YMMV / Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku

• Awesome Moments:
  • The ending of The Legacy of Goku II showcasing Trunks returning to the future and defeating the Androids 17, 18 and Cell of his time. Despite the simple GBA graphics and presentation, seeing him one-shot all three of them is just as awesome as in any other depiction/adaptation of the scene.
  • While the fandom is split between both characters involved, one satisfying moment can happen in The Legacy of Goku II by talking to Chi-Chi as Hercule, and she utterly asks why he dares to show his face in front of her after taking the credit for defeating Cell from Gohan.
• Awesome Music:
  • The soundtrack for the first Legacy of Goku game by Ariel Gross is surprisingly engaging and while he does pay homage to the Faulconer opening theme for the game's intro theme, the rest are all well put together original pieces, especially the final battle theme and the Namekian Temple theme.
  • Legacy of Goku II and Buu's Fury notably feature soundtracks consisting of remixes of the music composed by Bruce Faulconer for the original North American English dub of Dragon Ball Z. Hearing these epic songs straight out of the anime in 16-bit form is a real treat. Even fans of the original music are fine with it.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Due to the Nintendo Hard nature of the first game, just about every enemy in the game qualifies, but special mention goes to the wolves. They are extremely powerful, often dealing 25% of Goku's health in a single hit, take a lot of effort and luck to beat, and are the most common enemy in the early stages of the game. In fact, there are several of them in the woods surrounding Goku's house, and they could very well be the very first enemy you fight in the game. Many players have started the game, saw a wolf, and then the next thing they saw was the game over screen.
  • In Legacy of Goku II the alligators and saber-tooth tigers populating the Tropical Islands are this. They are quite strong AND they often come in large groups, so they can easily swarm you and give you no time to react if you are unprepared. Adding on to this is the fact that you can only play as Vegeta and Trunks on your first visit to the Tropical Islands, and their Super Saiyan forms have just had their speed greatly nerfed for story reasons, which makes them even tougher to deal with. You could try to avoid them entirely, but they do give quite a bit of EXP if you beat them, and since they come in large groups...
  • Buu's Fury is an extremely easy game, but there is one enemy that could give players a hard time. The cyborgs that can transform into a ball will become invulnerable to all damage when they do so, and they can damage you just by touching you. The area where you first encounter them has a lot of small rooms and narrow passageways, so it's difficult to avoid them when they do this. They can also hit rather hard, so you may find yourself in a dangerous situation very suddenly.
• Even Better Sequel: The Legacy of Goku II was well-liked enough, but Buu's Fury polished the engine even further.
• Fanon Discontinuity: The first Legacy of Goku is generally ignored and for good reason. The only reason to even play it now is out of morbid curiosity, and to see just how lightyears an improvement the sequels are over it.
• Funny Moments: Broly's expression if you trick him into jumping into lava in his boss fight in Buu's Fury.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Weighted clothing in Buu's Fury, which increases your XP gain at the cost of decreasing your speed. Thing is, it doesn't slow you down that much, and Super Saiyan greatly increases your speed anyway! Before long, you'll be ten or twenty levels ahead of the curve and killing every enemy in one shot, especially combined with the level up point-boosting Gokuu Hat.
  • Also in Buu's Fury, the 255 Senzu Bean bug. Normally Senzu Beans are Too Awesome to Use, but if you're carrying hundreds more than the game intends, never mind that.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Legacy of Goku II has the Red Ribbon's Ladybug drones. If you're parallel to them, they attack by shooting lightning at you, which has a fairly long reach and a long-lasting hitbox, making hitting them tricky. They're also the very first standard enemy you encounter, and they can easily kill you if you're not careful. Once you've leveled up a few times, they're not as deadly, but they remain a frequent annoyance throughout the game.
  • Buu's Fury has a few. First are the tanks, which can damage you just by touching you, and are able to fire missiles at you very rapidly, requiring you to either use ki attacks (which are rather weak in Buu's Fury compared to Legacy of Goku II) or time your punches VERY well. There are also the skeleton enemies, which have shields that can completely block your attacks, and have to be defeated multiple times before they will actually stay dead. Thankfully, aside from one point where you are required to fight a tank due to it blocking a passage the exact width of the tank, you can simply run past any enemy you deem too annoying to deal with.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In the first game, if you got hit by an enemy's ki blast while flying, you would become invincible until you fly again. It makes a game rife with Fake Difficulty somewhat more playable. Though, it's mainly only bosses that use ki blasts, and it's not until Namek that regular enemies use ki blasts, so you still have to get through the first two-thirds of the game legit. Or just use the invincibility Cheat Code.
  • Speaking of the invincibility code, there's one thing that can hurt you with it on: Snake Way's spikes. While you need to actively try to die to them, it's an amusing oversight.
  • In Buu's Fury, an early Fetch Quest has you retrieve a Senzu Bean (which grants full health and ki) for Videl. If you eat the bean yourself before delivering it, the game will subtract one bean from your empty stock anyway, causing it to wrap around and give you 255. This is particularly broken when you consider that ordinarily you can only carry 3.
• Growing the Beard: The Legacy of Goku II is considered a huge jump up from the first game. Among other things, it features multiple playable characters instead of just Goku, is more faithful in following the anime's story and not cutting parts out, includes a world map and larger areas to explore, and has better combat and a much better health system where you can take more than just 3-4 hits.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When Gohan transforms into Super Saiyan 2 in the fight with Cell, the game mis-labels it as "Super Saiyan Rage". Then Dragon Ball Super comes out with an actual Super Saiyan Rage form for Future Trunks, as a variant of Super Saiyan 2.
  • Another moment made retroactively humorous and ironic comes from Buu's Fury. After destroying a robot sent by Pilaf to prevent Goten and Trunks from getting his Dragon Ball, Pilaf surrenders proclaiming "Okay. I give up! Take the Dragon Ball. I'm getting too old for this..." While this was a Discontinuity Nod to the Non-canon continuation Dragon Ball GT (in which he and his underlings were indeed elderly by then), funnily enough Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods would reveal that the Pilaf Gang themselves have been reverted to children thanks to a mis-worded wish to Shenron.
  • For fans of Team Four Star, the scouter's read on Popo in 2 is hilarious for implying that he might be immeasurably powerful. In Dragon Ball Z Abridged Popo is a horrifying, near-eldritch being who could solve all the problems in the series but chooses not to because it's more amusing to watch the Z Fighters screw up.
  • One of the spirits you can find in the Snake Way in "Buu's Fury", who complains about having to wait in there by stating "This is worse than the time i waited in line for The Hercule Movie!" , becomes even funnier due to how frequently the quote is used to start a Cutaway Gag on Family Guy.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Gohan after getting his power-up from the Elder Kai in Buu's Fury, as it removes his ability to go Super Saiyan (and the speed boost you get from being in it) without giving him a permanent boost to speed like when he was the Great Saiyaman. This means he's always at his untransformed speed, making him suddenly less desirable when he's at his strongest in canon. (Which is perversely fitting when you consider that many fans have similarly low opinions of the Ultimate Gohan powerup.)
• No Problem with Licensed Games: While few will defend the first game in the series, both of its sequels are regarded as good action RPGs for the Game Boy Advance, and are thought to be some of the best non-fighting games based on the Dragon Ball franchise.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The first game, The Legacy of Goku, isn't very good, being slow, clunky, and an all-around piece of crap.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Ki drain from Super forms in II makes them wildly impractical for anything more than a stat boost while you spam your melee attack, as using ki attacks will drain the entire meter in no time. Buu's Fury fixes this by adding a yellow "super meter" on top of the ki meter and draining that instead, plus adding hefty ki regeneration when landing melee attacks.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Buu's Fury compared to Legacy of Goku II. First, the player now has the ability to block enemy attacks by holding the R button. Second, the mechanic in II where an enemy could not get punched into a corner, and would get knocked behind the player if this happened, is removed, allowing the player to corner enemies and continue to wail on them with the attack button without consequence. Further making things easier are the player being allowed to freely allocate stat points after leveling up (whereas your stat gains were determined randomly in II), and the addition of several items, including equippable gear, numerous varied healing items purchasable in unlimited quantities that can be used at any time, and a rare item that automatically revives you from death simply by having one in your inventory. The games' enemies aren't that much stronger than those in II, but just through these new features alone, you will be.
• Signature Scene: The Legacy of Goku II has an optional and odd, but humorous one: if you talk to Mrs. Briefs, she gives you one cookie. Cookies are the only usable healing item other than Senzu beans, and your inventory for them caps at 99, so as a result many players have memories of talking to Mrs. Briefs a full 99 times to max out on cookies.
  Mrs. Briefs: Really, dear. You have 99 cookies already! If you get sick on my carpet I'll be quite upset!
• Spiritual Successor: Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot follows the same structure of these games, in the aspect of being an Action RPG where you play as different members of the Z Fighters battling through the storyline of Z.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The Legacy of Goku II is an impressive step-up from the first game, with many fans considering it (and Buu's Fury) one of the best Dragon Ball Z games. It addresses many of the problems the first game had, but mainly the clunkly controls and bland combat.
• That One Level: The section in the Northern Mountains in II where you have to individually move three dinosaur eggs from a generator to a hot air vent. There's only one room between these places, but it's loaded with patrolling enemies, and while you're carrying an egg, you can't attack and you're not allowed to take damage, turning your Action RPG into a Stealth-Based Mission that you have to do three times with no changes.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Stations of the Canon are a known force that shines through just about every major Dragon Ball property, but in a game with character customization and gradually giving the player a full party of Z Fighters to enjoy, it's slightly disappointing that none of them get to really have major fights that they already didn't. Imagine if, for example, after Goku's Heroic Sacrifice at the end of II, you could still choose to fight Cell's super perfect form with Gohan, yes, but alternatively with Vegeta, Trunks, Piccolo, or even Hercule, making his lie genuinely come true. Or in the case of Buu's Fury, how hard would it have been to get Gohan, Goten, and Trunks back just before Kid Buu and have them Spared by the Adaptation for the sake of fighting him with whoever you want?

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