The Wii isn’t exactly overflowing with fighting games right now, but it’s seen a couple promising titles with Dragon Ball Z and Mortal Kombat Armageddon. Game Factory has added another entry to the genre, with a licensed game based off of the animated show Legend of the Dragon. The one-on-one fighter replicates the animated look of the show and has all the basic fighter mechanics, but isn’t really remarkable in any other way.

Legend of the Dragon works a lot like most other fighters you’ve probably played. You choose from a number of characters from the show, and face off against an opponent using various attacks and combos. A and B are the only attack buttons, which is rather limiting for a fighter; Z and C on the Nunchuk are used to strafe back and forth, which are functions better suited to the control stick. The number of combos is sufficient, but could have been richer with a better control layout.

Z and C are also used to activate the game’s main special feature, the transformation powers of each character. When their Zen bar is high enough each character can morph into a spirit-powered alter ego. The Zen bar has enough power after only a few successful attacks, which is good because that means both fighters are usually evenly matched. In other words, a non-transformed fighter stands little chance against the super attacks of a morphed fighter, which sometimes unbalances the combat.

Once morphed, both fighters have access to super moves, which are activated with D-pad combos. These feel less like true techniques and more like minigames, because they switch the controls over to Wii remote gestures. These minigames involve following onscreen movements to repel or execute an attack, or swinging the remote and Nunchuk in a cliché power-blast face-off seen in so many animes. The only other move that uses the motion control is the grab, which is slow and difficult to execute.

The attacks, super or otherwise, are mostly the same for all characters, which makes the fighters seem even more uniform. The individual characters, based off of the TV show, have different fighting styles but their combos and attack power have very little variety. Thus, there really isn’t a whole lot of thought in choosing a fighter and playing them against the abilities of the others. This is ultimately what robs Legend of the Dragon of a fighting game’s most crucial element—strategy between the different character types. These stale and monotone gameplay mechanics hinder almost every aspect of the game.

There are several modes to choose from, both single and multiplayer. Quest mode is a simple story based succession of fights that play out across a map, and is playable as one of two main characters. The battles get progressively harder as you move further into the quest, but because there is little opportunity for strategy, sometimes sheer luck wins them. I quickly grew frustrated after losing fights that were stacked against my character, unless I did precisely what the game wanted, which wasn’t very clear most of the time. If I found the battles annoying, I think the TV show’s younger fans will have even less patience.

There are also the standard quick play, practice a...