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 synch up right). In this game, you will fight typical foes like Radditz, Nappa, Cell, the Androids, Frieza and Buu, as well as all of the incarnations of Cooler, Lord Slug, and Broly. 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 or until you actively switch between characters; 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 is spent in the Dragon Adventure mode where you play out the various storylines. Here, characters 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, the Androids, etc.) and are typically really tough (unless you hold off a while and level your characters).
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.
