DRAGON BALL Z: KAKAROT

I've spent enough hours with action-RPGs to know the difference between a game that uses its RPG layer as genuine architecture and one that uses it as wallpaper. Kakarot is firmly in the second camp, and once you make peace with that, it becomes a surprisingly good time. CyberConnect2 set out to build the definitive playable version of the Dragon Ball Z story, all four sagas, from Raditz landing on Earth through the Buu arc, and in that narrow, specific goal, they largely succeed. The structure is straightforward: you play through each saga as the character the story demands, switching between Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo, Future Trunks, Gotenks, and Vegito as the plot dictates. In combat you fly around open battlefields, chain melee combos on a single button, slot in up to four special moves per character (Kamehameha, Masenko, Galick Gun and so on), charge ki, and build a surge state you can unleash for a damage burst. Timed counters, vanishing dodges, and support assists from a partner round things out. It is not deep. The difficulty curve is all over the place, random encounters are trivially easy, certain boss fights can spike brutally, and a pocket full of healing items will flatten most of that tension. If you want a combat system that rewards genuine mechanical mastery, look elsewhere. What Kakarot offers instead is the sensation of being inside the anime, and it delivers that feeling with real conviction during the big moments: Goku going Super Saiyan against Frieza, Gohan's rage unleashing against Cell. Those boss fights hit. The RPG scaffolding surrounding the combat is mixed at best. You collect colored Z Orbs scattered across the environment to unlock skills on character-specific trees. A Community board lets you slot Soul Emblems of named characters into groups (Z Warriors, Cooking, Science) for passive stat bonuses. Cooking meals before fights provides buffs. Scattered Dragon Balls can be gathered using Bulma's radar and then spent on wishes, reviving past bosses for rematches, getting rare items, or stacking Z Orbs. None of these systems have real depth, but none of them hurt the experience when treated as light texture. The open world itself is semi-open, broken into discrete zones accessed via a map screen, and the exploration is mostly pleasant if you treat it as optional downtime between saga beats. The side quests, however, are the game's clearest weakness. Fetch quests, thin dialogue, and content that rarely connects meaningfully to the main story make them feel like padding. Where Kakarot genuinely earns its reputation is in its fidelity to the source material. The Z Encyclopedia alone, packed with character models, lore entries, and music from the anime, demonstrates how much care CyberConnect2 put in. Cutscenes recreate key moments with enough accuracy to feel like an alternative, sometimes improved version of the original broadcast. The game remembers that King Kai made Goku tell a joke before training. It remembers Vegeta's Badman T-shirt. It remembers that Dragon Ball is as much about the quiet, strange, funny beats as it is about screaming at maximum power. Post-launch DLC has extended the experience further, covering Dragon Ball Super arcs and even Dragon Ball Daima content, so the package has grown substantially since release. For an RPG specialist like me, the lack of meaningful build variety and the shallow skill trees are real disappointments, there is no moment past hour 40 where your choices feel consequential in the way a good RPG demands. But for what it actually is, a playable, beautifully presented anime adaptation with satisfying boss encounters, Kakarot does its job well. Newcomers to the franchise will find it an odd entry point; lifelong fans will find it close to what they always wanted.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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