YMMV / Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

• Accidental Innuendo: "Yeah, doesn't matter if it's big or small, fat or skinny - as long as it's white, she'll love it." became a meme to take out of context to talk about Marron's supposed racism. She is asking for a cat.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Great Ape Vegeta is large, intimidating, and essentially Vegeta's trump card that took him to a Climax Boss against Goku that actually managed to leave Goku immobile for the rest of the fight. Unfortunately, the fight can be over in less than 30 seconds due to the way the phase works, making it come fully off as this trope.
• Awesome Music: The soundtrack is composed by a mixture of CyberConnect2's original arrangements, orchestral recreations of the two opening themes along with their original versions, and a small selection of Shunsuke Kikuchi's score from the original anime rearranged by the developer's orchestra team, ultimately bringing an unprecedented consistency across all pieces.
  • The rearranged Kikuchi scores from the original stand out for the update in their composition and the very subtle changes in melody to better fit as a game song, resulting in an unexpected, unprecedented fresh take on those nostalgic themes.
  • While the orchestral arrangement for Cha-La Head-Cha-La was a welcome inclusion, it pales in comparison to the surprise and joy over We Gotta Power finally getting one after years of Toei and game developers' preference for using the former.
  • As for the original arrangements, Fight to the Death - which plays during the Super Saiyan Goku and Full-Power Frieza's battle - is a popular pick for favorites amidst players.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Trunks: Warrior of Hope ends on a sweetly-bittersweet note with Trunks saving the world from Babidi and Dabura, though not without Kibito and the Supreme Kai being Killed In Action, and has an overall aura of hope for a rebuilding world. That said, this is still set before the Goku Black Arc.....
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Any fans of Yamcha (and general fans of Dragon Ball) have completely rejected the Yamcha side quest of him cheating on Bulma with multiple girls due to how extremely out of character it is for him.
  • Not everyone was on board with the Retcon of Beastmen being humans who took a drug to turn into the anthropomorphic animals seen in the first series, Z and GT.
• Fridge Brilliance: In the final fight with Kid Buu, Goku dodges an energy blast and has one last fight with Buu, both moving so fast that it's only a split second. During this, Goku has a white aura around him that isn't his normal, flame like aura. This is an early form of Ultra Instinct, and Buu was the only one to keep up with Goku like that. It's no wonder that Beerus had Goku and Vegeta brought to him so soon, and that Goku would want to fight the reincarnated Buu, now Uub, at the end of the original manga.
• Fridge Logic: With the Female Researcher resembling Android 21, we get a retconned explanation for both the events of Dragon Ball Fighter Z, and also the random encounters in this game: The Female Researcher studied the Z-Warriors' powers with the training room, scavenged Buu cells from the site of Babadi's ship, and is beta testing the cloning tech by using cells from the dead henchmen. Whether or not this is 21 is debatable: in Fighter Z she herself says she's less then ten years old, which contradicts her being active at least twelve years in the past. This also contradicts 21's Horror Hunger plight, as it would mean she some how got turned into a Majin after she was activated since she was around before Buu was revived instead of it being innate since she was created. However, while she doesn't remember her original identity, she also knows that she was a human woman old enough to have an adult son, with the implication that she's Dr. Gero's wife - she was active in some capacity at this point. The Female Researcher could be either an identical android, the Android 16 of Dragon Ball Fighter Z is explicitly not the 16 seen here, or she could be 21 and her memories were somehow wiped by Gero's equipment when she got her powers, which would still be very unlikely.
• Funny Moments: The game overall streamlines the many sagas, but there is one piece of Filler left in. "Goku's Ordeal" aka The Driving Episode. It's just as amusing here if not moreso than the anime, since it's a playable portion of the game. Even better, you actually get the driver's liscense. Yes, you can drive a car as Goku in the Free Roam sections. There's even races!
• Goddamned Bats: By the late game, all the mob encounters ended up being more of an annoyance than they are a threat as they will often appear to interrupt and waste time as you are forced to fight them. The rewards for beating them aren't even worth it as the experience gained from beating them is so miniscule that it's gonna take hundreds of mind-numbingly dull enemies before you can even level up your character. True you can get an instant victory by ramming through them but by post-game, the enemies scales to your level so it wouldn't work most of the time. And to put the cherry on top, any time they appear expect your character to comment on the approaching enemy over and over and over...
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Asura's Wrath, developed by CyberConnect2, is considered to be one of the best Dragon Ball games ever made due to over the top spectacular setpieces and high octane action. Years later, CyberConnect2 would go on to make their own Dragon Ball game.
• Ho Yay: Some of the dialog surrounding Yajirobe and Korin is suspiciously romantic sounding◊ and brings attention to the odd fact that Yajirobe lives with Korin (and does for the entire series, even GT) even though there's nothing to do there. The lines about Korin punishing Yajirobe may not seem suspect in text, but the way the voice actor vocalizes the line is oddly...sensual. Makes you wonder if the writers for the english version have seen Dragon Ball Z Abridged.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: The game gets a good amount of flak for its low difficulty. The bosses and side missions are easy enough that level grinding is almost completely unnecessary (unless you're going for the Villainous Enemies, which can and will test your skills at dodging). It became somewhat averted in an update, which added a "Hard" difficulty setting.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: A vocal group of fans were greatly disappointed when it was revealed the game would be another retelling of Dragon Ball Z, rather than have its own original story like Dragon Ball Fighter Z. It's not difficult to understand why. Most Dragon Ball Z games (at least, those that feature story modes) simply adapt the series story, with varying degrees of faithfulness, rather than tell their own.
• Narm:
  • In the final cutscene, when everyone reunites on the Lookout, the developers used Dende's child model from the Namek saga, as opposed to the adult character model he used for the Buu saga before that point. It's so jarring that it really distracts from what's meant to be a heartwarming finale. It's unclear whether this is an accident on their part or an intentional nod to the fact that both the anime◊ and even the original manga◊ made the same gaff.
  • The whole "finding a beastman cure" questline is full of this, thanks to how it not only conflicts with continuity ^note There has been no comments of any sort that animal-earthlings were anything other than a natural occurring species, as with King Furry and Oolong and how it conflicts with its own continuity^note The retcon is that all beastman humans are just taking a drug, which was a fad that died out and presumably resulted in ostracism, but not only are there plenty of beastmen who are frequently seen without any sort of negative stigma, Oolong points out he was always an animal-person, and there is no attempt to explain the why he'd be different., causing the quest to come off as forgetful at best or a straight up example of incompetent writing at worst.
• Nightmare Fuel: Frieza's Nightmare Face just before he tries to shoot Goku while his back is turned. CyberConnect2's animation really showcases the mad tyrant's Villainous Breakdown.
  Frieza: I am the greatest being in the universe...and that is why...y-you must...YOU MUST DIE BY MY HAND!!!
• Padding: One of the criticisms of the DLC (Based on Battle of the Gods and Resurrection F) is that all it really adds to the game is a small handful of new boss fights separated by copious amounts of Level Grinding. It comes across as very odd when compared to the base game which never required you to do any grinding to progress in the story. Even worse, the best way to grind is to simply replay the same fights against Whis to get Sacred Waters in order to power-level Goku and Vegeta, making for an extremely boring experience.
• Polished Port: The Switch version not only does include the first two sets of DLC in the base game (the Trunks: The Warrior of Hope DLC still has to be bought separately, however), but includes new quests, difficulty levels (something the base game on other consoles was missing) and runs quite consistently at 30 FPS.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus is while the game is not bad by any means, it most certainly is considered to be lacking in both its storytelling aspect and a few of its gameplay aspects.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Being an open-world action RPG with Goku's name in the title (well, birth name) with bits of Adaptation Expansion, many have viewed this as an HD remake of the Dragon Ball Z The Legacy Of Goku series.
  • On top of that, being an Action RPG with destructible environments, a mostly open world, and some sandbox elements while capturing the story and feel of DBZ, this game accomplishes what Dragon Ball Z: Sagas was trying to do back in 2005 and more.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The fact that Perfect Cell's introduction skips Vegeta's Final Flash and has the fight with Full Power Super Saiyan Trunks occur completely offscreen did not go over well with fans, as those were considered among the most awesome moments of the entire Cell Saga.
  • In the History of Trunks DLC, fourteen year old Future Trunks (his age at the time of Future Gohan's death) is played by Alexis Tipton, who normally plays his present day child counterpart, instead of Eric Vale. While this can clearly be chalked up to Trunks being younger at the time, the change was considered a Vocal Dissonance to some fans, who found it unfitting to have a high-pitched child's voice come out of Future Trunks' body. The change in voice actors is even more noticeable since Vale portrays Trunks at this age in History of Trunks special and flashbacks in Dragon Ball Super.
• That One Attack: Whis' ultimate attack, Destructive Rhapsody on higher training difficulties, is a pain to deal with. When his health is at a certain amount, he will eat food, and trigger the attack. On lower difficulties, it's a More Dakka attack that can be avoided. On higher difficulties, he shoots out energy spheres with the attack, so you have less breathing room when he does this twice. It's even harder to attack him before the allotted time limit runs out to defeat him, and you mainly have to rely on Ki Super Attacks to even beat him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Bonyu was hyped up for being a former Ginyu Force member and a member of Jeice's race. Many were expecting her to have her own story arc that revealed more about her, including a possible relation to Jeice, but no, she never actually even appears in person. Instead, all we get is a virtual reality version of her for training. Many players were not pleased.
  • Future Trunks. Despite being one of the major characters in the game that's playable, Kakarot skips THREE of his major fights (Perfect Cell, Future Cell, Future 17 & 18), meaning he's actually less available in the Cell Saga than Gotenks is in the Buu Saga despite the latter being temporary. This seems to be acknowledged in the History of Trunks DLC, giving back his fights against Future Cell and the Future Androids, but the fact this was not in the base game still rubbed fans the wrong way.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: New Namek is the other open world that can be explored after defeating Frieza and is more or less the same as old Namek. On top of not having any wild life beyond frogs, there's only one model of fish to be found on the planet, which means there's not much incentive to explore the planet- leaving it lacking to what the TV series had gone out to display many different type of unique animals for the planet.
• Unexpected Character: Due to the game primarily telling the entire Dragon Ball Z story, there were few who expected that Towa, Mira, and Android 21 would also make appearances.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: CyberConnect2 has always been known for its amazing cinematics and graphics, but Kakarot takes this to new heights. When the first teaser image for the game was revealed, many almost mistook it for a reboot of the original anime at first.