Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3

The roster is the headline and it earns the attention: over 160 fighters, counting every transformation and fusion as its own entry, drawn from across Dragon Ball, Z, GT, and the films. No other game in the franchise has come close since. Spike’s third Tenkaichi entry is not a technical fighting game and never wanted to be — it is a physics toy for recreating anime fights at full scale, and that is exactly what it does well. It is a mainstay on PCSX2, AetherSX2, and ArmsX2.

Storyline

Dragon History runs the full Z timeline, from Raditz landing on Earth through the final exchange with Kid Buu, with sections of GT and the movie villains folded in around it. Fights are staged with the beats the anime gave them, so a battle will interrupt itself for a transformation or a rescue at the moment it should.

The more interesting material sits in the what-if branches. Beat a fight under specific conditions and history diverges — Raditz survives and joins the Z Fighters, Goku turns on his allies, Bardock reaches the present. These alternate paths are why the mode holds up beyond a single run, since replaying a saga to unlock a different outcome gives the campaign a reason to exist past nostalgia.

Gameplay

Combat happens in fully 3D arenas with free flight, and the camera sits behind your fighter rather than to the side. You close distance with dashes, break guard with heavy strikes, and vanish behind opponents with teleport counters timed against their attacks. Ki fuels everything — flight, blasts, and the Blast 2 specials that are lifted move for move from the show.

The set pieces are where it commits. Beam struggles turn into button-mashing contests with the screen filling white, ultimate attacks trigger cinematic sequences, and arenas visibly deteriorate as fights escalate until you are trading blows in a crater. Around the story mode sit World Tournament, Ultimate Battle survival, and Duel, plus Z-Item loadouts that let you tune a fighter’s stats before a match. Depth is shallow next to a dedicated fighting game, but the variety across that enormous roster keeps matchups feeling distinct.

Playing Experience

This is a game best played against another person with both of you laughing at the absurdity of it. Solo, the appeal is working through the roster and the Dragon History branches; in versus, it is the spectacle — two fighters clashing beams while a mountain range collapses behind them. On PCSX2, AetherSX2, or ArmsX2 the higher resolution suits the cel-shaded art particularly well, and performance stays solid even when the screen fills with effects.