YMMV / Dragon Ball Z: Budokai

• Awesome Music: The entire Budokai series is fondly regarded for its music, regardless of its dubious origins. Budokai 3 in particular had some pretty great tunes, including the menu select theme, the Dragon Universe character select theme, and the Archipelago theme.
• Broken Base:
  • When it comes to the lack of Budokai 2 in the HD Collection, do you not mind it ^note Between the superior single player content of the first game and the superior gameplay of the third, Budokai 2's inclusion would ultimately feel like an unnecessary Master of None, or does the collection feel incomplete without it?
  • Whether the original soundtrack or the HD Collection soundtrack is better (the original having to be replaced after the composer was fired due to plagiarism in both this game series and his work on Dragon Ball Z Kai). There is more of a preference for the former (see directly above), but that is not to say that the reused music from the Budokai Tenkaichi games and Raging Blast is "bad" per se; it's just that some of the replacements don't quite fit. This is particularly noticeable in Budokai 1's Story Mode, where the choice of music feels rushed due to the Mood Whiplash-y nature of some of the selections compared to the original score.
• Character Tiers:
  • Not as bad as some other fighters but they're definitely present. Omega Shenron is Top Tier in 3 due to combination of powerful combos and having seven base ki bars by default, meaning he fills up to max ki without having to charge, while Piccolo, Cell, and Dabura are up there with him because of their fast-ranged physical combos. Bottom Tier is Saibaman and Mr. Satan.
  • Additionally, Budokai 3 tends to have two tier lists: one with all Capsules, and the other with just Breakthrough (players can use all moves available for their characters, but no other Capsules). Characters that use transformations tend to place a lot lower on the former list, since one Capsule is Yakon, who eats said transformations.
  • In Infinite World, Yamcha is the highest tier character in the game. Why? Because his basic punch has more priority than anything else in the game. As long as you just keep spamming his normal punch and cancelling into it (via a frame-lock abuse) so the combo doesn't end, the enemy can never even fight back.
• Complete Monster: Shin Budokai - Another Road: Future Babidi, just as vile as his present timeline counterpart, invades Earth to revive Majin Buu. When Future Trunks recruits his friends and allies from the present timeline to defend the future, Babidi takes control of Piccolo and Vegeta, forcing them to fight the heroes alongside Babidi's fighting puppets based on Trunks' and Piccolo's memories, using the energy to revive Majin Buu. Realising Buu might kill him, Babidi has Buu and Dabura rampage throughout Earth while he attempts to make a wish on the Namekian Dragon Balls to force Buu to obey him. Frustrated that the Namekians have no evil in their hearts to control, he takes control of Cooler and Broly, having them wreak havoc on the planet's villages in search of the Dragon Balls. When his plan fails, he learns that the Earth Dragon Balls have been revived. He orders Buu, now Super Buu, to continue destroying Earth's cities to keep the heroes distracted while Babidi gathers the Dragon Balls, after which he has Buu kill Broly and Cooler once their use runs out. When Super Buu gets angry at Babidi for trying to kill Mr. Satan after the latter steals his wish and ruins his plans, Babidi callously dismisses humans as less than trash, saying there are millions of humans like Mr. Satan.
• Contested Sequel:
  • Infinite World is this to Budokai 3. Strikes against it include Infinite World actually removing characters and features (including, most jarringly, the beam struggles that were finally included in Budokai 3) while not adding any new stages, which makes it feel more like an expansion pack than an actual sequel. Defenders, however, will point to how Infinite World actually added far more new characters compared to those who were left out ^note Kid Goku, Supreme Kai, Uub, and Cell Jr. were omitted in favor of the GT versions of Goku, Vegeta, and Pan, alongside Pikkon, Great Saiyaman 2, Super Janemba, Super Baby Vegeta 2 (shortened to Super Baby 2 here), Super 17, and Syn Shenron, streamlined the various characters' transformations into a single skill (Transform!) for convenience, gave several characters new moves (including Krillin's Solar Flare), and retained all of the costumes found in Budokai 3 and its Greatest Hits version (save for Piccolo's King Piccolo costume) while adding more.
  • Burst Limit is also this to those coming off the heels of Budokai 3 and even Infinite World. On one hand, despite being an early PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 Dragon Ball title, it's still a solid fighter that uses Shin Budokai as the base for its gameplay (meaning those familiar with the previous games will feel right at home), the graphics still hold up, it's just as cinematic as Budokai 1, and the soundtrack is nothing short of baddass (Kenji Yamamoto notwithstanding). However, it's also very easy to see where corners were cut, with some assuming that the game was rushed, having its share of performance issues, recycled animations from previous Budokai games, and a stilted presentation, not to mention the poorly thought-out Drama Pieces system (see Scrappy Mechanic below). Burst Limit also doesn't go any further than the Cell Saga, and even worse, teases Mecha Frieza and Super Saiyan 2 Goku in the pre-rendered cutscenes despite them being unplayable by any means in-game.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The gameplay of the first Budokai is really shallow and repetitive when compared to its sequels. That said, its Story Mode is an admirable, cinematic attempt at retelling everything from the Saiyan Saga to the Cell Saga, while being Truer to the Text than the first anime adaptation, and was basically Mortal Kombat 9 long before the latter was a thing.
• Fan Nickname: "Stupid energy" is a comical nickname fans give to the ki that Cell uses for his Spirit Bomb ultimate, since Only the Pure of Heart can canonically use the Spirit Bomb, and since from 2 onward he shouts out this line below. Because of how it can be taken out-of-context, it begs the theory that Cell uses a different energy source born from stupidity.
  Cell: Okay, planet, gimme that stupid energy!
• Fridge Brilliance: Notice how in Infinite World, GT Goku's Super Kamehameha is the same one he blew Commander Black to bits with in the movie The Path to Power, which is based on the original Dragon Ball. Why's this? Because technically the Goku in that movie was GT Goku thanks to using the same colour scheme as GT's depiction and his art style (facial structure and such) more resembling GT than the original Dragon Ball!
• Friendly Fandoms: Thanks to Kenji Yamamoto's plagiarism, many who grew up with the original releases of the Budokai series are also fans of Stratovarius and their work (with particular note going to "Move Forward Fearlessly", oftentimes the very first stage BGM players will hear due to being used for the fight against Raditz in Budokai 1's Story Mode, making liberal use of the opening guitar riffs from "Glory of the World"), and Stratovarius fans are just happy their favorite band is getting more exposure.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Piccolo's Light Grenade in Budokai 2 and 3. It only costs half a ki bar AND does some pretty heavy damage. In the first Budokai the damage it deals isn't as much, though, and you can't spam it like you can in the sequels.
  • Viral Heart Disease drops the health of both players constantly until they've hit half their last health bar. Vaccine nullifies the effects for its user. Equip both, and be prepared to be hated by your friends.
  • In Budokai 2's Story Mode, it's possible to make Goten invincible; simply have Goku and Kid Trunks move to the same spot as him which will give him a whopping 60% increase to his defense. Then equip him with Mysterious Vest and also have him pick up a few armors on the map and nothing can damage him. Not even the infamous endgame Kid Buu can hope to stop you.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The Budokai games are exceptionally popular in Latin America (as is the Dragon Ball franchise overall), to the point where they rival the popularity of The King of Fighters in that specific region of the world.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In the PS2 version of Budokai 2, by holding the L2 Button while entering and exiting the shop, a random Capsule will be added to your inventory. This includes stage and character Capsules. This was fixed in the GameCube port, unfortunately.
  • Budokai 3's original release had a bunch of these, all of which were unfortunately patched out by the Japanese/Special Edition/Greatest Hits release:
    • The most prominent being that physical-based Special Attacks not only return Ki upon successful hits, but also weren't affected by damage scaling. This means characters like Goku or Yamcha could effortlessly pull off a ToD combo against opponents with even seven bars of health.
    • #18's grab could be chained into a pursuit attack, or if in Hyper Mode, a Dragon Rush. This made her incredibly punishing if you were able to land even one grab with her (or a pain to fight if you were on the receiving end).
    • One of base form Cooler's combo strings would Guard Break every time it landed, giving him immense lockdown potential.
    • Likewise, Omega Shenron's ->K+G was also capable of Guard Breaking, and given the fast recovery of the attack, Omega could immediately follow up with full combos, making him even more painful to fight.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Shin Budokai: Another Road's storyline is about Majin Buu being released in Future Trunks' timeline and Future Trunks having a hard enough time fighting him that he has to enlist aid from the present day Dragon Team. Dragon Ball Super revealed that, yes, Future Trunks having to deal with Majin Buu in his timeline is canon... except in that version of the story, thanks to assistance from the Supreme Kai and Kibito, Future Trunks easily defeated Dabura and Babidi before they could unseal Majin Buu in the first place. Even funnier is that one of the branching storylines in Another Road does exactly that as well, which can be done in the first chapter, even! The only difference between Another Road and Super is that the former has Future Gohan and Pikkon brought back for a day to help out and Supreme Kai isn't killed by Dabura unlike in Super.
    • Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot also did this, as it adapted aspects of the Super manga and made its own version of the story.
  • Similarly, in Budokai 2 and 3, Future Trunks strangely has access to the Super Saiyan 2 state despite never achieving it during Z. (In the first game, he correctly has his Super Saiyan First and Second Grade forms, labeled as "Super Trunks" and "Super Trunks 2".) Then in Super, it turns out Trunks really did obtain the actual Super Saiyan 2 form.
  • The opening animation for Budokai 3 ends with Gogeta charging up and blasting a Kamehameha at Broly. In the later Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie, Gogeta not only fights a rebooted version of Broly, but also fires a huge Kamehameha at him. Unlike Budokai 3, where Gogeta's Kamehameha presumably incapacitates or outright kills Broly, this Broly is saved from certain death at the last moment by a wish on the Dragon Balls.
  • Additionally, judging by the fact that Broly draws blood against Gogeta during their initial trading of blows, Budokai 3 seems to suggest — in direct opposition to the series and movies — Broly's Legendary Super Saiyan form is stronger than Super Saiyan Gogeta, at least in terms of raw power. ^note Word of God states each movie villain is stronger than the last, meaning Broly is weaker than Janemba who in turn was effortlessly defeated by Gogeta in Fusion Reborn. If that wasn't enough, Broly – Second Coming shows that Broly, despite powering up from his Near-Death Experience in the first movie, is not quite as invincible as he was before: a rusty Super Saiyan 2 Gohan, though outclassed, is able to hold his own for a while and inflict visible damage to Broly. Many years later, DBS: Broly shows Broly going full power not long into his battle with Gogeta and briefly overpowering the latter as a Super Saiyan. The moment he recovers, Gogeta immediately turns Super Saiyan Blue in order to decisively end the battle and not give Broly a chance to close the gap in power between them.
  • The names of a select few Broly-only items refer to him as the "God of Destruction" — a fitting title at the time. Of course, a few years later that title would be appropriated by someone else...
  • Shin Budokai's alternate ending, in which Vegito's fusion is made permanent for a year until it could be reverted back via a wish on the Dragon Balls, became this after Dragon Ball Super revealed the Potara fusion would only last one hour if used by non-Supreme Kai (with Vegito burning through the fusion even faster due to being in Super Saiyan Blue at the time).
• Mis-blamed: For the HD re-releases, the developers took the brunt of the blame for the soundtrack being changed. This had nothing to do with them and everything to do with Kenji Yamamoto's plagiarism controversy.
• Narm:
  • In battle, with the exception of his lines for certain moves (and his transformations in 3 and Infinite World), English!Cell speaks with his Imperfect Form's nasally voice at all times. The voice itself isn't the problem (and Perfect Cell does briefly revert to using it in the anime when revealing himself to the world and announcing the Cell Games), but hearing high-pitched kiais and other odd-sounding yells from his later forms for most of the fight creates a lot of unintentional hilarity. This was due to programming limitations, as the forms are just model swaps and the Japanese voice actor didn't change his voice like they did in the English dub between Cell's forms.
  • The PAL version of the first game uses the Japanese voices whilst having an alternate translation for Story Mode... which features weirdness like Vegeta calling people "Aunt Sallies" and Bulma expressing sadness at how Goku "was able to escape from Namek" (seriously) while the cutscene showed him... kinda failing (he escaped but besides that...), and at one point translates Cell's angry growl of "Chikushou!!" ("DAMMIT!") as "Shucks!!" It's only saving grace is that it both tries to be more accurate to the Japanese manga dialogue and is more liberal with swears (with "damn" and "crap" being used in an era when Funimation shied away from them).
• Narm Charm: While some fans don't like Budokai 2's Story Mode for its Broad Strokes approach with adapting the story of the manga and anime, as well as not having the cool cinematics of the first game, others like it for the craziness it brought. It can add a lot of replayability due to bringing in characters from later in the story earlier than they're supposed to be, as well as some decent Lampshade Hangings later on when Cell and Frieza are brought back to life for the second time where they don't remember being brought back and powered up by Babidi by Goku, confused, bringing up how they'd just fought prior. The Story Mode is also the only way to properly unlock all of the characters and a lot of the special moves outside of the item shop, with the player having to do 2-3 playthroughs at least to get them (if the player knows what they're doing or has a guide handy), as well as the only means of unlocking Babidi's Spaceship and special Capsules like the Breakthroughs through playing it a lot to completion ^note at least with how the game was originally designed to play, as the PS2 version allowed you to bypass the requirements needed to get them through a glitch with the item shop, but this was fixed in the GameCube port, so this can be very much appreciated by those who enjoy the mode enough to do so.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: Each game in the series is generally a competent fighting game in its own right, benefiting greatly from familiarity with the characters from the show and manga. The third game, with its massive cast, beautiful cel-shaded graphics, long story mode that is faithful to the series (covering the entirety of DBZ, along with some surprise stories and guest fighters from both the prequel Dragon Ball and the sequel series Dragon Ball GT), solid gameplay mechanics and epic Ultimates that capture the essence of the show perfectly, is considered the best of them all.
• Once Original, Now Common: The Story Mode in Budokai 1 can get this reaction from younger fans. These days, a DBZ game with a story mode based on recreating the anime through fights and cutscenes is considered to be the bare minimum, if not downright cliché, and it's easy to point out the many skipped battles or the fact that the first game only goes up to Cell. It's hard to remember that, prior to Budokai, this level of fidelity was unprecedented, and its immediate successors often skimped out on the cutscenes, making it unrivaled for a good period. Back when it came out, for many, it was like actually watching the show.
• Polished Port: Despite the lack of the original soundtracks, the menus and cutscenes not being expanded to widescreen, and no Budokai 2, the PS3 and Xbox 360 ports of the first and third games are really good. The graphics pop with the upgrade to HD and the framerate is increased to 60fps. The first game also has a gameplay improvement in that for the versus mode, the second player can finally choose the "Custom" option for their character's moveset, which was oddly left out of the original PS2 and GameCube releases. They're also based on the original Japanese PS2 releases, which means the extra costumes in 3 are in the game's code that were initially left out for a later re-release internationally are still unlockable with the same codes as they were originally, though that means the cel-shaded shadows from the GameCube port of the first game are absent, unfortunately, and Budokai 1 doesn't have more than one language option in the international releases for some reason. It's a shame that Budokai 2 wasn't included, as it would've benefited greatly from these upgrades, though the jazzy soundtrack would've been very missed as a result.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Capsule system in the first two games severely limited a player's options, as moves like basic throws and ki volleys were mapped to Capsules in the same manner as transformations and special moves. And this is before you get into supplemental items and effects that also required slots. Budokai 3 relaxed things somewhat by making throws a universal mechanic while incorporating the more generic techniques previously found in blue Capsules into the Dragon Rush sequence of attacks. Infinite World went a step further and made it so that all transformations were mapped to a single skill, meaning players could more freely customize characters with a high number of transformations (Goku in particular) instead of defaulting to Breakthrough so as to not handicap themselves.
  • The fact that transformations drained the ki gauge, though accurate to the source material, made their use very risky and generally impractical in the first two games, especially when higher level transformations requiring 5 bars would burn through your meter in no time flat and being knocked down while below the required amount of ki would immediately cancel out the transformation. It's little wonder that, on top of giving each character their own gradually replenishing base ki level ^note which affects attack power and defense depending on how far over or under their default number of ki bars the character is, 3 removed these drawbacks entirely. Most transformations instead raise the user's base ki level, and several (like Frieza and Cell's forms) are permanent once activated. And for those who couldn't indefinitely maintain a transformation, they had to be either dangerously low on ki or in post-Hyper Mode fatigue for the powered-up state to end.
  • In order to win struggles and properly charge Ki Volley Attacks in Budokai 2, you have to spin both control sticks at the same time. Good luck trying to defend against an Ultimate while your thumbs and palms slip and slide all over the sticks!
  • For Budokai 3, Hyper Mode was pretty much very unsafe and drained all your ki in one shot if you couldn't properly use it to land big damage or perform your Ultimate Attack/initiate a Dragon Rush. ^note A commonly used work-around is to raise your ki high enough, enter Hyper Mode, transform when right next to the opponent, and then use the Guard Break caused by the transformation to either knock away your foe away with a ki attack special and enter Dragon Rush or unleash the Ultimate unimpeded, not that the game ever tells you this. Both Hyper Mode and Dragon Rushes (see directly below) were abused heavily by the A.I. as well, making some players glad that they were removed in Infinite World.
  • The Luck-Based Mission that is 3's Dragon Rush, in which you have to press a button and hope that your opponent fails to press the same button. You have a very slim chance that you'll press a different button from them every single time, and though your chances of success rise with each stage of the attack (the last choice is a 50/50 shot), you still rack up damage over time and the only way to deal any damage in return is to prematurely end the sequence by guessing right at the very beginning. For weaker opponents, this isn't so bad, but it can easily cause you to lose the fight against stronger opponents like Cell and Kid Buu.
  • The Drama Pieces in Burst Limit, which will stop the match to play a short cutscene and give you buffs should you fulfill their conditions in the middle of the battle. Good idea on paper, absolutely pace-breaking in execution. Not helping matters is that some conditions are constant (like needing to fall below a certain amount of health or reach a certain transformation), while others are so specific and situational, it becomes extremely jarring when it does go off at seemingly random. Don't be surprised if the people you fight with decide to forgo Drama Pieces altogether and just treat the match as any other Budokai game.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: In Budokai 3 you can reset a character's level in Dragon Universe, and once Z3 is unlocked, you can use it at any time, and since on Z3 every opponent has all their stats maxed out while you start on level 0, the first opponent will be a Marathon Boss. While characters who have a Saibamen as their first fight have it better, since you can just avoid them and wait for them to activate Self Destruct and safely avoid their attack until they explode, and Z3 gives so much experience you'll get over 20 levels, mitigating the next fights if you know how to use your stats, but characters like Vegeta don't have such luxury of having Saibamen as a first fight (Though characters who start on saiyan saga like Goku may have the option to fight a Saibamen in a battle point, which can be good to grind a bit).
  • Within this challenge there's a Breakthrough variation, where you have to use a Breakthrough capsule, meaning no yellow or green capsules. This means you can't cheese your opponents with Heart Virus (Which makes both you and opponents lose HP until only half of the last bar is left), and Vaccine (Which cures you of Heart Virus' effect). Teen Gohan has the worst first fight out of anyone in Dragon Universe, simply because Piccolo is equipped with Dende's Recovery, which reduces damage, and since Gohan will be at level 0, his damage will already be weak, and Dende's recovery makes that even worse. If the player goes Super Saiyan 2, does careful combos and makes sure Piccolo rarely has more than two bars, and make sure to use Soaring Dragon Strike in combos, the fight still will take more than 5 minutes to end. And you still have to make sure you don't get hit much too, since Piccolo's stats will be maxed out.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Infinite World's A.I. is much harder than previous games', as it uses techniques up to and including move cancels.
• Sophomore Slump: Budokai 2 is generally seen as the weakest of the original three games, despite the major improvements it made, due to lacking a lot of the memorable aspects of the other games. The "story mode", Dragon World, especially sticks out, since it is a weird board game system that lacks the surprisingly detailed retelling aspect of the first game, and lacks the RPG-like mechanics, world map, and different character stories of the third game. While the game is better overall than 1, and set the stage for a lot of the improvements that 3 would bring, it lacks the charm the first game has while also lacking the polish of 3. Tellingly, the HD remaster didn't include it.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel:
  • Budokai 3 is considered a vast improvement on the previous games. It added in the ability to fly up or down while dashing, teleport and dodge counters, more individualized physical combos for every character, greater variety in special moves (most characters have a beam special and a physical combo special with varying properties), as well as the Dragon Rush mechanic and a new quick time event for Ultimate Attacks. Said special moves and Ultimates alike also gained much more simplistic inputs. Furthermore, transformations no longer drained ki once activated, giving players more of an incentive to use them. Oh, and it also added beam struggles, an icon of Dragon Ball Z that had somehow been absent in the first two games.
  • Though more debatable compared to 3 (see Broken Base and Sophomore Slump above), Budokai 2 itself also counts as a big step up in terms of video game sequels. This especially goes for the graphics, which were much closer to the anime with the new engine, art direction, and Cel Shading, something other anime games would mimic as closely as possible. The expansion into the Buu Saga allowed for more characters and locations to base things off of. Gameplay-wise, fights were more fluid and smoother, and there were multiple mechanical improvements like lower ki consumption for transformations, added moves, and other features to help diversify combat. While Budokai 3 refined this formula to near perfection (resulting in one of the better regarded DBZ games in the franchise's history; see No Problem with Licensed Games above), Budokai 2 laid a good deal of the foundation.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Many of Kenji Yamamoto's works sound eerily similar to songs by Finnish power metal band Stratovarius. The most obvious examples are "Challengers" and "Warrior from an Unknown Land" compared to Stratovarius' "Hunting High and Low" and "Infinity" respectively, whereas "Move Forward Fearlessly" liberally uses the opening guitar riff of "Glory of the World." ^note Doesn't make Budokai's soundtrack any less awesome, though. In fact, years after the Budokai games were released, Yamamoto was fired because Toei found out about his plagiarism. The HD collection of the Budokai games used a completely different soundtrack ^note or, to be more accurate, a mish-mash of the soundtracks from Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and 3, Raging Blast, Tenkaichi Tag Team, and Ultimate Tenkaichi as a result.
  • While there is still a clear rock influence in the Budokai 3 soundtrack ^{(For example...)}The opening to "Over the Galaxy" was lifted from Elton John's "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" whereas "Embrace the Blue Sky" is "Be Good to Yourself" by Journey, Yamamoto also branched out a bit more into disco and R&B: the Duel Mode character select theme is "Upside Down" by Diana Ross, the Level Up/Status Screen theme is "Everybody Dance" by Chic, and "An Old Friend" is "September" by Earth, Wind & Fire. (One fan even made some mash-ups of the latter two examples in light of the above controversy.) The common consensus is that, even if Yamamoto stole a lot of songs when composing the OSTs, he had undeniably good taste in music.
• That One Boss:
  • Android 19 in Budokai's Story Mode. He's already one of the strongest characters, and you have to fight him with the heart virus chewing through your lifebar. Even more irritating because it's a Heads I Win, Tails You Lose fight. If nothing else, it does accurately recreate Goku's experience in the series of being beaten half to death mid-heart attack.
  • Budokai's Legend of Hercule Mode (in which you fight all of the Cell Game competitors as Hercule) has the fight against the Cell Juniors. During the battle you're hit with a major case of Hitbox Dissonance, as half of your attacks will fly right over the Cell Juniors' heads. It doesn't help that you have to beat them as, well, Hercule.
  • The Kid Buu fought at the end of Budokai 2's Dragon World haunted many player's nightmares.
  • When playing as Goku, Budokai 3 has Cell. Before him, none of the previous bosses really stand too much of a chance (with the possible exception of Frieza in his full power form). Cell, on the other hand, has more health than you and is incredibly durable to most of the attacks that you have unlocked at this point. The Kamehameha sort of helps, but good luck landing a hit on him with it because he usually blocks it or moves out of its way.
  • The battle against Super Buu in Tien's story in 3 is also really tough, employing Perfect Play A.I. with a stronger and more versatile moveset than poor Tien.
    • The guys over at Dragon Ball Z Abridged tried to fight him. To say it took a long time is an understatement.
    • Super Buu in general is a big pain to fight in the game. His guard break attacks have good range (as they involve the use of stretchy arms) but are deceptively quick to boot, he constantly spams III Ball Attack (which is, infuriatingly, one of the hardest special attacks to avoid in addition to shredding through your lifebar very quickly while flinging you halfway across the stage), and, in the case of Goku and Vegeta's stories, the player has to fight him twice under conditions that can really screw you over. ^note The first fight you have to play as Super Vegito, which, while having some of his own benefits, robs you of the potential to use Super Saiyan 4 to beef up your Kamehameha and Galick Gun to near Ultimate Attack levels of damage, and the second fight's choice of arena (Inside Buu) automatically drains your health a la Viral Heart Disease.
  • One of the (potential) final bouts in both Goku and Vegeta's Dragon Universe stories is a brawl between Super Gogeta and Gotenks at the World Martial Arts Tournament Arena, set to Budokai 3's main theme "The Ultimate Energy." For the sake of the battle, both fused characters have an infinite timer, making it impossible for either fighter to de-fuse. Because the timer will never be emptied no matter what Gogeta or Gotenks do, this translates to infinite ki, which ultimately helps Gotenks far more than it helps the player. For one, expect Gotenks to immediately ascend to Super Saiyan 3 so that he can spam Victory Cannon as much as he likes, which can and will rip your health bar to shreds in no time flat. Even on lower difficulties does Gotenks have a bad case of Perfect Play A.I., leading him to teleport counter your attacks and repeatedly counter your own attempts to counter his teleports. If that wasn't bad enough, the moment Gotenks enters Hyper Mode, he will stay in it until he either initiates a Dragon Rush or his Ultimate, the player does the same to him to forcibly knock him out of the state, or Gotenks is KO'd.
• That One Sidequest:
  • As mentioned above, trying to fight Gotenks as Gogeta is a nightmare and a half thanks to his aggressive playstyle.
  • Unlocking the additional characters in Budokai 2 and 3 is completely slogged down by the sheer amount of Guide Dang It! moments, as certain characters and abilities can only be unlocked by defeating a specific opponent with specific conditions or locations in the story modes. Screwing up means going back to the beginning of the entire campaign just for another shot.
  • Unlocking the Drama Pieces for use in Versus Mode in Burst Limit is an even worse case of Guide Dang It!, almost incarnate, due to the issues explained above in Scrappy Mechanic. Just activating them mid-Z Chronicle battle isn't enough, you still have to win the fight in order to truly unlock that specific piece, which could be much harder than it's worth since some Drama Pieces requires you to throw the match and be put in a critical condition. God forbid if the piece in question belongs to the CPU opponent, in which case it becomes a Luck-Based Mission on top of everything else.
  • For some reason, Dimps decided it was a good idea to make Super Saiyan 4 Goku and Majin Vegeta Bragging Rights Rewards in Shin Budokai - Another Road, as unlike every other character that can be unlocked through casual play, Super Saiyan 4 Goku and Majin Vegeta have specific unlock conditions that are easier said than done. Majin Vegeta requires you to get the Golden Ending by completing the last chapter with no cities lost, a difficult task on its own thanks to the aggressiveness of the enemy encounters combined with how spread out the map is, while Super Saiyan 4 Goku requires you to defeat Kid Buu in that same chapter with at least a B Rank, a painful task since it's apparently an unwritten law to make Kid Buu a pain in the ass to fight in every game he appears in.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Burst Limit has fully rendered models of King Cold, Mecha Frieza, and Super Saiyan 2 Goku for the pre-rendered FMVs. That's cool! ... So why can't we play as them?
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Most of the Ultimate Attacks look fairly impressive in the first game, and the spectacle was cranked up big time from 2 onward, especially when you use certain world-destroying Ultimates that change the arena into one of the two "ruined" stages. Using a sphere-shaped or explosion-based super move gets one of two scenes of the ball exploding on the planet's surface giving the player an epic view from the planet's orbit. Using a beam-type Ultimate, you see the beam shooting outward from the planet, also viewed from orbit. And the beam is gigantic if said successful Ultimate was Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta's 100x Big Bang Kamehameha. The HD port of 3 really helped highlight this.