If you're already a fan of the Dragon Ball Z franchise, then of course the biggest appeal of Attack of the Saiyans is that you get to play as your favorite characters. There's nothing to disappoint longtime fans. Of course, to the uninitiated, using Attack of the Saiyans as your first venture into the world of DBZ makes for a ridiculously surreal experience.

There's a large and extremely colorful cast of characters, some of them interesting, some of them very obnoxious, and you will be bum-rushed through a strange history that sounds like "so-and-so absorbed this guy and was reborn as you-know-who" and "he was evil but then turned good but then split into two people, one of which died, but then came back as an alien" - and none of this is really a deal-breaker by any means, it just means you might be spending some time on Wikipedia figuring out who comes from what planet.

In fact, the large cast and the deep history kind of make playing Attack of the Saiyans feel like stumbling on a collection of mythological stories from an alien culture, and since it's all extremely cartoony and over-the-top, it's like what Tolkien would have come up with for Middle Earth if Tolkien was brain-damaged (but in a good way) and received telepathic transmissions from an alternate dimension.

The point is, Attack of the Saiyans is not necessarily just for hardcore DBZ fans. If you're into Japanese RPGs, and if you don't mind a slow, tedious beginning (and seriously, the first ninety minutes are very weak), then Attack of the Saiyans can be an extremely charming, loud, and violent fairy tale.

By Kyle B. Stiff
CCC Freelance Writer