Dragon Ball: XenoVerse

Sean Dibble

Welcome back to the world that we all grew up loving. The world is Dragon Ball Z, you all know the lore so I won't be going too far into detail on that. Just know that if you don't know the story please, PLEASE, do not get the game, you will be lost and extremely confused. The game is based around a future in the year 826, something is happening to time itself and history is being erased. Trunks, in all of his infinite wisdom, asks Shenron to grant him one wish and that is to bring to strongest warrior to aid him in stopping history from being rewritten.

You are that superior fighter, no Goku here to steal the show from you this time. You're also not just the hero of the story, you can now create your very own custom fighter to play as through the games story. It is however limited at the moment and hopefully future updates or sadly possible DLC will give us more options but you do have five races to choose from (Majin, Saiyan, Earthling, Namekian, Frieza). Right off the bat though one thing about the customization that I am not happy with is the fact that if you want to be from the Majin race you either are the fat male model or skinny female model with the ample midsection, you can't have skinny male or fat female (minor detail I know but I wanted to create a good Kid Buu character and I wasn't allowed too). The other races are more straightforward with the Frieza race having the most customization available to the player. Now, with that said, after you choose the hairstyle and eyes and what not, you can change your color to pretty much anything you want to be. You want an Albino Namekian? Go for it! You want to be a hot pink Saiyan? Why the heck not! It is all up for grabs, but it is nothing over the top and is frankly simplistic compared to what you can do in other MMO style games.

Gameplay is a tad bit better than in previous games and they seemed to have fixed the camera issues from the past, sorta, but it is better with being able to find enemies and lock on to them. Now a big thing about DBZ games is story and this one, though not for everyone, I have enjoyed very much. It takes the lore and plays around with it a little bit and creates alternate story ideas. For instance, what if Raditz broke out of Goku’s hold and didn't get hit by the Special Beam Cannon, only Goku did? This is one among the other timeline discrepancies that you have to fix, Trunks sends you back to each event to right what has gone wrong in the hopes that it corrects the timeline. So, you follow along and fix what is happening to keep the lore intact. Like I said above, if you don't know the lore to begin with I highly recommend taking the time either reading up on it or watching the anime. It will be time well spent because the game doesn't really go into it much and it is a shame. 

While I do love DBZ games for their simplicity, XenoVerse is different and its a good/bad sort of thing because if you like MMO style games then this is a great game for you because it has that feel to it. You must search for new moves and train under masters to learn their fighting styles to make your character stronger. But you will also suffer from the terrible side effects of the MMO style which means grinding….yes, there is a bit of grinding in the game and you will find yourself doing the parallel quests over and over again to level your character up so you can beat someone like Captain Ginyu (yes, I had to grind levels to beat him and I am ashamed to admit it). And to the question that all of you are probably asking. “Are the buttons the same from past games?” Yes and no. There are a few button changes, some for the better and some not so much. For instance, to use super moves you hit the right bumper on a controller and to use an ultimate move you press and hold both right and left bumpers. That change I love, however to descend you have to press L3 on the controller and that is just plain awkward so things can be hit or miss.

My biggest pet peeve about this game though, the servers are always down. I downloaded the game pretty soon after launch thinking "ok" might not be able to play online for a bit because it is brand new. This led me to the single player but there I found that I couldn't play because of not being connected to the servers. It would connect me to the multiplayer lobbies when I clicked on the single lobby, I would get in game and then almost instantly get sent to the title screen and when I would try to get back into single player, the lobby would take ten minutes to connect! Why? All I wanted was to play single player, not with people, by myself. I do not understand and I am hoping this trend of gaming will soon be over with forcing people to be connected to a server even while in single player, its poor management and will keep people from enjoying the game. I couldn't play for a good three or four days because of it and honestly, I got frustrated to where I wasn't sure I would play the game again. Being the huge DBZ fan I am though, I knew that wasn't possible. Plus, I want to get to the point where I can beat my friends as an all powerful Beerus but who knows? If problems with the servers continue, I may be dropping Dragon Ball: XenoVerse from my Steam library.

Good:

- Graphics are stellar

- Controls have improved a bit

- Interesting take on the story (for people who know the lore)

- YOU CAN CREATE A NEW SAIYAN!!!

Bad:

- For people who don't know the lore, you will get lost

- Single player lobby still requires connection to the server

- Limited customization

- Some weird new controls

Scully Rating: 5.0 out of 10