Although games like Xenoverse 2 and FigherZ are still grinding numbers and consensus, it seems that the hunger for games dedicated to the famous work of Akira Toriyama never ends. After Naruto and Jojo, the CyberConnect2 team now offers us its vision of Dragon Ball, with Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, a title that will retrace, once again, the exploits of Goku along all the events that have characterized the Z series. In reality in the trailers we have not seen anything of the sagas posthumous to that of Freeza, but we want to be confident.
This time, however, the intent is to relive the adventure by analyzing more the origins of our hero, or his Saiyan nature, and this explains why the title of the game shows Kakarot, the Saiyan name of Goku.
To do this, Cyberconnect2 therefore decided on an Action RPG approach, putting Goku at the center of a vast world to be explored. This is not a real open world, the guys from Bandai Namco tell us, but vast open areas within a world made up of multiple regions.
We tried a 20-minute demo that allowed us to take our first steps in one of these areas, just before Goku and Piccolo's fight against Raditz, which is why our green friend was by our side during our exploration. In fact, there is a party management that in the future will allow us to choose our allies, maximum two, to take on our adventures.
The exploration takes place in various ways: on foot, in flight or aboard the famous speedy cloud. The cloud seemed to us the best option at the moment, because it seems the most manageable in terms of controls, while on foot or in flight, when Goku accelerates, you go too fast to be uncontrollable, often ending up getting stuck in some rocks or falling in water. Going around the world it is possible to collect various red or green spheres, whose usefulness has not yet been clarified: probably it is some currency to spend to upgrade or to exchange for some object.
Wandering around the area it is possible to meet enemies, at the moment only robots that recall those of the Red Ribbon in the first series of Dragon Ball, ideal for practicing combat and above all to accumulate experience and level up. Like any self-respecting RPG, in fact, the level increase involves an enhancement of the statistics which will then impact on our performance during the clashes.
The fights are conceptually quite simple: there are two types of attacks, combos and energy balls. The latter consume the Ki bar which can be reloaded with the appropriate button. Then there are the dodges to avoid the hits and the accelerations to get close to the enemy quickly when you are far away. With the left front dorsal then you can access the special moves, for a maximum of 4 that can be changed as you learn new ones and progress in the game. These moves are particularly powerful, like the iconic Kamehameha, and therefore consume a high amount of KI, but they still seemed abusable to us given the ease with which to reload the bar.
In case of difficulty you can use items to restore energy and get temporary buffs. These are resources that can be obtained as rewards for secondary missions or by purchasing them in special shops. Speaking of secondary missions, the peculiarity of these is that they involve historical characters from the first series of Dragon Ball, such as Android 8 and Nam. Unfortunately these quests are quite trivial and simple in their requests, but they are approved by Akira Toriyama himself and serve to give space to characters who have not been seen since the arrival of the Z series.
In addition to fighting, however, Goku can entertain himself with some secondary activities such as hunting, fishing and the search for fruits or minerals (the use of which is still unknown, let's imagine a sort of crafting).
The thing that seemed most successful in this Dragon Ball Z Kakarot are the boss fights, in particular that of Raditz, the only one we could try. Raditz is a very powerful foe compared to Goku, so it's important to carefully dodge attacks and hit only during openings and moments of weakness. The fight takes place in phases that are very spectacular, both from an aesthetic and choreographic point of view. At each stage Raditz will add more and more moves to perform to his repertoire, requiring a due amount of attention to learn the enemy's patterns and understand when to attack.
Dragon Ball Z Kakarot is a game that will surely find a lot of acclaim and appreciation from fans of the manga and anime, but it is clear that it still has a lot to show to fully convince. Being an “open world” RPG, what we have scratched is only the surface, there is still so much to discover and analyze. The game will arrive in the early months of 2020 so there will be a way to see it on other occasions to get more details and to know if we are faced with a new mammoth Dragon Ball title.
