Crappy games – Dragonball Z: Collectible Card Game (GBA)
Wow, where do I even start on how horrible is this game. When I first saw game footage and commentary of this game from KITT171, I knew that I had to give this game a shot for myself. I finally got home from school and played this Dragonball Z game for about an hour.
Now I’ve never played the actual Dragonball Z trading card game before, so the first thing I did is tried out the Tutorial mode in order to find out how this game is played. The tutorial in this game sucks ass. It explains some basics, like when it is your turn to attack or defend, but it doesn’t explain that you NEED certain cards for defending and attacking as well as what receiving a Dragonball does in this game (I still have no clue).
After the Tutorial mode, I found out that you can make your own deck of cards, which you can see in the beginning of this video. Now I’m not familiar with this game, so I gave myself at least one of every card that I was allowed to choose from. Sad to admit, but this is the high point of the game. I mean the fact that this game gives you the option to select your deck of cards is pretty neat.
However, I found the gameplay to be quite realistic, but in a terrible way. How so? Well, just like when playing board games with your friends, eventually they start to cheat. In this game, the cards of your opponent are never shown, so there’s no way in telling if the CPU is cheating or not (I bet it is). I still don’t understand the upgrading of power (to me it just randomly happens). This first match seen here took me about 15mins before losing. For a 1st match, you would think that the CPU would take it easy on you. Unfortunately, that’s not the case as you will be overpowered by the cards they pull out against you. To be honest, I’m still confused about the gameplay of this game.
The graphics in this game is nothing much (then again, it’s a card game so not much is expected). The music is just ONE soundtrack looped over and over again. *sigh*
Overall, I don’t recommend this game at all. It sucks major dragon balls.
Link to KITT171’s video of this game:
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I love this game and yes the GBA version wasn't that great the actual CCG was amazing. Me and my friends played it all the time. I loved my saiyan style deck even though my friends hated it. Awesome game.
lol I didn't even know they made DBZ card games XD
Had that game on GBA was really fun after learning how to play it. Krillan is weak… even with basic deck beating him was not an issue.
The video game is really bad (could be one of the worst card game to video game adaptations EVER) but the card game is fairly simple to learn. You have a Life Deck which you draw your cards from. When this Life Deck is empty you lose. Cards either have a sword (Attack), a starburst (Defend), or Non-combat (like Drills).
1) You draw 3 cards at the start of your turn.
2) Play Non-combat cards
3) Right before you declare to attack you gain 2 power stages.
4) Declare Combat or skip to Discard Step.
5) Combat
a) Defender draws 3 cards
b) Play an attack card. Physical attacks damage the the power stages of your target. If the target is at 0 power stages you discard the top card of his deck for each point of damage. Energy attacks cost 2 power stages and damage the Life Deck directly.
c) Opponent can play a defend card or take the damage.
d) Opponent can play an attack card.
e) You go back and forth until both players skip to attack (but skip step 5a, it only happens once)
6) Discard down to 1 card.
7) Rejuvenate: take the top card of your discard pile and put it at the bottom of your Life Deck. You only do this if you skip combat.
You do this back and forth until someone either dies, has all 7 dragon balls (which you can steal by doing 5 or more card damage), OR goes to the highest level possible, out of all characters.
i never won
You really have to go out of your way to be any good, such as googling the handbook or just reading about how the CCG goes. If you're casual about this then you're fucked; you basically have to lose over and over before starting to make sense of what's going on. For example, it might take a bunch of losses to Guldo before you realize, "Hey, maybe I should stop his Personality Attack so he doesn't rape me" or for Gohan "Maybe I should use cards that take away anger". I wouldn't call this game great by any means, but once you understand the game, and can win consistently it's sorta fun.
I got this game back in 2004. I remember being really bummed out because I misread the packaging and thought it was a first person fighting game.l Anyways, I kept playing it and the game really grew on me. If you have a competitive drive, then take the time to learn the cards and how each character plays their hand. I do wish there was more organization when deck building but overall I really do love this game. Its for sure a cult classic
wow I remember this game! I played it so much. never really knew what I was doing but when I won I felt like a king. I used to love it