You pick the character to start.
So if you want to play as Gogeta, you choose him and then select if you want SS or SS4 then start the match.
That means no funny fusion dance and no fat Gogeta or Gotenks.
The more that I think about transformations the more I am getting used to the idea, I mean I remember what a pain in the ass having to power up and transform in the other games could be and now I can start off as Gogeta and not have to worry about a time limit. The only thing now would be the moves for each form of a character. I really only played around in story mode a while and as Vegeta.
I think that this game may do something great, but in the end if you are like me you are going to want to play Tenkaichi and then go "you know what I think I will play some B3 for a while now" because the play experience is really different.
Also for those who think that I just hate the game and want to bash it, that's not true. My thing is I had evaluate it for work, so I look at everything in a very techincal way. If I was given the game at home just to sit and play with and not have to worry about anything work related I may have a little different view to start, cause the more I think about it the more I think it will be a fun game to play.
Fusions will not be timed because there are no in game transformations, so if you start out with Gogeta you will play the whole match with him and not have to worry about turning back into Goku or Vegeta.
The options section was a mess when I was looking at the game, so I did not see an option for the Japanese audio tracks.
Majin Vegeta is a selectable form and his ultimate attack is still the self-destruct.
You are not going to be able to knock back the Oozaru like you would other characters. Finding your opponent is not that bad because you use the radar search function, so I did not see a difference. The funny thing is when you are fighting against the Oozaru and you are far away and it still looks huge, its pretty intimidating.
The realtime damage looks really good, I did a double take when I first noticed it. It really helps to give the feel of your battle being epic and bone crushing.
Beam struggles are still in.
Shadow dragons are a no. Uub is in the game but I did not see an option to choose Majuub.
They still have not corrected Cells voice, which really bothers me, I don't know about everyone else.
The beam struggles look pretty much the same. I did not have a stuggle with an ultimate but it could be a possibility now, which may prove interesting.
I had very limited time with the game so I did not have a chance to play as Roshi, Tao, or kid Goku so I don't know how flying works for them. Sorry.
The costumes seem to be set to the character to choose, so there is not an option to pick a different one. The closest thing would be choose Gohan as Saiyaman, or him as the mystic Gohan. Or Vegeta 1st earth encounter (armor with shoulder pads), then the ss version with armor that is Bulma's design without the shoulder pads.
Quick answer is no costume choices, just character forms.
They use in game graphic cut scenes, which I really wish they would use the anime, and the intro before the title screen is CG which looks kinda weird. Sagas was cool because as they were explaining the story the anime was playing. And for the what if storys they should have created short anime clips like they did with the intro to B3. But that's my opinion, and it would be kinda costly.
I did not see #13, #14, #15, or Pikkon and I did not notice Omega Shenron (could be I just ignored Omega because it was not something new but I really think they took him out) and I used the debug to unlock everything. (debug is a part of code the developers leave in the game to unlock everything so that testing is easier)
The only additional characters that stuck out to me would be the rest of the Ginyu Force, Janemba, Chiaotzu and Baby Vegeta, there are a few more but those were the new ones that really stuck out.
Oozarus are big, like 3-4 times normal character size.
Trunks with sword, and Trunks in Saiyan Armor, also there is a second version of Saiyan Armor trunks, the beefed up muscle one like when he fought perfect Cell. Much stronger but slow.
The difference between forms are the moves and the character stats, like strenght and speed and so on.
I really did not notice it like in previous games because now it is not used to transform, but the little blue bar is what decreases and that is what is used to do ultimate moves.
I was knocking my co-worker through everything in the city stage, if there was a building that could not be destroyed in it I couldn't find it.
There are a lot of stories, it think I have read that it is like around 170 cutscenes.
And to answer another question they are set up more like B1 where you watch a cutscene describing the story then fight and watch another one, so someone new to DBZ can learn the basics of the whole series by playing this game.
I don't know exactly how they balanced the characters when there is so much power difference between them other than it has to do with their "stats" and you could always power up Tien with the potara earings boosting his stats.
I did not play as Bardock, but I would assume that most of his moves are just like previous games.
Yes there is SS4 Vegeta and SS4 Goku has his 10x Kamehameha.
Someone else posted about Evil Buu (grey) and Bojack that is correct those are two of the ones I forgot about.
I did not play as Roshi but there was a preview of him fighting, like a looping video when you arn't doing anything and I am pretty sure that he buffed up.
There is no time to change gameplay other than maybe each characters base stats like strength and speed, that is the only thing that can be changed this late in development.
Dodging, teleporting, and counter attacks are still there but the way you preform them is not exactly the same as B3.
I think a good way to put some of the aspects of this game is that it is a fighting game with DBZ characters instead of a game made up of the series first and fighting second, like they have done with the other games.
There are only two forms of Oozaru, regular that is under Kid Gohan and Vegeta's in Saiyan armor, no Golden. I think don't put in some of the GT characters because it is still considered to be a DBZ game and GT was not as popular. But they kept the more prominent ones like Super Andriod 17, Baby, SS4s, and SS4 Gogeta. I don't know whey they decided to cut Omega Shenron, it would have been cool to have all of the Shadow Dragons. Hopefully I just missed seeing Omega.
Free roaming fighting is not too hard because you have the radar in the corner that will lock onto other characters, the hard thing is when you are far away from an opponent and you press X to dash fly towards then and they do the same, most of the time you fly right by each other. Cool thing with the radar though is if you use Solar Flare it breaks the lock on and disrupts how well you can search for someone for a little while.
I think that all the characters have been revealed in one thread or another, so there is really nothing character wise that is still a secret.
Teen (end of Z) and GT Goten's are not in, neither is Goku Jr. or Vegeta Jr.
The AI is not bad, I think that sometimes when their lock on is broken it takes them a while to get it back but combat wise they are pretty good.
Oozaru plays pretty much like the others but it is big and very strong and very slow. I kept doing the energy beam out of its mouth and that does a ton of damage.
The camera is done with the lock on, but honestly I don't remember if you can control it when you are not locked on.
Does it play better than B3? That is up to interpretation. Its a solid fighter, but some people are going to like this one more and others may like B3 more. Between the two there are very different play experiences.
