So I played Dragonball FighterZ recently.

My reaction to it is precisely: "Oh wow, this is a great Marvel vs. Capcom game!"

Because yeah, as a fighting game if you ignore the license, its pretty fun... but if you're looking for a game that specifically emulates the feel of a DBZ battle, then it is way off the mark.

But I noticed something about DBZ games in that regard: the "good" ones tend to not really emulate DBZ very well--back in the day I recall Budokai being the gold standard and that was basically Tekken with DBZ characters. The SNES and Mega Drive had Super Butoden and Battle Retsuden, which did a much better job of emulating DBZ battles, but were kind of clunky to play (though I hear Saturn's Shin Budokai was actually really good. I may need to acquire that).

But I recently had another thought:

DBZ might not really be the best source for fighting games.

I know that sounds counter-intuitive, since you know, fighting anime = fighting game, but when you look at the source a bunch of problems become clear... for example, like half the cast is trained by Master Roshi, which means they know all the same moves and techniques he does. Not to mention wear variations of that red/orange suit Goku wears. So we've got like five characters who are basically the same. Except no, its more than that.... as a fan of the manga (not so much the anime because of all the filler), I'm sure if I really wanted to I could find a way Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon or Vegeta's Gallick Gun is different from the Kamehameha, but... I can't.

When you think about it, the thing that makes fighting games like King of Fighters '94 fun is how everyone is different and you have to get used to it. You play as the Ikari Warriors, get ready to figure out how to input pretzels to do impressive body slams, meanwhile Terry Bogard is the closest to a shotoclone you're gonna get, and playing as that judo master that Kyo Kusanagi teams up with is kind of a challenge.

But when it comes to fighting games, DBZ has a huge hurdle in that the characters all basically have really similar attributes. They're all speedy types with a balance of melee and ranged attacks. Which I recall, this kind of design is something people have against the very first Mortal Kombat.

(That said, Budokai on PS2 or Gamecube is probably the ideal way to experience DBZ's story.... outside of reading the manga, at any rate).

So basically... yeah, I would like a game that emulates the style of DBZ fights. But if you're not even gonna bother being an emulation of the manga/anime's battle style, you might as well go even farther and say, make Tenshinhan a clone of Goro Daisuke (King of Fighters) and so on in order to give the characters some variety.

Thoughts? Agree/disagree? Do you think maybe I'm overlooking something?

(Additional question: I noticed on the eShop there's a game called Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid. Is that any good?)