Character selection doesn't seem up to par, but each fighter has a variety of forms. You'll use them all at some point during the game if you play through it all. Still, moves are repetitive from character to character, and aside from some speed differences, it's impossible to tell them apart when using them in the game aside from visual cues.
Fighting occurs in a meager number of modes, the core being the illogical and incomprehensible story. This offers different paths to take, and using the menu to step onto a different path is only a matter of replaying a previous fight that caused the branch. Difficulty is all over the place and never consistent. Survival and time attack are standard fare, though the survival is blatantly easy. Multi-player requires two UMDs and is only Ad Hoc.
Obviously, obsessive fans of the franchise will overlook the missing and now standard fighting game features. Dragon Ball Z has enough of a following so that the majority of people playing it will fall into that group. The rest would be better off with Darkstalkers or Street Fighter Alpha 3 for their fighting game fix.
Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai is a rated T (Teen) by the ESRB for Violence.
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