I know what you’re thinking, “Didn’t you just say how much you hated Ultimate Battle 22 and you waited until the PS2 games came out?” Why yes, and that’s still true, but what I did do was at some point in between Budokai 1 and 2 I found Final Bout in a second-hand games shop for a couple of pounds and thought “why not?”, assuming it was a poorer man’s Tekken or Street Fighter EX, not knowing of course that it was literally UB22 but with 3D graphics instead. *sigh*. Still, by covering this now it means whenever I get to the first chunk of Z films I can review the Budokai trilogy one after another, so that’s nice, plus there’s something fitting about review a GT-heavy game while reviewing the Dragon Ball film that was released while GT was airing and featured GT elements… It sort of matches! Let’s take a look!
Background:
Trunks tries to overcome Super Saiyan 4 by kicking Goku in the nads.
Dragon Ball: Final Bout was released in Japan as “Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout” for the PS1 on August 21st 1997 and was advertised as the final Dragon Ball game (Japan not knowing what the English release of the series in a few years would do for its popularity worldwide) Funnily enough it got a US release in October 1997 under its original title a few years before the show would actually begin airing in the country, it was just a “we’ll license this and release it, why not?” kind of deal, explaining why the English voice acting is so, um… questionable. It also saw a release in select non-English speaking European countries on November 6th 1997.
Roll on October 4th 2002 and then newly dubbed “Dragon Ball: Final Bout” was released in the UK, much like Ultimate Battle 22 it was a shameless attempt to capitalise on the show’s new-found English-speaking popularity (hence why they removed the “GT” from the title, given Z was still airing for the first time here in the UK) Believe it or not it got a US re-release in August 2004 to try and capitalise on the newly-airing GT, despite being for the original Playstation and it being 2004…
Gameplay:
Goku takes to the air to defend himself from Goku before moving on to face his next opponent: Goku!
As I mentioned in the opening paragraph the gameplay is much the same as Ultimate Battle 22 (and its Butoden ancestors) just rendered in early 3D polygons. So you have basic attacks, crap looking basic Ki blasts, you can fly vertically up and charge up you Ki “just like in the show” but it once again plays like its been put on slow motion, though I will admit the move inputs (stuff like quarter circle on the d-pad and then a button ala Street Fighter) actually work all the time now, so that’s an improvement at least. Everyone has a special move called, ahem, a “Special Knockout Trick” that deals massive damage but you can either block or counter these moves by pressing a button at just the right time when an on-screen prompt appears, with the latter causing you to fire your own SKT, causing a good old fashioned beam struggle complete with a button tapping mini-game, with the loser taking the damage. There’s also a “Meteor Smash” move which is just a quick combo string of melee attacks but is oddly quite satisfying to do.
In terms of modes you have the exact same set up as Ultimate Battle 22, with a generic Arcade Mode (with an unplayable boss to fight at the end at least, so that’s something a bit different), Versus mode (COM or P2), a tournament mode (again COM or multiplayer) and the return of “Build Up Mode”, where you can level up a specific character and use your own built up fighter to face off with your friend’s fighter, even if you both have different copies in different houses (the joys of bringing your memory card over to your friend’s house…) You can also import your Built Up fighter from UB22 if he is on both rosters, which is kind of neat if both games weren’t crap.
Beam struggle! Hooray, something really positive to say about the game!
The roster is an odd beast, it has the main trio from GT (Kid Goku, Trunks and Pan) and then the rest are Z era villains and one or two other heroes like Vegeta. Also just like UB22 you can unlock hidden characters by beating them in Build Up mode or just put a simple code in on the title screen. Nothing super interesting this time though, it’s mostly characters already in the game but in Super Saiyan (or in Goku’s case him as a child in Super Saiyan, him as an adult in Super Saiyan, him as an adult in Super Saiyan but in his Z outfit and him in Super Saiyan 4, which is at least visually different but yeah… that’s a lot of Goku for a game with such a small roster!)
Beyond a basic training mode, that’s your lot! Like I said it’s just Ultimate Battle 22 again but with 3D models, like how Street Fighter IV retained the Street Fighter gameplay but with 3D graphics, only this keeps the really slow gameplay but with low-poly graphics… hooray?
Graphics and Sound:
Look at that powering up effect! … and try not to look at the background art…
As mentioned several times during this review, the graphics are low-polygon 3D models, and I mean low-polygon, I’m pretty sure the original Virtua Fighter had more impressive character models even when it was downgraded to the Saturn and that was way before 1997. The menus are static and dull and the in-game backgrounds are the same dull and barren 3D ones like UB22, just with less foreground stuff in the way, thankfully. So I do prefer these visuals as at least they look like a cheap PS1 game, where as UB22 was some weird in-between combination of the SNES and PS1 that really didn’t look nice.
Sound is… fine, well the music and sound effects are fine, the voice work is mostly scratchy low-quality recordings of the Japanese cast but oddly the pre and post match dialogue are performed by random US “actors” the 97 team hired on the cheap, so you get a mix of a poor US dub and the original Japanese voice work in the same match! Very odd.
Thoughts Then:
Buu vs. Cell! Who would win?! … Well, Buu obviously, but that’s no fun, let’s pointlessly speculate!
As I said I got it in between the first two Budokai games just out of curiosity and because it was so cheap and somehow I was still disappointed. As I’ve said I was thinking based on the visuals it would be like some of the other early 3D fighters of the time and be “fun but flawed” but what I got instead was a reminder of how bad Ultimate Battle 22 had been but with different graphics. Looks like I gave it the same score as UB22 at the time, probably because I played it for five seconds and never touched it again (well, until now anyway!)
Thoughts Now:
I bet those who played this in the 90s before the show was dubbed were confused by the giant yellow monkey thing being called “Super Baby”.
Funnily enough I have to disagree with my past self, I think it deserves to be one score higher than UB22, which you know is still not very good but at least with the addition of beam struggles, a melee combo and special moves you can actually pull off mid-combat means I did play this game up to the Arcade route boss without wanting to strangle myself, and the visuals felt of-the-time (roughly) rather than “crap even for the time”. I still won’t be playing again but at least I want to point out this is an improvement, even if only slightly…
Hogan Reviews 