You can also deflect those attacks and reflect them back at your opponent. You can do ki attacks from here, such as throwing energy blasts of varying strengths, but you no longer have melee attack capabilities. If you back up far enough from the opponent, the game switches over to the Raging Blast viewpoint, where the camera is an over-the-shoulder view.
If you were on defense, you have to try to recover to stop getting hit and hopefully get a chance to counterattack. Pick incorrectly, and if you were on offense, you simply receive a counterattack. Pick correctly over your opponent, and you'll get a chance to unleash combos where you toss your opponent in the air, hit him further than before, and ultimately finish him off with a 20- to 30-hit combo. Once you register three hits from a light attack combo, you get a short pause and determine whether your next hit will be a light or heavy attack. You can unleash light or heavy attacks, block, and dash toward or away from your opponent, but you can't unleash ki-based attacks. Getting into melee range gives you the Burst Limit viewpoint, where the game is presented as a traditional fighter. The fighting system feels like a mix between Burst Limit and the Raging Blast games in terms of viewpoint. This new entry, Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi, is no different as developer Spike forgoes the advancements made by earlier games and uses the story in its own fighting engine. The other part of the equation is that the games tend to change up the mechanics, often swapping out completely different engines while still maintaining the fighting game ethic set out so many years ago. Part of the sustained staying power lies in the fact that the fan base is still rabid enough to take in every iteration almost without question.
Despite the absence of new tales for more than a decade, the game series continues to chug along, content to retell the same battles over and over again. One cannot help but be amazed at the tenacity of the Dragon Ball Z license.