Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is a respected sport with some of the greatest Dragon Ball Z content. It allows me to fly as Goku and his friends, jumping out of the clouds, fighting giant dinosaurs and powerful bad boys.
But while the game had the name Kakarot (Saiyan's Goku name), I never spent any time playing as Goku himself. The show knows what to do in the absence, but the game strives to find the same tension in its kind of events.
Goku is out of office until the actual fight begins
In Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, I spend most of my time playing as Gohan, Piccolo, Trunks, and Vegeta. I roam the world like these other heroes, taking on the bad guys, while Goku, on various occasions:
- Flying on a planet in space orbit
- Curing heart disease
- He is dead
Goku can and so on he was a missing hero, but he is still the lead man on the show – and I see him getting stronger every episode: the occasional training of gravity on the way to Namek, or the pursuit of Bun Bubble monkey on the King Kai planet.
It might be a series builder An original vision of Akira Toriyama putting Goku's son Gohan in the lead role Dragon Ball Z, but that's not how the show played out. Playing like Gohan, Piccolo, or Vegeta ultimately makes me feel like an opening act in front of a headliner, a small plate before the main course. Most of my battles as these heroes make me tired of getting rid of the bad guy or killing their buttocks; knowing that Goku will eventually join this battle 10 times more than I last control him, and will lead us to victory.
Goku's endless wait is a reliable anime entertainment. It works in the show, because we always have a good idea of where Goku is and what he's doing. But the wait for our hero suffers from an exploit like this. I know Goku is the main character – his name is still in the box! – so what do I do to spend this time in someone else's shoes with such a great experience?
Where in the world is Goku?
In Dragon Ball Z: The Dragont, I usually go for five hours or more without seeing a titular character without cutscenes.
What is most frustrating about Goku's long run is that he is nothing more than a show. While his friends wait for him to return to the Saiyan saga, Goku trains the King Kai world, and heads down the Serpentine highway. While Goku tries to reach the planet Namek in his space, he trains to fight Friza. We will not play any of these sessions Kakarot, and it makes the absence of the Goku game very clear. We are not looking to see what he is doing in his absence, the narrator simply tells us that he is training. And the absence is disturbing.
When I got my hands on Goku again, it's hard to understand how powerful he is from the last time I played him. The show spends the season revealing the sheer power of a great enemy as we watch Goku inch to match his training. The retreat creates a rhythm, and tension, as we wonder if Goku will be strong enough in this fight, if his training will be completed in time. Certainly there is, and it will be. But knowing that a good person will win doesn't mean that the pressure of the situation doesn't apply to viewers.
But the game skips that task, only a brief mention of Goku's training between the machines. It takes one of the most powerful moments from the show – to watch Goku's hard work pay off – and transforms him into a simple Desus Ex Machina, a hero from thin air, here to save the day when salvation seems impossible. Aside from playing that training, other than doing the work he has to put in place for his power and abilities to be seen, Goku looks more like a plot device than a character.
Kakarot it tries to tell the story the way the anime told it, while using an open-world role-playing game structure. And while there are many things to love about the game's anime-like attachment, the endless look between the characters focuses on Goku, and puts you squarely in Ensemble's ever-waiting game, which is often the Dragon Ball ZThe sites.
There is a way to remove the character from most mainstream newspapers while maintaining a sort of tension and suspense – the show kicks it off – but the game has lost its place.
