Welcome back, my beautiful freaks, to the Assassin's Den!
Dragon Ball is one of the best known animated series in the world. It has been dubbed into English several times over, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and several others that I know exist but can't find a record for from the original Japanese. It mixes science fiction and magic to create a world that is unique, yet familiar to the audience. And it presents a very positive message; that hard work and dedication can get you far, that never giving up on your friends means they'll give you the same courtesy, and that even your worst enemy can be your friend if you give them a reason to. And at this point, even if you're not a fan, you've at least heard of it, and been exposed to some of the terminology; Super Saiyan, for example.
And it also made its creator, Akira Toriyama, a very wealthy man; as of 2015, he has a net worth of $45 million. And at 61 years old, he likely only works because he still likes to draw, write and create.
Which brings me to the subject of review today; Dragon Ball Xenoverse. Released in 2015 for Windows, Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One and PS4, is was developed by Dimps, known for the Budokai DBZ fighting games and the hand held Sonic games, it follows the storyline created for the beta of the Dragon Ball beta, Dragon Ball Online, though set 150 years earlier. You take on the role of what fans and media have coined the "Future Warrior", and defend history from distortions in the timeline.
Now, the Future Warrior is able to be one of five races; Human, Namekian, Majin, Saiyan and Frieza Clan. Now, I'm not going to bother explaining the races, since there are resources all over the internet, so I'll explain the differences. Humans are well rounded, having the best ki and stamina regeneration, and have slight differences between between genders (as do the Saiyans and Majins, as those are the three races that have males and females. Namekians and Frieza clan are genderless, but appear male.) Saiyans have the lowest base health, but the highest base attack, which raises when their health gets below 25%. Furthermore, they get another stat boost after being revived by a teamate in non-storymode battles. Also, they can transform into Super Saiyans, giving them another attack boost so long as they have ki, which is drained in the state, but also allows unlimited Super Attacks and Ultimate Attacks so long as this state lasts. Frieza Race has the highest speed, but lowest attack, their speed gets
higher at lower health, and their standard ki blasts stun your foes. Namekians have lower attack but higher health, which begins to regenerate below 70%. They also have the fastest stamina regeneration. And finally Majins have the highest defense, but slowest stamina recovery. And when their stamina is maxed out, the get another defense boost. All races have access to the kaio-ken and unlock potential transformations, though the unlock potential is only available if you have the Resurrection of F DLC pack.
Anyway, the Future Warrior fights through the Dragon Ball Z saga, correcting changes to the timeline made by what DBO called "the Time Breakers", Towa and Mira. You're fighting alongside the main heroes and helping them defeat the powered up villains of each saga until you take on the final boss, Demon God Demigra. (Demigra has no connection to the Time Breakers, but used them for his own devices.) Once beating Demigra, you take on a post credits mission where you find out Demigra planned for his defeat, creating wormholes to destroy the timeline anyway. And that's where the GT DLC packs take place; their timeline is being screwed with via Demigra's wormholes.
The gameplay is best described as a 3d fighting game with rpg elements. All the canon fighters have preset moves and stats, but the Future Warrior can be built any way you want. You can built around ki supers (ranged), strike supers (melee), or something in between. You gain experience points from storyline quests and side quests, which this game calls "Parallel Quests", which allow you to level up and put points into the stats to suite your play style. You also gain skills from completing the storyline quests and parallel quests, as well as costumes, items, crafting materials and to create new Z-souls (things you equip to boost stats and, depending on which one abilities from mentors.) And finally, you have mentors, who teach you unique skills.
Character creation is both extensive, but also simplistic. You're working within the confines of Toriyama's art style, so facial shaping is limited. However, you've got a huge number of potential skin tones, hairstyles for Humans and Saiyans, "hairstyles" for Majins, and head configurations for Namekians and Frieza clan. You've got a LOT of clothing, some of it race specific, and some of it can have the colors changed. Combine that with a LOT of accessories and you've got a pretty dynamic creation tool that makes you unique among your peers.
As for the fighting system, it is appropriate for a Dragon Ball game. You can go left and right, forward and back, and up and down. There's a light attack, a heavy attack, a ki attack, and a "jump" button to let you go upward. You can block, you can vanish dodge, you can fly all over the arena, and you can use your special moves that you equipped previously, use your transformations (if you equipped any), and you can use your ultimate attacks. It's a good system, though not as intuitive as, say, Street Fighter, but 3d fighting systems are always hit and miss. But once you know the system, it becomes second nature.
Honestly, Dragon Ball Xenoverse is fun. First time through makes you do a LOT of grinding though, because some of the storyline quests require you to keep companions alive, and that is NOT easy if you're underleveled. Secondly, if you try to fight someone like, say, Beerus and Whis, at too low a level will get you stomped into the ground. So you NEED to do parallel quests, or redo story missions, if you want to survive later. However, since you keep everything you unlocked on your account globally, the grind for new characters can be MUCH quicker if you do a few specific parallel quests; PQ 53 is a fan favorite, as you are gathering 3 Dragon Balls in a small arena, and the only obstacle is Broly. This would be a problem, if you couldn't take 2 companions with you, and if Videl didn't fly almost immediately after Broly spawns in. So you can have essentially 3 meat shields while you gather the Dragon Balls in peace. Doing that once gets you a B rank, and gets you enough xp for 15 levels. Do that for half an hour, and you're at 31 levels. And at that point, you can actually fight Broly and survive.
Why do this, besides getting the chance to redo the story mode (which you can do at will at this point; everything remains unlocked once you unlock it)? Well, this game has a very active PVP community. And while I'm not one for PVP myself (as many other SWTOR players can attest), you can test your skills against other players in one on one or team battles, as well as the World Tournament. However, if you're playing on a 360 or PS3, I wouldn't suggest it, since the servers for those consoles seem to be...iffy. First three days I owned the game, the servers were down. And today, I've kept getting kicked from the single player lobby due to the servers having connection issues. And I know it's not my ISP, because I've had NO issues with ME3 or SWTOR or Youtube or anything else that requires a constant connection.
This game won't win over non-fans of Dragon Ball. It's got a bit of a learning curve and doesn't explain everything. I had to look up how to throw, since the game doesn't tell you, and I had to look up how to please mentors faster in order to learn later skills. And if you don't know the series, you won't know who certain characters are and their importance to the series. For example, I haven't seen Battle of Gods or Resurrection of F, so if I hadn't looked it up previously, I would have NO idea who Beerus or Whis are, nor would I have known why Frieza now has a golden form, or what a Super Saiyan God is. I'd also be wondering why GT is considered an alternate timeline now, because I'm one of those weirdos who actually LIKES GT.
Honestly though, this game feels like a love letter to fans. where YOU get to be the hero of Dragon Ball, where YOU get to shine instead of Goku and Vegeta and the rest of the Saiyan cast. And you can do it as a Human if you want, the species that got overshadowed VERY early in DBZ, due to just how powerful the Saiyans and Namekian cast got, and how powerful the threats they fought became.
That said, it does have its downsides. Since this is a Japanese game made by Japanese developers, it needed a full translation of both text and a dubbing into other languages. And the English translation is poor at times. I'm talking NES era poor. I've seen quite a few times where sentences had me trying to figure out what was actually meant when talking to certain NPCs. Secondly and surprisingly, there's a number of mistakes in the dubbing. I mean, Christopher Sabat, the English Voice of Vegeta and Piccolo among others, is a native English speaker, so he'd understand English vocal inflection. The only explanation I can think of is that the lines were recorded without context based on a badly translated scripts, and someone who didn't know English fluently was the one to choose which takes to choose.
All in all, I highly recommend this game, but only if you're a fan of Dragon Ball. If you're not, but are a fan of 3d fighting games, I'd download a demo to see if you'll like it. I got my copy for 25 dollars at my local Gamestop used, and downloading it costs 40 dollars on Xbox 360 live, and I assume it's the same for the PSN and Xbox One marketplace as well. Each DLC content pack was 10 dollars each. I found it worth it, and if you're a fan, you should find it worth it too.
But for now, stay beautiful freaks!
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