Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II

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Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II is a top down action RPG based on the very popular Dragon Ball Z manga/anime/general pop cultural phenomenon. DBZ was pretty much at its height when the GBA was released, and quite a few DBZ games made it onto the GBA. Only 3 made it into the challenge list: this game, Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure (an action platformer based on the original Dragon Ball i.e. young Goku's adventures), and Dragon Ball Z Supersonic Warriors(a 2d fighting game).


As you may have guessed from the title, Legacy of Goku 2 is a sequel to another GBA title, Legacy of Goku. There was also a third game, Buu's Fury. Neither of these got good enough critical ratings to get onto the list, so it seems the Legacy of Goku 2 was a high point in the series.



Legacy of Goku 2 covers the Android and Cell sagas from the Anime, and follows the story relatively closely. The only exception is that some stuff is added during what is essentially a timeskip in the source material (the 3 years between Trunks arriving from the future to defeat Frieza and the Androids actually appearing).

The pacing of the game is a little odd. The first half felt like the introduction to a much longer game, but when the Androids finally appeared the plot kicked into high gear and the game ended up finishing relatively quickly. I wonder if this was because they needed to add in some content to reintroduce the gameplay and characters, without much happening in the story. Then when the story gets going everything happens much faster. The game is fairly short overall, but does have some sidequests and post-game content I didn't get into.


Gameplay is decent, but not amazing. Mostly it consists of walking around, punching enemies and throwing various special attacks. Hitboxes are a little "interesting", depending on which angle you're facing. The main issue is there's no block or dodging mechanic, and after a hit you (or your enemies) get stunned. This means you can effectively stunlock enemies to death. This applies to all the bosses throughout the game. Getting that first hit in can be difficult due to the weird hitboxes though. The most threatening enemies are those that appear in large packs, as they can stunlock you to death very quickly.

Graphically, the game looks fairly good, with decent bighead style pixel art. There are a few oddities, like the fact that Cell is much bigger than everyone else and has more realistic proportions.

The biggest problem with the game (other than the slightly dodgy core gameplay) is the necessity of grinding. You play as 5 different characters, each of which levels separately and you can only switch at a savepoint. There are doors in the world, which require specific characters at specific levels to open (with no attempt to explain in-fiction what these are). Sometimes you really are forced to grind, for example when you unlock Goku at level 35 you almost immediately need him at level 40 to unlock some doors. The saving grace is that levelling isn't that slow when you fight the hardest enemies available. Even an under levelled character can be brought up to scratch fairly quickly. I found this process surprisingly relaxing however, and it annoyed me less than grinding in some games does.


Overall, Legacy of Goku is a cut above your average GBA tie in, but is let down from greatness by its short length, shallow gameplay, and grinding. I did enjoy the experience however.