Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 continues the visually flashy and overall stunning style of the previous DBZ Budokai games. Everything from the cel-shaded characters to the huge arenas to the various special moves look and feel just like they did in the shows. Whether you are fighting on a destroyed Namek, or a peaceful mountain pass, fans of the show should be able to easily recall epic battles fought in each location.

Tenkaichi continues the DBZ trend of using the actual voice actors from the show for each of the characters. All of the major and minor characters that appear in Tenkaichi 2 (which covers almost every person in the show) are voiced by the same actor/actress from the anime. Sound effects also come off loud and clear. After all, what good are a bunch of bright, flashy explosions if you don't have some cool sound effects to go with them.

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 touts itself as being "The most explosive fighting game ever!" and with the number of explosive balls of light and fast-paced action this game has to offer, if it doesn't meet that goal, then it comes pretty damn close.

This game features every fighter from the DBZ story (right up to the recently released Wrath of Dragons movie) and all of the sagas and movies in chronological order (well... they attempt to fit the movies in there, but fans of the show know that they really don't sync up right). In this game, you will fight your typical foes of Radditz, Nappa, Cell, the Androids, Frieza and Buu as well as all of the incarnations of Cooler, Lord Slug, Broly and you even get to fight as Goku and Radditz's long dead father, Bardock. Put simply, this game has everyone.

The fights themselves are mostly the same as before. Two fighters will face off in a confined arena and unleash devastating signature attacks against one another. Some of the more noticeable differences are the size of the battle locations and the tag-team feature built into some of the story missions. These tag-team events let you fight as a character until he or she has been sent to the next dimension, then your next fighter joins the fray. An example of how this is used would be when Goku and Piccolo go up against Radditz. You start off as Goku and by the time he dies, Radditz has been weakened enough for Piccolo to take him out. For those readers not familiar with the show, Goku sacrificed himself in this battle so that Piccolo could stop the Saiyan warrior.

Most of your time will be spent in the Dragon Adventure mode where you will play out the various storylines. Here, your character will fly over the world from location to location looking for fights, and of course Dragon Balls. The main story events are marked as red dots on the map while you are flying around, and these are where you need to go to advance the storyline so you can unlock items, powers and characters. But there are also non-required missions you can go on that will also unlock various goodies. These missions are fights against other DBZ characters (Tien, Yamcha, Chioatzu, etc.) and are typically really tough (unless you hold off a while and wait for your characters to level up some).

Budokai Tenkaichi 2 also has the standard Tournament mode, where you get to go up against computer or human opponents in a series of tiered battles (gamers familiar with pretty much any DBZ console game will recognize this mode). And of course there is the quick fight or Dueling mode, where you get to try your hand against an unlocked opponent of your choosing at any of the opened locations.

Other modes are Ultimate Battle Z, where your character fights a series of rivals in order to unlock really rare items and Ultimate Training (one of the longest and most in-depth training modes to date). The Item Shop and Evolution Z menu options are used to buy items and apply them to your characters in order to customize the fighter just how you want.

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2's Story mode can get a little annoying at times, but in retrospect seems to be well balanced overall. The fights follow the events of the show. If you are controlling a character that is supposed to win a fight (i.e. Gohan versus Cell), then the Stage Clear condition states simply "Win". But if your character doesn't actually stand a chance (like the first time Piccolo faces Radditz), then your instructions are to simply stay alive until the clock runs out. Mind you, these fights are typically your really low level character against their really high level one, so there isn't really any chance of actually winning the fight. So I guess overall, it seemed like the changes in difficulty were consistent to the difficulty the characters from the show faced as they fought each new opponent, lost, trained and re-matched.

With each new Budokai game, not only does the cast of characters and overall scope of the game get bigger, but it seems like the controls get more complex. It seems like Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 tries to address that issue and simplifies things a little. A much appreciated change.

The game has a very in-depth training section that will teach you all of the ins and outs of fighting, flying, focusing your power, homing in on a target, etc. in Tenkaichi 2, but if you are the type who tries their hand at a few fights before going over to the tutorials (I admit to being one of those), here are the basics. Your basic moves of dash, Ki blast, block and attack are X, Triangle, Circle and Square respectively. Jumping and ascending while flying is done with R1 while you descend with R2. R3 is how you transform your character and L1 lets you lock onto an enemy while L2 is how you charge up your energy.

Special attacks assigned to a character are done with very simple to mildly complex button combinations (like it has been in past Budokai games), but gone are the other key presses you have to perform in order to maximize your attack. In one of the past games, in order to make your character's special attack really count, after firing it off, you would have to tap a series of face buttons in a certain order in order to up the damage, while your opponent would do the same thing to reduce the damage. In another game, attacks came in three waves and the attacker would tap a face button, and if the defender guessed that button correctly, the attack was blocked (or it wasn't as damaging). These mini-games, which always felt like they interrupted from the flow of the fight, have been taken out.

If you have been following the Budokai games from the beginning and haven't tired of fighting pretty much the same battles over and over again (just with slightly different mechanics) just to see how they handled the new characters for that game (in this case we have ones like Kid Goku, Bojak, Broly, Hirudegarn and a few others), then Tenkaichi 2 is definitely a good game for you. If you've followed the series in the past, but feel it's started to grow a little stale, then rent it first, or pick up Super Dragon Ball Z (a much more arcadey game).