The 7 Best Dragon Ball Games of All Time, Ranked

The best Dragon Ball games split cleanly into two design traditions: tight competitive fighters like Dragon Ball FighterZ, and sprawling power-fantasy arena brawlers like the Budokai Tenkaichi and Sparking! line. Critics reward the first group and fans reward the second, and the review data shows that gap plainly. This ranking weighs both.

Last updated: September 1, 2026. Metacritic scores checked on this date.

The critic-fan split that defines Dragon Ball games

Before the list, the pattern worth knowing. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 is the game most fans name as the franchise’s best, yet it holds a Metascore of just 72 from 27 critics — formally “Mixed or Average” — against a user score of 8.8 from 384 ratings, per Metacritic. Put on the same scale, that is 72 from critics against 88 from players — a 16-point gap on the same game.

The reason is that the two groups were reviewing different things. Critics in 2007 judged it as a fighting game and found shallow mechanics and thin innovation. Players judged it as a Dragon Ball simulator — a roster the Dragon Ball Wiki puts at 161 characters, plus flight, destructible arenas and beam struggles — and found the most complete version of the anime anyone had shipped. Neither is wrong. But it means a ranking built purely on Metascores would put the fan-favourite near the bottom, and a ranking built purely on nostalgia would ignore the one Dragon Ball game that genuinely holds up as a fighting game. This list accounts for both.

7. Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 (2016)

Metascore 72 from 57 critics; user score 7.5. Dimps’ create-a-character MMO-lite is the franchise’s most-supported live game, still receiving content years on, and its custom Time Patroller hook is genuinely novel — you are not Goku, you are a nobody fixing broken timelines. It lands last here because the combat is the weakest on this list; critics repeatedly used the word “repetitive,” and the DLC load has grown heavy. Its sequel, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3, was announced by Bandai Namco for 2027 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam, set in the new Age 1000 era.

6. Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II (2003)

Metascore 75 from 21 critics; user score 8.8. The one entry here that is not a fighting game at all. Webfoot’s Game Boy Advance action-RPG condensed the Android and Cell arcs into 15–20 hours of top-down questing with five playable characters, and it remains the best handheld Dragon Ball game by a wide margin. It is on the list because it proves something the franchise keeps forgetting: Dragon Ball works as an RPG, and the 8.8 user score says players noticed long before Kakarot tried it on console.

5. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot (2020)

Metascore 73 from 75 critics; user score 8.0. CyberConnect2’s open-world retelling is the most complete narrative adaptation of Dragon Ball Z in any medium outside the anime itself — it covers Saiyan through Buu with the filler intact, and the between-fights material (fishing, driving, eating with the Z Fighters) does more character work than the battles. The RPG and open-world layers are undercooked, which is exactly what critics said. Worth it for the story, not the systems. If you want the viewing order that maps onto it, we have a full Dragon Ball watch order.

4. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 (2004)

Metascore 77 from 32 critics; user score 8.6. The high point of the 2D-plane Budokai trilogy and the game that got closest to squaring the circle — a real fighting-game skeleton (Dimps, who went on to co-develop Street Fighter IV with Capcom) wrapped in Dragon Ball spectacle. Dragon Rush, teleport counters and the Dragon Universe mode all landed. Its ceiling is lower than FighterZ‘s and its balance leans on luck more than it should, but in 2004 nothing else in the genre felt this much like the show.

3. Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO (2024)

Metascore 81 from 74 critics; user score 8.2 from 1,347 ratings, released October 11, 2024 by Spike Chunsoft. The Budokai Tenkaichi 4 the series waited seventeen years for, and the best-reviewed arena entry the franchise has produced. The roster is enormous, the destructible arenas finally match the anime’s scale, and the controls are the most legible the sub-series has had. It sits below the top two because the single-player content thins out fast and the interface is genuinely awkward — both recurring notes in the reviews. It is still receiving support; we broke down the Sparking! ZERO season pass and DLC characters and the strongest team combinations separately.

2. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 (2007)

Metascore 72 from 27 critics; user score 8.8 from 384 ratings, released December 3, 2007 by Spike for PS2 and Wii. The reference point every arena Dragon Ball game since has been measured against, and the reason Sparking! ZERO‘s reviews all reached for the phrase “Budokai Tenkaichi 4.” Its roster was absurd for the era, it covered Dragon Ball, Z and GT, and it ran on hardware people actually owned. Placed second rather than first because the critics were not simply wrong: the mechanics are shallow, and a modern player coming to it cold will feel that before they feel the nostalgia.

1. Dragon Ball FighterZ (2018)

Metascore 87 from 78 critics; user score 7.9 from 1,072 ratings, released January 26, 2018, developed by Arc System Works. The best-reviewed Dragon Ball game ever made and the only one that succeeded as a fighting game first. Arc System Works’ 2.5D art is still the most convincing translation of Toriyama’s line work into 3D that anyone has managed, and the 3v3 tag system gave it real competitive depth — it held a place on the fighting-game tournament circuit for years, which no other Dragon Ball game has managed.

Note the inversion, though: FighterZ has the highest critic score on this list and one of the lowest user scores. Fighting-game fundamentals came at the cost of the power fantasy — no flight, no free-roaming arenas, a comparatively small roster. It is the best Dragon Ball game; Budokai Tenkaichi 3 is the best Dragon Ball game. That tension is the whole franchise in one sentence.

The rankings at a glance

Sort that table by user score and by Metascore and you get two almost inverted lists. That is not noise — it is the clearest evidence that “best Dragon Ball game” is really two questions. If you are chasing the anime’s power fantasy, start at number two. If you want a game that would still be good with the licence stripped off, start at number one.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best Dragon Ball game?

Dragon Ball FighterZ, by review score. It holds an 87 Metascore from 78 critics, the highest of any Dragon Ball game, and is the only entry that works as a competitive fighting game in its own right.

What is the highest-rated Dragon Ball game by fans?

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 and Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II are tied at a user score of 8.8 on Metacritic, ahead of every other entry including FighterZ at 7.9.

Is Sparking! ZERO better than Budokai Tenkaichi 3?

By critic score, yes: Sparking! ZERO holds an 81 Metascore against Budokai Tenkaichi 3’s 72. By user score the older game is ahead, 8.8 to 8.2. Sparking! ZERO is the better-made game; Budokai Tenkaichi 3 has the stronger reputation.

Is there a new Dragon Ball game coming?

Yes. Bandai Namco announced Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3 for 2027 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam, set in the Age 1000 era, revealed at Dragon Ball Games Battle Hour in Los Angeles on April 20, 2026.

Which Dragon Ball game has the biggest roster?

The arena fighters. The Dragon Ball Wiki puts Budokai Tenkaichi 3 at 161 playable characters across Dragon Ball, Z and GT; Sparking! ZERO launched with a larger roster still, reported at 182 characters before DLC.

For more on the source material, see our rankings of the strongest Dragon Ball characters and the strongest Dragon Ball villains.