A world full of poorly lip synched original cartoon characters, battles that surpass time (and pass-over twelve episodes), kamehameha attacks, limitless "power" and levels of strength and speed, bulging muscles and time travel, endlessly dying and resurrected characters named after foods. Anything in common? "Gee Gohan, I don't know!"

It's my sun. You can touch it when it's your turn!

All of these elements have gone someway to making the Dragon Ball Z series of cartoons one of my Cheez TV all-time favorites (along with Teknoman – curse you Pokemon for killing any chance of repeat!) - and a television series whose staple action relied on hardcore fights soaring high above the ground between up to eight super-strong and super-fast people, with blazing and brightly coloured projectiles and other deranged special attacks (turning the opposition into chocolate and eating them for instance). Truly, the series was made to have an equivalent fighting game based upon it, however, none of the core elements that have made the Dragon Ball Z series so popular - the flying, intensity, speed, melee and projectile elements - have been effectively translated into gaming format, until now.

DBZ: BT2 goes a long way to rectify problems of previous incarnations: poor flight mechanic, lack of frantic and frenetic fighting, and unusable special attacks.
Previous titles in the DBZ franchise of games failed to capture the feeling of really being immersed in the Dragon Ball world.

With BT2, you get something different, something surpassing even the cartoons in many respects, direct action and combat with enough frills to keep you entertained but not to bore you stupid. You'll be greeted by Goku and son Gohan within seconds of booting BT2, with the original voice cast returning and a cheeky Monkey Magic style lack of synchronized voicing, you know you're now a part of the Dragon Ball-verse and in for something special.

Your TURN!

Adventure Mode boasts one of the longest single-player fighting campaigns around. Following the original cartoon story from beginning of the Dragon Ball Z to the end of GT in near perfection, you'll be pitted against Cell, Majin-Boo, Frieza, Android #13, Bebi Geta and their various incarnations, even fighting giant Saiyan monkeys is on the cards. In the beginning, battles aren't too difficult (unless you selected the hardest difficulty in which case you'll have not more than stubs for thumbs after the first round), and it's not long before you'll have squashed the Saiyan menace on Earth, quickly defeating Vegeta, Raditz and the others and have to begin defending the universe in it's entirety. It's more epic than a Final Fantasy storyline.

DBZ:BT2 repeats itself, with cut-scene to fighting to cut-scene to fi .. ght .. *snoring sounds prevail* ... sorry. Even though the game repeats itself with battle after battle, with, at my approximation, about 100 or so battles (maybe more?), the fighting only increases in intensity and the levelling up of characters plays a good part of the action too. Levelling up, which is achieved by attaching a variety of items called Z items in the Evolution Z menu and then fighting for extended periods, is interesting and under documented. I've really no idea when, or indeed, why characters level up when they do, but oh well, it happens! Character development diversifies from levelling up in some instances, with races such as the Saiyans and Nameks progressing through a series of transformations including Super Saiyan levels 1-4 and then fusions such as Gotenks and Vegitto, as happens in the cartoons. The speed of attack and moves available greatly depends on the evolution stage of the character and it's possible to transform mid battle to make use of all the characters potential. One example of attention to detail is evident in the evolution of Trunks, where at one stage of Super Saiyan he is exceptionally strong but ridiculously slow so he devolves to the stage below to ramp up the speed of his attacks whilst sacrificing brute strength. In game, the difference between the slow Trunks and fast Trunks is extremely well balanced, so choosing the correct transformation plays a good part in the battle.

Heeeeey, where do you study? We're like, totally in tune ya?

Between battles is a World Map, which can be flown around at great speeds (Not_Matt pointed out that the feeling of speed whilst soaring above the World Map feels faster than that of Superman in the Superman games). Small points of interest such as cities and shops are scattered throughout the worlds providing for optional battles, items and Dragon Balls to be found.

For all the praise I've given to DBZ:BT2 there are still many flaws, actually a huge number really. In short, the AI is pretty predictable, and even on the most challenging setting, the battles adhere to the same formula, which is essentially punching the opposition far enough away to provide time to power up before sending the Ultimate Blast in their direction (Goku's Spirit Bomb is still unrivalled!). The battle mechanics are pretty intuitive but don't really amount to more than button-mashing, charging and then a simple press of three buttons to unleash the final move. Battles improve somewhat when playing two-player as the veracity of another human opponent makes for some intense game-play. I've never cramped so much mashing a control in my life than playing a mate Tim, a die-hard DBZ fan whose sole aim was to unleash Goku's Spirit Bomb on my Frieza character.

The sheer number of playable characters (over 60!), strict adherence to the DBZ and DBGT story and number of battles will keep any DBZ fan going for, well, a damned long time! However, for anyone that isn't a fan of the saga (and it's a bloody huge saga), this game might not satisfy. To survive against the likes of Tekken, Street Fighter, Virtua Fighter etc. it would have to improve its battle mechanics and moves list somewhat, but in the end, maybe it's the simplicity and speed that separates this title from the other fighters and makes it accessible? Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2 isn't the best of the series yet (Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 still reigns king of DBZ fighters according to some), but comes close to "must have" for 'core fans of Dragon Ball Z.