It's a great time to be a fan of Dragon Ball video games. Dragon Ball: The Breakers is still pushing forward with its experimental asynchronous multiplayer and could stick around for a while longer. Dragon Ball FighterZ and Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 are both winding down, but still have forthcoming updates and improvements. Finally, after years of waiting, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 4 is now on the horizon. The game's shape is still unknown, but Budokai Tenkaichi 4 is undoubtedly one of the biggest sources of hype in the Dragon Ball community right now.
When Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 4 comes out, there will need to be a couple of torch passes by the older generation. The basic arena fighter competency of Dragon Ball Xenoverse makes for good inheritance, and BT4 could also grab Xenoverse's "What If?" story scenarios. No one expects Budokai Tenkaichi 4 to surpass FighterZ as a competitive fighting game, but there are lessons to be learned from the Arc System Works title as well. Picking the right ones could be a major boon to Budokai Tenkaichi 4's gameplay, especially if that helps its tag team scenarios reach their full potential.
Budokai Tenkaichi 4 Should Lean Into Its Team Battles
Up until this point, the Budokai Tenkaichi line has been predominantly duel-focused. A team system was added in Budokai Tenkaichi 2, and Tenkaichi Tag Team was explicitly a 2v2 game, but the gameplay format always favored two combatants reenacting climactic Dragon Ball fights. The team system also allowed transformations and fusions to occur during Budokai Tenkaichi gameplay, pushing its Dragon Ball simulation even further. Still, the long transitions when combatants switched made it clear how much of a bonus feature tag teams were.
It's been over a decade since Budokai Tenkaichi last graced players' screens, and a lot has changed since then. Series developer Spike Chunsoft has refined its tag gameplay in subsequent arena fighters, allowing for smoother transitions between characters and more integration of switched-out members in fights. While the Budokai Tenkaichi 4 development team is currently unknown, these innovations could fold back into the old Dragon Ball series. However, if there's any Dragon Ball tag fighter that Budokai Tenkaichi 4 should be drawing inspiration from, it is its fellow DBZ title FighterZ.
Dragon Ball FighterZ's Tag Super System Is Too Good To Leave Behind
As a spiritual successor to Marvel vs. Capcom, Dragon Ball FighterZ is built around tag fighting like no other game. While fusions are out due to logistical reasons and team sizes have been shrunk from five members to three, FighterZ still makes the best use of its combatants. Things improved even more once assist options were patched into the game, but that may be beyond Budokai Tenkaichi 4's scope. What should definitely carry over is the concept of said assists, which have been well-proven to work in arena fighters thanks to the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm games, and the team super combo mechanic.
By inputting the appropriate motion and pressing an assist button during a combo or super, another character will jump in and use their level 1 or level 3 super. This can be done with both teammates, making for safe tags and massive damage. In the name of increasing mechanical depth, team synergy would be a great addition to Budokai Tenkaichi 4. Characters would be studied closely for their different super properties, and whether their supers could cleanly combo into each other. This would also give team battles a distinct identity from traditional 1v1 fights. All in all, inheriting the older game's various team mechanics would be the best way Budokai Tenkaichi 4 can pay homage to FighterZ, and it would be all the better for it.
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 4 is currently in development.