Any game that adapts Dragon Ball Z’s entire story is going to have to make some comprises. Ignoring that Dragon Ball in its entirety is a 42 volume manga, that’s still 26 volumes of content the game has to adapt– and it does cut corners. Making DBZ into an RPG is equally as troubling considering the series has never had a consistently active cast.
Characters come and go which means you won’t get the change to play as a few of them for as much as you’d like. In fact, for a game called Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Goku isn’t even the character you spend the most time controlling. In some cases, the availability (or lack thereof) is excusable, but when Kakarot drops the ball, it drops it.
7 Vegito
Vegito comes and goes like the wind, just as he does in both the manga and the anime. This means he doesn’t outstay his welcome, but it’s not like players are given the time to really enjoy playing as Vegito. His fight against Buuhan is narratively cathartic, but playing is him is more of a very brief treat than anything substantial.
It’s a shame such an interesting character is locked to one single fight, but what can you do? That’s the case in the manga as well. It isn’t too egregious that Vegito isn’t more playable (unlike other playable characters,) but hopefully Kakarot includes a future update that adds Vegito (and Gotenks) as permanent party members.
6 Trunks
Future Trunks’ life is pain. Whether it’s in Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball Super, or Kakarot, the boy was just made to suffer. In the case of the series’ latest video game adaptation, the Cell arc seemingly doesn’t care much for who is essentially its central character. Trunks is playable a few times to move from point A to point B, but his only real fight is against Mecha Frieza.
Trunks’ fight against Perfect Cell is not only skipped, but we also don’t even get to see him go back in time to defeat Android 17, Android 18, and later Cell. That’s two boss fights right there. Just put them back to back with a cutscene sandwiched in-between and already Trunks is handled infinitely better than in the main game. He’s playable in the post-game, but that’s not enough to make up for how awful his availability is. It’s a wonder the devs didn’t just make him a party member and the fight against Mecha Frieza a cutscene.
5 Gotenks
It’s really a testament to Kakarot’s problems with availability that a character who is temporarily playable ends up with more play time than someone who can permanently join the party at the end of the game. What went wrong here? Did someone have a personal vendetta exclusively against Future Trunks? He barely gets any of his major fights whereas Gotenks gets all of his.
To be fair, he doesn’t have very many, but he less than Trunks and they’re all here. Trunks has a few and really only one is adapted properly. Gotenks isn’t even playable that often. You’ll play as him for, at most, about an hour. Which ends up more than Trunks if you don’t do any side content with him. Which, why would you?
4 Piccolo
Considering how good of a job Kakarot manages to balance Piccolo’s playtime alongside Goku and Gohan’s in the Saiyan arc, it’s really disappointing how the rest of the game fails him– worse so than the main series. Him being dead during the Frieza arc means he naturally can’t be playable too much, but there’s no reason we couldn’t have trained with King Kai (as Piccolo or Goku.)
The Cell arc features Piccolo a decent bit, adapting all of his major fights, but he may as well just be a party members come the Buu arc. Piccolo’s right on the cusp as far as acceptable availability is concerned. He’s present for everything important, but it just doesn’t feel like enough in the grand scheme of things. Though that likely has to do with Kakarot trimming perhaps a bit too much fat.
3 Vegeta
Although he isn’t playable during the events of the Saiyan arc for obvious reasons, Vegeta ultimately manages to pull past Piccolo in terms of availability thanks to the Frieza and Buu arc. In the former, Vegeta and Gohan trade control back & forth before Goku arrives. In the latter, Vegeta is just a more active character than Piccolo, participating in more battles.
Vegeta might actually be the most consistently playable character in the game when you think about it, with control going back to him rather evenly across the Frieza, Cell, and Buu arcs. If nothing else, there aren’t many stretches where Vegeta isn’t playable for a long time. The longest ones are the Saiyan arc and when he’s dead during the Buu arc.
2 Son Goku
Fans like to point out that Goku isn’t super active during Dragon Ball Z, but that’s not exactly true. If he’s not around, it’s either because he’s training or healing. He doesn’t move the story along as much as he did as a kid, but the plot is still centered mainly around him in some capacity or another, even if later arcs focus more on the supporting cast.
That said, Kakarot goes out of its way to keep Goku more active, going so far as to add new boss fights in the Cell arc just for Goku. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of actual character development for Goku in the Saiyan and Namek arc– virtually all his training is cut across the sagas. Still, he’s playable surprisingly often for a character who actually doesn’t fight that much after his fight with Vegeta.
1 Son Gohan
For a game titled Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, you sure do spend quite a lot of time playing as Gohan. Not just that, the majority of the game is framed from his perspective. While the Saiyan arc opens with Goku image training, Gohan is there from the very start. Both characters are introduced together, and it doesn’t take long for the story to start centering on Gohan.
It’s Gohan who drives the Saiyan and Frieza arcs as the main playable character, and Kakarot really goes out of its way to make the passing of the torch between Goku and Gohan even grander… only to rip away the spotlight from Gohan even more jarringly than the actual series. Kakarot spends so much time with Gohan, it’s a bit silly the devs chose to specifically center the game around Goku.
NEXT: Dragon Ball: 10 Best Handheld Games, Ranked
