I remember when Dragon Ball Z first hit our TVs, how it became this big thing for nerds and the burgeoning anime community. How we got rushed with games so quickly that because of the discrepancy of the Japanese releases we were getting characters that hadn’t even shown on TV yet. And then now decades later, the push for new Dragonball games meant scraping the bottom of the barrel for new video game characters. But then the renaissance came thanks to Battle of Gods, but the rush on games had since long vanished. So let’s look at the most recent game that came out late last year.
Part of the Budokai Tenkaichi series… which hasn’t had a release since 2012… and that was for the Kinect, this is a long awaited return, not that we were long for games, Xenoverse and later FighterZ were filling the role of DB games nicely, but there was something about the 3d arena fighters with as many characters as they could get from the franchise that was missing.
And instantly that is the big draw for most people, the sheer volume of Dragonball characters available, starting with Z but also including GT, Super and the movie characters, and though dlc Daima (which isn’t out yet at time of writing but has been confirmed). This means you get different versions of the core characters based on different eras of the franchise, which also has all the transformations they have as semi separate characters, and their fusions. This is because you can transform and de-transform as fights progress, starting as a weaker form resulting in a stronger state than just starting as the strongest form right away.
The other main draw and heavily advertised part of the game is the single player character stories. While it goes through that character’s role in the franchise for the most part starting at the start of Z (so no you don’t have to go through all of DB before Raditz shows up) At certain fights or cutscenes you can do things that alter the story. Sometimes this just makes an alternate ending which is usually short, but others branch out into whole new timelines. For example, at the start you can choose to go against Raditz with Piccolo like what happened in the normal story, or instead refuse and get backed up by Krillin and Roshi instead, BUT also with both those fights if you do well enough and beat Raditz without much difficulty you create whole new timelines showing what happened if Goku never died in those two options. Achieving these can range from not hard at all, to making you wonder how well designed this game is because its difficulty can go very BS when fighting computers.
Indeed playing the game normally you will VERY quickly hit the roadblock of Great Ape Vegeta, who being giant and aggressive gives you little time to recover and organize to fight him properly. Against most other fights I usually end up just charging up into Sparking mode, dashing into my opponent, and keep just attacking them until I’m about to fade out of it and use my ultimate attack, while they are recovering from that blast, charge up again, and keep doing that until fight over. It’s sadly the only main strategy I can offer. Computer will always respond faster than you if you try to do anything clever (which the game keeps thinking you should do). And that’s before the controls decide to do things I didn’t press using up some of my resources that I need for the one strategy that does work.
Can’t say that the against players is that much better, given what happened with the likes of Yajirobe, Android 19 and Dr Gero. But then I’ve mainly been playing against the computer, working to first get all those alt stories done, unlock as many people as I could, and having to get all 7 Dragon Balls multiple times in order to unlock those crap GT dragons.
As mentioned those were the two main draws for people, the alt storylines and the number of characters, so unless you’re a Dragonball fan I honestly can’t recommend this game. FighterZ was a solid beat ’em up which could get me to recommend it to non fans, but this… yeah the control issues, difficulty spikes and rest isn’t something I could recommend if you’re not a fan. For fans though yeah those alt storylines can be quite inventive and fun to see.
Rating: 🎮🎮
