Highlights
- Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot's newest DLC, The 23rd World Tournament, introduces new combat mechanics and a focus on ground combat, which adds a fresh and fitting element to the final tournament arc.
- The DLC stays true to the original source material, offering a beat-by-beat retelling of Goku's matches and even allowing players to experience Tien Shinhan's best moments.
Dragon Ball Z needs no explanation, being the grandfather of Shonen anime adventures. Yet, at least in the West, the original first half of the story (the anime used Z has a rebrand for the darker half, while the manga refers to the whole story as Dragon Ball) gets lost in the shuffle. Original Dragon Ball was more comedy martial arts, with far fewer ki blasts and evil aliens. For fans like myself, it's the better half of Goku's story.
Z's story has been told many times through video games, most recently with Kakarot. However, with the newest DLC, The 23rd World Tournament, the game dared to adapt the ending section of Dragon Ball, the final story from just before Raditz invaded, and turned the story darker than it ever was previously. It's my favorite story arc of Dragon Ball, and what Kakarot did with it is both a love letter to the story and something that manages to flip the game's mechanics while still feeling great.
I quite love DBZ: Kakarot. It's a fun RPG that faithfully tells the story of Z while knowing where to add the side quests and spots to grind. The DLC has been good, but with some weak spots, and from the very beginning of the 23rd World Tournament DLC I could feel this would be the one to come toe-to-toe with History of Trunks as the best expansion.
The DLC starts with Kid Goku's final fight against the Demon King Piccolo, something the trailers never showed us. This fight gives you a firm foot in how the new combat works, as Kid Goku, has a moveset you don't get to change and a tutorial of how the new ground combat works. You'll notice early on that the ki blast prompt is now called shockwave, and if you hit it, Goku will now send a burst of air toward the Demon King.
This is true to Dragon Ball as while Z was full of ki blasts, there weren't ki-based attacks in the original Dragon Ball aside from signatures like the Kamehameha and the Dodon Ray. The amount of special attacks is a lot more limited as a result.
Ground combat was a secret sauce mentioned in the trailers, and they managed to make this new form of combat feel right at home. Even when I first played Kakarot, I'd hoped we'd get a game just like it for the original Dragon Ball, knowing the ground combat would be the biggest hurdle. Now, it's still so combat-heavy that I feel this gameplay couldn't work for certain chapters like, say, when Goku and friends had to deal with Monster Carrot, but the way you have to utilize punches above all else just feels so perfect for the final tournament arc.
Getting your energy full to burst mode sends Goku into a fury of fists, enough so that in many fights I barely used ki attacks at all! When I did, I mostly relied on the First-Strike Kamehameha. This is what the game calls the attack where Goku uses the Kamehameha with his feet, a callback to something Goku did once to free his hands in the show. But here, it's a ramming attack that often hits harder than the regular Kamehameha until I fully upgraded the stronger version, and it knocks back enemies so well that it's an instant win if a weakened opponent is at the edge of the ring.
The story is basically beat-by-beat to the original source, and you only get to play most of Goku's matches and one of Tien Shinhan's. Playing as Tien was showcased in the trailers, and while it only happens twice, they make it worth the time.
Your first time with Tien is optional; Tien is mentally preparing for his match against Mercenary Tao and if you bother him, he'll have a flashback to another time he fought Tao.
The fight is hard, even with Solar Flare usually stunning him, hard enough that while I beat it on my second try I spent most of the first match wondering if I was supposed to lose as I rarely got the upper hand. Once you win, you get more backstory about how Tien came to understand that the Crane School were monsters, and he wasn't the assassin he believed he was; it makes the coming rematch way more fitting.
Your level and Tao's will seem the same, but Robot Tao is an absolute pushover just like his 23rd Tournament fight in the original story. Pummeling Tao so easily after struggling against him feels great, and as a big fan of Tien Shinhan, it's so nice to get to play one of his best moments in a way that adds to it just a little bit more.
Once you defeat Piccolo Junior at the end, you unlock the post-game, where you can have rematches of the fights through the Tough Training icon on the map, and every rule used in the original match still applies. You can still knock the opponent out of the ring, you can still try to get back up if you were knocked down, and you still can't heal. Fights like Demon King Piccolo and Giant Junior will keep their more restrictive rules, meaning that while the rematches are redos of the original fight but at escalating level caps, the fights themselves have variety. Take this over the other DLCs and even the base game, where nearly every single fight had the exact same set of rules. You still go into the Tough Training knowing you'll have to change strategy.
The other post-game activity is a side story where Goku is asked by the local police to deal with prisoners who were released during the Demon King's time as ruler of Earth. These are fights against a large group, in the vein of Dynasty Warriors. It's a similar feature to both the Bardock and Resurrection F DLCs, but the story this time fits this activity way better, and Goku is stated to only be defeating these thugs, not killing them, making it feel a bit more morally sound after Bardock's genocides.
Even the character models were redone to more closely match the art style of the original Dragon Ball, with rounder features and the Turtle School Gi being a more reddish-orange. That alone proves the commitment, but playing it, I think this DLC is some of the best this game has to offer. Kakarot has become the best Dragon Ball game, even outside of just Z.