Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II (2003)

Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku II is an often overlooked game in the DBZ franchise, though I think it’s one of the best. The game is a faithful adaptation of the anime and features the diverse cast of characters each having unique abilities. Exploring and unlocking areas is good fun and progressing your characters is rewarding. The game features high quality sprites and a good art-style, but the music is a let down.

Story

Legacy of Goku II is set during the Android/Cell saga of the anime. Specifically the game begins with Goku returning from planet Namek and continues until the end of the Cell saga. The game features five playable characters: Gohan, Piccolo, Vegeta, Trunks and Goku each character can gain access to unique areas and feature somewhat unique dialogue and certain parts of the game will restrict your access to each character. The game follows the Android/Cell saga fairly faithfully and does not cut any corners and takes only a few deviations from the original story. The game also features side-quests for both new characters and characters from the anime, though unfortunately most of these side quests are quite uninspired.

Gameplay

Legacy of Goku II is a top-down action RPG, in a similar style to Secret of Mana. Your character has abilities that can be activated using Ki and each character features unique signature abilities such as Special Beam Cannon and each character also has access to a transformation form, such as Super Saiyan. In melee your character has a single quick attack and a charged attack, for the most part the melee combat is all based on timing and getting the hit in before the enemies and then chaining your hits together. Your characters have an individual level that increases through killing enemies and events in the main quest, and upon levelling up they gain passive stat increases.

Legacy of Goku II features a large overworld with many different areas that you can fly to, in these areas there are quests, collectables, unlockable areas and new enemies. For the most part the game is spent travelling to new areas as the story demands and exploring the areas and completing side quests whilst progressing through the main quest. You are free to explore any previously visited regions at your leisure but to unlock new areas you will need to progress the main story.

Presentation

Legacy of Goku II uses quite high detailed and clean sprites, and is a vast improvement over the original game in this regard. This is a Gameboy Advance game so the graphics are quite limited by the hardware, but the spell effects and art-style is still really great. The music is quite bland like most GBA games, but it does the job.