Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team is a fighting game for the PlayStation Portable. While small in size, the game boasts a variety of modes and contains 70 fighters from the Dragon Ball Z Universe. With these 70 fighters, the game allows players to have two versus two combat for the first time ever in a Dragon Ball game. The game gives you the ability to control more than one fighter in 1v1, 2v1 or 2v2 battles.

DBZ Tenkaichi Tag Team is yet another retelling of the Dragonball Z saga. If you’re somewhat familiar to the Dragon Ball Z story, then there’s nothing even remotely new here. You may even actually get bored with the story telling. If you’re not familiar with anything of the Dragon Ball Z universe, then Tenkaichi Tag Team does a fairly satisfactory job in telling you the story, but you may get lost in some spots. The Story arc contains the Saiyan saga up through the Majin Buu saga. This game doesn’t reveal any story plots that weren’t seen in the anime though.

There have been other PSP Dragon Ball games before Tenkaichi Tag Team, so what makes this any different? The game might not be brand new material, but it is presented pretty well. Tenkaichi Tag Team allows for some exploration between fights where you can take on missions for characters found on the map. Other objectives include winning fights with different partners, and locating key objects. It’s a simple system, but it does add variety to the redundant fight after fight after fight progression found in most fighting games.

Along with the story mode, Tenkaichi Tag Team contains ranked battles that are very similar to other fighting games, a string of challenge modes, and a training mode. The game also contains a shop that allows the player to spend D-Points won in matches on new capsules to customize their fighters. This is a nice added touch, but isn’t really a game changer. There is also a multi-player option that is Ad-Hoc for players to team up or fight against eachother.

The sound design is average with what you would expect with Dragon Ball Z. Cue the manly grunts and gasps and the obligatory bad guy speech. The voice acting seemed awfully bad considering most of the anime voiceovers are actually decent. The cel-shaded graphics aren’t bad at all and look great on the PSP’s screen. Tenkaichi Tag Team does a good job of recreating the authentic look of the anime series. The movements and animations tend to look a little odd though.

Although the game is a pretty solid fighting game that allows you to move in a 3D environment, Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team gets repetitive and stale after awhile. Playing the story mode to unlock all 70 of the characters seems like a mundane task of run up, attack, fly back and then rinse and repeat. Although the characters are different and have different special moves, it’s basically the same fighter with a different skin. Overall, the game is a pretty bland forgettable unless you are a diehard Dragon Ball Z fan. The story is presented in such a fashion that a new fan of the Kai series could easily follow. The new additions of multi-fighter battles will appease your appetite for combat but not for the average gamer. You’re better off sticking with your Street Fighter to keep with the fast pace fighting. The game feels sloppy and feels as though it was made without much care because the series still prints money.

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