Short review after having played for a few hours:
This game realy does not live up to the hype of "best Z game ever". As usual. First off, anyone that followed the previews of this game knows its not a Budokai sequel. The Japanese name is Sparking! and I wish they'd given this one a similar name. To any average joe off the street wanting a DBZ game and expecting something like Budokai 3...this is a HUGE step back. The most minor problem is that transformations were taken out, but the controls and basic mechanics have been totally changed and to something most ineffective. The tried-and-true Punch/Kick/Guard/Energy has been dropped for Hand-to-Hand/Dash/Energy/Guard. Honestly, that was a bad idea, since Dash was already in the Budokais and wasn't really a big thing in the first place. To make that a major button rather than keeping kick and punch really makes this game suffer.
Of course, this would be less of a problem is Practice and Tutorial weren't two utterly useless modes. Now, I'm a guy who can play any of the Budokai games on Strong or Very Strong and MORE than hold my own, and yet for some reason I'm getting utterly owned in Practice. And NOT because the characters are simply better. No, its because they stand far off and just fire energy beams at you, keeping you on the ground. And for some reason, NO ONE'S energy runs out in practice mode, so they just keep hitting you with special beam attacks and normal ones until you realize you're really not going to learn anything that way. The old "Training" mode, where Trunks or Goten take lessons from the veteran fighters of the Z world as a way to teach you how to play the game has been replaced by "Tutorial", which is basically lines and lines of text that attempt to tell you how to do it, while Gohan shows you what it looks like WHEN you do it, but nothing is quite like being able to DO it yourself and get a feel for it.
Oh, and gone are the days of the loved Forward and Backward Energy attacks. No, now it has become L2+Triangle or L2+Triangle+Up or Down, something that seems easy to do, but not when your opponent is launching them off like there's no tomorrow, and sidestep is gone since the game is 3D.
The game LOOKS wonderful, and the 3D stage and the ability to ACTUALLY fly without being launched is a great idea, but...they REALLY should've taken a page or three from the popular Budokai series (which was REALLY getting somewhere with #3)--it would've saved us a lot of trouble.
If it sucks, I'll just return it (or get credit) and buy B3, which I know is an awesome game. 
