Review: Dragon Ball: Xenoverse

I understand about five percent of what’s going on in Dragon Ball: Xenoverse, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see its appeal.

Perhaps I should rephrase that as ‘fan appeal’.

Totally meant for devotees of the long-running Dragon Ball franchise, Xenoverse is part button-mashing fighter and part MMO. With a game hub rendered in the anime style the franchise is known for, you’re tasked to create your own original character – human, Saiyan or otherwise – and have him or her run around punching things. I’ll admit that I spent far too long designing my character, eventually deciding upon what I’ve termed the ‘bad-ass boyband member’. Seeing Stevivor in the in-game world gave me the same feeling of creating a South Park character in The Stick of Truth. Warm fuzzies abound.

The main storyline sees you teamed-up with a variety of Dragon Ball characters, fixing abnormalities in the time stream. It’s basically an excuse to have you go and wedge yourself in to what I assume to be pivotal moments of the anime’s long run. Some matches are one on one and others task you to eliminate scores of henchmen, but my favourite bits of this main story are when things turn into one big battle royale, with tons of characters on-screen duking it out.

Xenoverse also has plenty of opportunities for side-questing, with Parallel Quests throwing you into dungeons of a sort. There, you’re asked to complete win conditions in one stage, and then fly off to another to repeat. Parallel Quests can be engaged offline in solo mode, or together with friends online.

The same is true for battles, which – you guessed it – let you pick whatever characters you’d like (including your own original creations) and set them up against each other either in offline or online modes.

As your character completes main and side missions, he or she will level up, earning new skill moves, new gear and new opportunities to engage in mentorships with classic Dragon Ball characters. You’re able to learn under Piccolo, as an example, at level five, and doing so will earn you his special move. As part of these training modules, you’re tasked to become adept at given skill to learn another, and so on.

So yeah, it’s a Dragon Ball MMO.

While that grindy mechanic kept me going for an admittedly long(er) time (than I thought), I did start to get bored with Xenoverse partially because I didn’t really understand what was going on, and partially because the game’s mechanics are very repetitive.

In battles, you’ve got flight, general punch and kick moves and supers. No matter what the scenario – one-on-ones or battle royales – I constantly found myself locking on one bad guy, pummeling him with normal attacks until my super meter was charged, and then using a super. Over and over and over and over again. Without fail. Without change.

That criticism isn’t just about fighting mechanics, it’s about every fight. There may be a lot of bells and whistles (read: MMO functionality) built into Xenoverse, but ultimately, everything boils down to a fight. Or a big fight. It’s hard to stay engaged for long periods of time as a result.

This does get broken up a bit by frustratingly-telegraphed ‘you’re not a high enough level’ battles. One happened quite early on, in fact. A level 8 character, I walked into the third or fourth main campaign mission, handed minions and a main henchman character his ass two times… and then was utterly decimated by the henchman in the fourth phase of the battle.

He hit me two times, taking half of my life bar each time. Ouch.

It was easy to understand what was going on, and easy enough to rectify as well – I just went and did Parallel Quests until I gained a couple more levels – but there wasn’t really any way to tell I was under-prepared before I started the quest. That said, when showing this review to a knowledgeable Dragon Ball fan, I was informed this whole ‘overcoming adversity’ type deal is pretty accurate to what happens in an episode of the show. Which, thinking of something like Power Rangers, does make sense. It still mostly sucks, but maybe some will get a kick — and further motivation — to try again.

Online functionality was available in the days before this review, but I wasn’t able to find a lot of matches during the times I wanted to play. I’ll assume that this was in part to random times I chose to play, and also because few copies of the game are actually in consoles at the moment. As such, I don’t feel qualified to speak of the game’s online experience.

There’s not much else to say about Dragon Ball: Xenoverse. An obvious non-fan, I’d sum up the game by saying it’s pretty much the same fight over and over and over. Sometimes, the dude dressed in the orange jumpsuit has cool hair, sometimes he has a WAY over-done mullet and sometimes he gets yellow hair. And apparently, normal hair and mullet dude aren’t the same person. Who knew?

Xenoverse almost needs two review scores: one general one, directed at any gamer who’s open to anime and MMO elements — which is the one below — and another for Dragon Ball fans wanting to make sure this is a quality game. To the latter, don’t focus on the number below so much, because it sure is. If you don’t mind a bit of repetition, I’m sure what I can clearly see as unbridled fan-service will excite you greatly. Go and make yourself a part of your favourite sagas.

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Dragon Ball: Xenoverse was reviewed using a promotional code on PS4, as provided by the publisher.