Bergamo's inclusion has been used as the baseline example for how deep the roster is likely to be, just due to how unexpected he was.
    • Kakunsa got a similar response to Bergamo; the only one of the Little Witch Warriors that any player expected was Ribriand. To see Kakunsa represented through many players for a loop, though it has also given hope for the depth of Tournament of Power representation.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • Gotenks in Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and Budokai Tenkaichi 3 has a chance of saying "Peanut Butter Jelly Time!" when switched out in battle. This references a meme which was popular during the 2000s, slightly dating the game from when it was made.

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