You play through the major story arcs of Dragon Ball Z as an open-world action RPG, flying across the landscape between story missions and side activities like fishing or training. Battles let you power up and unleash signature attacks from the show against other iconic characters. It spends a lot of time on quieter side content between fights, which suits fans more than newcomers looking for constant action.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
Overall
An earnest, occasionally bloated tribute to the anime that mixes RPG padding with genuine fan-service highs.
Moment to moment
Flight and combat capture the show's explosive energy well, though side quests and filler content stretch the pacing thin.
Art and atmosphere
Iconic battles are staged with real spectacle, though the wider open world looks noticeably plainer between the big moments.
Worth your time?
A deep dive best suited to devoted fans willing to sit through slower stretches for the payoff of faithfully recreated arcs.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You control Goku and his friends across the entire Dragon Ball Z story, walking and flying through open outdoor areas between the show's famous battles. The stick moves you on foot or, once unlocked, lets you fly freely through the sky, while combat switches to an arena-style fight where light and heavy attack buttons combo together and a separate button fires a ki blast at range. In your first ten minutes you play through an early fight from the show, learning that landing enough hits fills a meter you can spend on a flashy special attack, before being let loose in a town to walk around and talk to residents.
Most of your time is split between following the story's big fights, which recreate famous battles against villains like Vegeta and Frieza with a lot of dramatic dialogue, and doing side activities in between, like fishing, gathering ingredients to cook meals that boost your stats, or picking up small requests from townspeople. As the story goes on you unlock more powerful transformations and new fighters to control, and boss fights get more visually spectacular even though the actual button presses stay fairly simple throughout. A full story playthrough with its included extra chapters can take forty hours or more given how much side content there is.
Session to session it feels like flipping through the anime with a controller in hand, spending relaxed time flying around or fishing between short, exciting fights. What may frustrate newcomers is that regular enemy fights outside the story's big moments can feel repetitive and simple, and the flying controls take a little getting used to over water and mountains. If you already love the Dragon Ball Z story and want to live inside it rather than just watch it, this delivers that experience generously.