Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II is an action RPG developed by Webfoot Technologies and published by Atari for the Game Boy Advance. It is based on the anime Dragon Ball Z and is the sequel to The Legacy of Goku, the second of three games in the series. It was released in North America on June 17, 2003 and in Europe on August 1 of the same year. It is the only Dragon Ball Z game developed in the United States to be released in Japan.
Story The game begins with a prologue in the timeline of Future Trunks (drawing elements from the TV special The History of Trunks). Afterwards, it begins in the present and allows the player to assume the role of young Gohan. Later in the story, more playable characters and more abilities appear, up until the final battle with Cell. The game uses environments, enemies, attacks, and music directly from the anime itself (the music is from the English dub). The game mostly follows events of the Android and Cell sagas; however, it is possible to fight Frieza's brother Cooler in the game. This is in addition to the many side quests and other events that happen during gameplay.
Gameplay The game introduced several new concepts to the series. The first was transformations, which allowed characters to become temporarily stronger, at the cost of slowly draining their energy bar. It also introduced the scouter, which allowed players to look up the stats of other characters in the game, as well as basic information about them. The game also introduced charged melee attacks, which allowed characters to unleash a powerful physical strike after a short charging period. The game also allowed characters to further supplement their stats with capsules that were scattered around the game world.
Despite being titled "The Legacy of Goku", this game featured the most limited play as Goku, with players starting play as Gohan and gradually unlocking Piccolo, Vegeta, Trunks, and finally, Goku, as playable characters. Once the story is completed, players can no longer play as Goku, but will be able to continue playing as the others to unlock a final playable character, Mister Satan/Hercule, in order to unlock an alternate ending to the game. The game's music is based on Bruce Faulconer's score for the FUNimation English dub of Dragon Ball Z.
Due to the game's success, a second version was released titled Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II International, exclusive to Japan on 23 July 2004. In this version, all characters were given new profile images and their names were reverted to their original Japanese ones. However, Mister Satan still retains his English name "Hercule" on the front of his parade float.
Playable characters Goku Gohan Future Trunks Piccolo Vegeta Hercule (unlockable after the Cell Games and when obtaining the statues of the Z-Warriors, but in doing this you lose Goku)
International The game was released by Banpresto in Japan under the title Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II International on July 23, 2004. Besides the in game text, the game features additional changes; all characters were given new profile images, and their names were reverted back to their original Japanese. (Mister Satan, however, still retains his English name "Hercule" on the front of his parade float.)
Reception
In the United States, the game sold 630,000 copies and earned $16 million by August 2006. During the period between May 2002 and August 2006, it was the 42nd highest-selling game for the Game Boy Advance in that country.
The Legacy of Goku II received "generally favorable reviews" according to Metacritic.
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