I feel pretty bad for the people who actually purchased this game for the full $50, especially when God of War, "the best action game for ps2," was released the same day.
DBZ: Sagas is 'decent' when you take a step back and dont compare it to other video games... If you look at it from the perspective of "It's a low-budget game with a small team that doesn't care or know anything about DBZ", it's not 'that' bad. I somewhat enjoyed playing through it, but only because I know who the characters represent and I have a good imagination to make it seem a little more involving. If I didn't follow DBZ and know all of the characters... Heh, no way I would be playing this game for more then 5 minutes. Like IGN says, "You'll stop playing faster than you can say 'Kamehameha!'"
What was really depressing is that I actually completed the game 100%.. Got all of the items and powerups, not one reward. Once you beat the game normally you earn this Pendulum mode that allows you to play through any of the levels with any character, including a few new unlockable characters... Unfortunetly, all of the characters play the same and all of their special attacks are just visual variations of eachother. The Special Beam Cannon and Kamehameha wave do the same exact thing, just that SBC has a swirly path -_- Ontop of that, most of those missions are so rediculously repeditive, you dont want to play through them with a different character. You can beat all of the bosses with just mashing between punch + kick (see
Stupid Bosses: Exhibit A and B), and it's just a chore to take on multiple enemies with the poor lockon system. I'm not like "Yeah, I'm taking on 4 different sabamen, what a rush!" It's more like "Oh god... Every time I try to attack one the other hits me in the ****ing back, and my character moves like a frozen pile of jizz sliding uphill..."
It's so rediculously annoying. Fortunetly, once you get a little further in the game you can fire off like ~10 special moves before you have to recharge. See 4-5 enemies? No problem, just spam your generic special move until everything on the screen is dead

It's actually more effective then ESF beam spamming because they actually slow down time for you so no one can kill you while you charge \o/
So, how about those unlockable levels? Oh, that's right, they didn't INCLUDE any secret levels. I dont think I would be at this level of dissatisfaction if they atleast included some cool unlockables when you beat the game. You have DBZ freaks that would beat this game 15 times over to play in an extra level with ssj3 goku or something. The unlockables they do include dont mean piss, unless you really enjoy playing as one armed gohan. It's amusing to see him pull off combos with a single arm.
But seriously, I think the main reason why everyone is so pissed is that Atari (yes, Atari SupaFighta, they do the PR) painted this fantasy sandbox that would allow us to play out our DBZ fantasies... Almost like GTA without the sex, drugs, and cars. I think it would be pretty damn awesome if i could get up and fly to random dbz locations on a huge seamless map and blow up ****... Level up, earn some original moves, learn new fighting styles.... That's (obviously) the complete opposite from what we got.. I dont know what type of sandbox Atari was describing, but the one we're playing in is a 15"x15" box filled with dirt, rocks, and chopped up worms.
Oh god, and the "Extras." They have a button dedicated to Extras on the main menu.. You would think, oh, I beat the game, I get some cool levels and videos! No, you can watch the videos that comprised the single player campaign... It's great, I enjoyed watching clips of the series so much the first time, I think i'm going to do it again

Putting the bashing aside, this game is somewhat decent if you lower your expectations to mod level... Imagine if you saw this as a free game on the internet being made by a small team. Would be like "cool, this game has potential, nice effects..."
Once you return to reality though, you'll realize this game isn't worth your $50... It's not worth your $3 to rent.. No, it's not even worth your 3 hours to illegally download. Do yourself a favor and stay far
FAR away from this game. Buy something like God of War or TimeSplitters 3... Gitaroo Man is pretty nifty too, been having fun with that one.