You can’t transform when the match is already underway.
And then came Dragon Ball Kai: Ultimate Butouden, which proved that it had nothing to do with the hardware -
the DS was perfectly capable of carrying a bonafide 3D fighting game that can at least come close to the admittedly superior offerings.
Ultimate Dragon Kai Butouden Ball is the spiritual successor to the Super Butouden series on the back in the 90s.
While not made by the same developers, majority of the gameplay mechanics from the original Butouden series found their way to the DS, with some minor tweaks and polish, of course.
The characters are rendered in a slightly SD (super deformed) style, with the heads looking like they are a little on the big side,
though not comically so. Think of it as a stylistic take on Akira Toriyama’s art style.
The stages are well rendered, with the engine finding time to show minor details like reflections on shiny surfaces and dust that’s been unsettled by all the fighting.
The beams and explosions, on the other hand, are unimpressive. There’s no transparency so they don’t look like proper ki blasts.
When it comes to gameplay, be prepared for a learning curve that’s steeper than the Budokai series.
As mentioned above, Ultimate Butouden carries the mechanics found in the Super games.
This means the stages are wide and divided into a ground and sky area, with characters shifting from one to the other by pressing up twice.
The controls for pulling off super moves are more complicated than just pressing up and ki (veterans will be at home here.)
thankfully, the touchscreen is used to assist novices.
All the super moves and the special itself can be launched by pressing buttons on the touch screen.
There’s the matter of transformations. I’ve been very vocal about in-game transformations being a requirement for Dragon games Z,
and Ultimate Butouden doesn’t have them. All the various transformations are in the game
(including all levels of super saiyan for the characters), but you can only select between them at the start of a match.
It’s sad that there’s no transformation in this game, but the sum of all parts is good enough that I can overlook the lack of in-game transformations,
and maybe this time we can finally use the "underpowered hardware" as an excuse and give the game a pass.
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