[Video Game Review] Dragon Ball XenoVerse (2015)

Posted on April 15, 2015 by thegrandshuckett in Video Games // 0 Comments

Game Summary: Fierce battles of Goku and others will be reborn! For the first time ever, the Dragon Ball universe will be depicted onto the new generation systems and will fully benefit from the most powerful consoles ever created. DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE will bring all the frenzied battles between Goku and his most fierce enemies, such as Vegeta, Frieza, Cell and much more, with new gameplay design! DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE will take the beloved universe from series' creator Akira Toriyama by storm and break tradition with a new world setup, a mysterious city and other amazing features to be announced in the future! But a question remains; an unknown fighter appears... Who is he?!

Developer: Dimps

Publisher: Bandai Namco Games

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One

Guest Review: by Wiggins

When I first heard they were making another Dragon Ball Z game I was pretty skeptical by this point because Battle of Z was less than average, and Ultimate Tenkaichi was just garbage. I wanted something that was similar to Budokai Tenkaichi 3 or Raging Blast and this game delivered.

The character creation is one of the best features of this game. You get to choose from 5 races that consist of: Majin, Frieza, Human, Saiyan, and Namekian. Some races provide the option of being either a male or female. All the races and gender types have pros and cons, which is a great idea; because I was worried that the selection of different races would be all for show. Past that select you can change color, hairstyle, clothes color, voice, and many other things. Then you get to the fun part the game. After playing the game for awhile more customizable options open up, giving the chance to change the move set. Eventually moves such Double Sunday, Burning Slash, Destructo Disk, and the infamous Kamehameha Wave become available when progress is made.

This is an RPG-style game which means that there is a leveling system. Each level gives out three points which you can add to: Health, Ki, Stamina, Basic Attack, Super Strike, and Super Special. On top of that the clothes you choose to wear also can alter stats, along with an ability that each player gets to choose. Having a balanced character isn’t a smart move in this game due to there not being enough points to spread everything out evenly. It would take two levels to boost all the stats by one.

Upon learning this I decided to not add much ability points into Super Strike and a majority into Ki. Another benefit of character creation is that they can also have a master. From that master they can learn their own personal Ultimate Special, such as Final Flash and Special Beam Cannon, along with various other moves after meeting certain conditions of course. Even after missions they always have something to say depending on how you did. So far my two favorites are Vegeta and Piccolo because they sound like true masters when a mission is done poorly. Another thing to keep in mind is that when choosing a non-created character they each have their own stats and moves. Even when choosing which version of a character you want.

The story is where things get even more interesting. I am very used to the retelling of the DBZ story. It is set in stone and rarely has been changed which did not really bother me, but when I heard that someone actually decided to change things up it caught my attention. A brief introduction lets the players know that someone is messing with time, and many of the major battles in the DBZ universe have been altered and it is the player’s’ job to correct them.

This plan was executed very well by the developers because the further I played the bigger the change in the story. By the end of the game it became its own story with original villains. For the most part I breezed through the story without much difficulty, except on two occasions. One when I had to battle Frieza and again facing the main antagonist. Frieza took about five tries, but that final boss took me over a week. I had to level up significantly, change my clothes, my moves, my ultimate attack, and take off my sunglasses. I pretty much had to revamp my whole character. It was worth it though, I achieved a zen like character that thoroughly destroyed the main antagonist.

I was not disappointed with the story at all and actually liked that the created character was heavily involved in the story. However, my issue is once the timeline was fixed, nobody remembered who that character was except the villains. Although in theory, once the error in time was corrected the character would be forgotten because s/he was not originally there.

In addition to the story there are Missions that can be completed to unlock various items that cannot be bought at the shops. They have various conditions that need to be met to get the tough items which the player has to figure out. Trust me when I say there are a lot of missions to do and will end up doing them more than once.

The fighting system is almost exactly how I like it. After playing Tenkaichi 2, Tenkaichi 3, and Raging Blast, I was looking for a system that is flashy and true to the series. For people that still prefer Budokai 3’s fighting system, you better keep playing that game cause this isn’t the game for you.

Expect a lot of flying around, special moves, and chaining attacks with special moves together. Not that boring and annoying kick-kick-punch-kick-energy move to execute special moves. The wonderful thing about Xenoverse is how many moves you have to choose from. No two moves are the same in Xenoverse, and having numerous people making a diverse multitude of created characters adds so much more variety for each person.

The beautiful thing about being able to choose moves is the possibilities that open up. I was able to chain together Orin Combo and Galick Gun only because Galick Gun executes faster than the Kamehameha. The battling system is not as deep as Tenkaichi 3 was, nor as sophisticated as Raging Blast, and I found myself doing many of the same moves over and over again. Sometimes I would switch up the combos to find which combination does the most damage as well.

The good thing is every DBZ character plays differently so it keeps the battling fresh when choosing a different character. I generally ended up choosing my own created character majority of the time. Also when fighting you can have a total of 6 characters of the field at once. Surprisingly the fighting never feels as if there is too much going on. The maps are rather large and everybody has plenty of fighting space, unless its five on one but even then the knock back attack keeps the feeling of being ganged up on in check. Trust me the computer loves using knock back attacks any and every chance they get.

Summary

This by far the most solid Dragon Ball Z game in many years. Even after the game is beaten there are still many missions to do and even secret missions to unlock. This amount of additional content simply makes the replay value very high. Also there are other races to choose from with their own pros and cons to try out. Overall this game is definitely a must play for all Dragon Ball Z fans and I would recommend this to a friend to try out.

Sending