Foreword

This review is based on playing the demo for a bit over twenty minutes. After doing a bit exploring and getting out of the starting area I got party wiped by an attack by Frieze that does over 500 damage to each of your party members at a point in time when your characters will be lucky if they have over 500 HP. It was at this point I simply gave up on the game. Plus the game crashed while trying to reload the title screen at this point as well.

Intro

I'll admit I'm not entirely sure what the title for this project is. If you look for it through the search engine for games it's listed as "DBZ Vegeta's Quest!", but on the game's summary page it's listed as "DBZ Showdown USA", while the title screen has it listed as just "DBZ Showdown!", and if you look at the downloads available for this project the game is listed as "Vegeta's Revenge!". I know alternative titles for movies are a thing, but it seems pretty crazy for a project with only one developer to have so many different names. Though I suppose at the end of the day the name of this project isn't as important as it's overall quality. Sadly this fan game based on Dragon Ball Z that was being developed by Jyomo831 using RPG Maker VX is an absolute mess. And is easily amongst the worst fan games I've ever played. It doesn't even fall into the category of being so bad it's hilarious either. Though I suppose the first mess to sort out is the narrative.

Story

I'll admit the plot of this game feels like an absolute mess. It's pretty obvious from the game's opening that this game is meant to take place in an alternate timeline from the cannon story events. So much so that this game's story comes across as sloppy mess since the developer doesn't do good job establishing how this strange timeline came about. Seriously this game kicks off with Vegeta and Future Trunks training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber against a Saibaman. A Saibaman that is so powerful it almost manages to take both of them out despite Vegeta having pushed past his normal limits and transforming into a Super Saiyan. At any rate after you barely get past this fight you then need to take down Ifrit whose fiery attacks can easily wipe out your party if he challenge him unprepared. And after that you can either fight an additional Saibaman or leave. In all honesty I would recommend taking it out since this game seems to assume your a kill crazy son of a gun that will kill every enemy in your general vicinity. After this were finally allowed to explore the world a bit and can recruit Krillin before the fight with Frieza on planet Namek. Albeit Krillin chickens out at the start of the fight and decides to hang out on the ship instead of risk his life to protect his friends. Though considering Frieza can easily party wipe the player with a move you'll never see coming without experiencing it first hand. It was probably a wise decision on his part.

Gameplay

The demo makes uses of active-time battle system which I absolutely loathe since it puts pressure on the player to make fast inputs while needing to flip through menus. To make matters worse if you wish to use special moves you need to press the right arrow key in order to move the UI to the left so you can pick a special attack. I guess the idea here is that your rotating the dragon ball to the right so the option on the left will now be on top of the ball, but this system is probably not going to be something the player is going to expect. After all, my first attempts at navigating the menus was to press left on the keyboard repeatedly in order to get to the special skills option.

Though that issue seems minor in comparison to the game's balance issues. The fights in this game are extremely tough right from the get go. And since you can't get into fights in the overworld as far as I can tell. The only way to prepare yourself for fights is to ensure you attack every enemy on screen enemy you come across in order to farm every last experience point you can get. And even with that the fight against Freiza will probably result in your death since he gets a free overpowered hit on the party when heavily injured.

Graphics

As far as I can tell the game uses a combination of custom assets and lifted assets from other games in the Dragon Ball franchise. And these assets don't always match up properly. After all, there is a clear difference in terms of style between the face portraits for Bulma and Vegeta.



I'm guessing Vegeta's portrait was pulled from a video game while Bulma's is a more pixelated image pulled from the anime with everything but her face cut away. To make matters worse this portrait doesn't even line up with the outfit Bulma is wearing in the game. So it sticks out even more than just because it contrasts with the other portraits.

And this contrast exists in other places as well with some of the backgrounds used in the demo clearly being images lifted from the anime with assets from the RTP for RPG Maker VX then applied on top of it. A decision that has led to some rather wonky visuals in my opinion.



Seriously what is the timeline in this game. After all, we have a Krillin sprite with hair and Krillin didn't grow his hair out again until the Buu Saga on the same screen as Vegeta in his old Saiyan armor from when he invaded Earth with Future Trunks from the Androids Saga hiding behind the well with a save point that sticks out so much it hurts to look at.

Sound

Sound wise the game is rather forgettable for the most part, but it does contain some lifted voice clips from the anime. Albeit the only time I encountered this was before and during the fight with Frieza. So if anyone else gets this treatment is unknown to me since I gave up after getting my shit pushed in by a cheap death that would be impossible to avoid without prior knowledge in my opinion. Outside of that the audio is rather forgettable which is probably a bad thing since you think this game would have borrowed music from one of the dubs or from the source material or from a popular entry in the video game series like "Dragon Ball Z: Budokai" for the PS2 in order to sound more like an official game.

Conclusion

While I can't say for certain what the name of this project is. I'm of the opinion that this demo really isn't worth playing if your fan of the Dragon Ball Z franchise. After all, it's storyline feels extremely scattershot from what I experienced and has so many little issues that will get under your skin in terms of visuals and overall difficulty that you'll probably want to give up about halfway through the demo. In fact, the only reason to spend anytime on this project at all is just to get it off the list of projects that haven't been reviewed yet in my opinion.