Er... I have no idea why I went and wrote this

Firstly, I'm not a fan of the show. My brother is though, that's why he brought this game.
What to say about this? Well, I'll sum it up in one sentence: There's some very nice ideas here, but ultimately it just doesn't last for too long.
First up is Story mode, which sums up about 300 hours of the show into about 3 hours worth of playing time. Dragon Ball fans will probably like, non fans (like me) will find the summery of the story helpful, but I don't like the sporadic difficulty levels. Normal mode is sometimes really easy, and sometimes really hard, so you end up having to switch difficulty levels to get a decent challenge.
There is also the usual Vs mode, as well as a 1 player tournament mode (which, sadly, can't be played as a multiplayer game).
Vs mode itself is good for a laugh if you have a friend, but it's not exactly that well balanced and you'll probably get annoyed with it after long enough, rather than it being the main lasting point of the game, like in Soul Caliber and so on.
Tournament mode is good, but I don't like that you can win/lose by ring outs. This turns it into a match of 1 hit KOs, where winning can be random at times.
Now, I probably should mention the best bit of Budokai: the customisation of characters. Rather than have their moves and abilities preset, you can customise them. Want to have loads of powerful special moves? Or maybe not, and you'd rather equip stat boosters? Or healing items? Or transformation moves? Whatever, there's quite a bit of depth here.
The only trouble is with getting them. You get them at random from the shop, so you often end up having to continually go in and out again to get them. A much better system would have been to put everything on display, but make rare moves really expensive to maintain the challenge of getting them.
You can't pick your character or use any custom configurations in story mode either, which is annoying because it means that they are only useful in World Championship or Vs mode.

So, anyway, this game is very fun while it lasts, and fans of the series will probably love it. But unlike the great beat'um ups, it's not going to last too long, and I think we all saw that coming.

6/10 I think. Add a point if you're a fan of the show.