Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team is a good attempt to bring something new to a long-running fighting series that has more or less become stagnant over the past few releases. Unfortunately, the push to have a Tenkaichi game on the PSP doesn't seem to have been the best idea.

On one hand, Tenkaichi Tag Team looks really good, especially when you are right up next to your opponent in fights. On the other hand, when the two (or three or four) characters are far apart, a lot is lost to the handheld's small screen. Issues like not being able to get a good idea of where or who the other fighters are become really apparent and considering the size of the arenas typically found in the Tenkaichi series, you can imagine how often this issue comes up. Granted, part of this is fixed by the lock-on system that will put a yellow circle on the screen for you to fly towards, but from a visual aesthetics perspective, this feels much more like a work-around to the issue than a real solution.

Audio is okay; while there is a good bit of voicework to accompany the Story Mode's text, there are quite a few voices that just don't sound right. Of course, a lot of the big characters like Goku and Vegeta sound right, but others like Kid Gohan just seem off. I don't know if most of the audio was simply lifted from the anime series, or if a lot of new clips were used and some of the actors were having an off day, but a lot of clips just don't sound right.

Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team's biggest feature is, as you would expect, the 2 vs. 2 combat. Since you can't change characters mid-fight, even when you are the only non-computer controlled player on the field, the game tends to feel a lot like the one-on-one fights from previous Tenkaichi games. There are just times when you might be facing a second opponent, or you might catch glimpses of your ally working over the opponent you aren't focusing on right now. That is, until one of the two enemies falls, then you and your support character can team up against the remaining foe and work him/her/it over really well.

Tenkaichi Tag Team offers several gameplay modes. The largest is Dragon Walker and it takes you through all of the major battles from Raditz's arrival on Earth to the final showdown against Kid Buu. Granted, a lot of the show's story is trimmed down, but all of the major fights are there, and since we can assume (as the developers no doubt did) that anyone picking up this game probably already knows the entire DBZ storyline at this point, that's acceptable.

Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team also features several non-story fighting modes like Battle 100 where the game lines up a series of fights for you to work your way through. These include both major fights from the show and new, interesting combinations of characters. There is also a Survival Mode which just throws foe after foe at you with no ability to regain your health.

Staying true to the series, Tenkaichi Tag Team also features a deep customization system that not only allows you to edit and level up three different versions of each character, but also use those customized fighters in any of the game's modes.

You collect D-Points by completing missions and use those to increase the amount of items you can give to your customized characters. These items can do anything from the standard attack and defense increases, to giving them extra homing attacks. Pretty much every attribute given to a player can be modified in one way or another with the items you find in the game or in the item shop.

Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team is a mixed bag when it comes to difficulty. Dragon Walker Mode presents you with both super easy fights, like Saibamen, and tougher boss battles that, while they take longer, don't seem to be excessively hard to get past.

On the other hand, the game's non-Story modes, namely Survival and Battle 100, naturally get harder the longer you play. For Survival Mode, its because you can never regain your health, and for Battle 100, the game is constantly throwing more and more powerful foes your way with better A.I.

Much like the system's smaller screen hurting Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team's visual presentation, the PSP's controls don't do a lot to make the game something you can play for any real length of time. Given the Tenkaichi series' large fighting areas, and the ability to launch your opponents pretty far away after a volley of melee attacks, there is a lot of flying towards your enemies in this series. To quickly reach your opponent, with the hopes of landing a few more hits before they can get up, you hold down the (X) button and point the Analog Nub the towards them. Well, with all that flying, I started developing cramps in both of my hands. This was an issue I never noticed on the consoles, and I can only imagine it has to do with the wider distance between the controls, or the fact that the PSP doesn't have a full Analog Stick. Either way, I found this caused me to not want to play the game for any length of time. Short bursts of gameplay were fine, but extended gaming sessions lead to some achey hands.

Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi Tag Team does a lot of things technically correct, but a lot of the pieces just don't seem to come together in a manner that feels fun. I firmly believe that a lot of that could have been changed if the game had come out on an actual console instead of a portable system. The smaller screen combined with the big fighting areas is bad enough, but when combined with the controls issues that come from the PSP, nothing really comes together right. Maybe the game was put onto the PSP because that made it easier for the developers to bring their PS2 code into a new game without having to write everything from scratch for the PS3, but in the end, the port wasn't the best idea in the world.