A 2005 video game for the Playstation 2, GameCube, and Xbox based on Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama, published by Atari and developed by Avalanche Software.
Dragon Ball Z: Sagas is a linear beat 'em up, touted as a sandbox game. The game covers from the beginning of Z at the Saiyan Saga to the end of the Cell Games and has an extremely difficult learning curve.
Sagas contains examples of the following tropes:
- Adapted Out: From the anime, Garlic Jr and many other filler characters.
- Adaptation Expansion: At the same time, it adds in filler levels, the most obvious one being the fight with Soba on Yardrat. It's actually surprising that the anime never showed that at all, but this game did in some form, even though there's no context to the fight.
- Boring, but Practical: While you can use special attacks and finish combos on bosses, it's, generally, more safe and easy to continually alternate between a 2-4 punches and kicks on them to take them down, since the hit stun they suffer from lasts for a few seconds after you hit them, as it allows you to chip their health down slowly until they die. It also becomes a vital thing to do for Frieza and Cell down the line, as you can only really damage them if you melee hit them and you need to do that to keep your Super meter filled to stay Super Saiyan/Super Namekian, since it won't go down and refills only when you hit enemies with melee attacks rather than, like in the Budokai games, you don't stay Super until you're hit down, rather, you get powered down automatically when the meter runs out, which can happen really quick, since, at best, you stay Super only for 10-20 seconds if you don't melee hit an opponent. The only exception to that is if you play as Broly when replaying the levels, and SS2 Gohan against Cell, but that one lasts only long enough for you to one-shot Cell with a Kamehameha Wave to finally defeat him.
- Boss-Only Level: "Saiyans Duel" (vs Vegeta), "Super Saiyan Goku" (vs Final Form Frieza), "Goku On Yardrat" (vs Soba), "Piccolo's Fusion" (vs Android #17) and "The Final Showdown" (vs Perfect Cell).
- Bowdlerization: The arcs it adapts are, usually, altered a bit. History of Trunks especially, as mentioned below.
- Character Customization: Of a sort. While you can't change their attacks, or anything, you can choose different outfits for each character outside of a few when replaying through the game and choosing your character.
- Combined Energy Attack: After Goku gets to Namek, you fight Jeice and Burter, who combine their energies to produce a red, blue, and purple wave in the air while firing purple energy blasts at you.
- Combo Breaker: Literally has an unlockable move called that that does as you'd expect. Part of the frustration that people experience in this game can come from the game choosing not to let you use it when you try to break the enemy's combos, but they can break yours anytime they want, no sweat.
- Dueling Player Characters/Fighting Your Friend: You can fight and kill the other player in 2-player at any time, since there's also friendly fire in the game. This is also the entire point of the Time Chamber levels.
- Gratuitous Japanese: In addition to retaining "Ki", rather than saying "energy" like the dub, the combos all have incredibly Japanese names that sound like they were made up. It's strange that this game has all of these, considering it wasn't developed in, nor released in, Japan. It's also strange considering that this is an anime game, which usually translate attack names, even at the time this one came out.
- Hell Is That Noise: A lot of the soundtrack is very mood whiplashy and can come as a surprise when it changes from one song to another.
- Kamehame Hadouken: Yep.
- Ki Manipulation
- Life Meter
- Loading Screen: Where they use clips of the anime with narration over them and some voice clips that, usually, don't fit the animation at all.
- Mana Meter: Ki gauges.
- Mythology Gag: Unintentional most likely, but Soba looks more like Garlic Jr's powered up form than an actual Yardrat.
- No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: Every single level is basically a straightforward path from A to B, with the exception of the boss fights.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: While it, generally, adheres to the story of Z for the arcs it adapts, some characters aren't the ones you'd expect to be playing as during the levels if you play 2-player. Each level will also be a straight path to the goal (generally either a boss, or the end of that segment).
- This only majorly happens during the History of Trunks levels, where, during the second level of it, they made a model of Trunks from after Future Gohan died rather than keeping it the one from the first one, and will have Trunks (1-player), or both of them (2-player) fight 17 and 18 rather than just Gohan. His levels also have you looking for parts of the time machine and the heart medicine, rather than Bulma giving the medicine to Trunks and having the parts already for construction.
- It also has a level on Yardrat, where you fight an alien named Soba, whom Team Four Star suspect was originally Garlic Jr based on his model design.
- The game also expects you to have seen the anime, or read the manga, beforehand, as, even though it has cutscenes setting up the levels, it skips over a lot.
- Secret Character: Broly and Bardock.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Frieza. All of the bosses are an extreme pain to deal with, but Frieza's the first truly challenging boss, since you need to be Super Saiyan to deal with him effectively, since he, and Cell as well, only lose health when you attain a certain Super Saiyan level when fighting them in their fights against Goku and Gohan, respectively. It's especially challenging because the Super meter depletes pretty fast when you don't melee attack them, and, unlike the Budokai games, you can't charge the meter to regain the form with your Ki when it runs out.
- What If?: After playing through the entire game, you can replay through the entire game with not only the characters who appear in those arcs, but also Bardock and Broly as bonus characters. They all play exactly the same, but they at least look different from each other and have different special moves.
