Dragon Ball Xenoverse review

[GrimNeo]

My Dragon Ball Xenoverse review so far. http://store.steampowered.com/app/323470/. If you're a DBZ fan then here is my review of the game. Having played many DBZ games. I have to say this game can be very fun but at the same time be very frustrating. I have 56 hours in the game since it came out.

 

Let me comment about the 56 hours invested into the game. I have spent many hours just trying to get on the Xenoverse Server. I would say I spend at least a total of 30 minutes a day or more just trying to get on. I often get on and get disconnected. I have decided to just play on single player lobby and even then it tries to connect to Xenoverse server, This can be very frustrating for me at least. I just want to play the game. Once I get on the Xenoverse server it kicks me off. I will get a message saying you will be disconnected in x amount of time. It's an inactivity message. The problem is I'm not inactive. I'm playing ranked and parallel quests. You can play online when in single player mode. You can also play offline with bots.

 

Story Mode

The story is different from the other Dragon Ball games. It's not the same old DBZ story. I will try not to spoil the Story mode but you play a time patroller and help Trunks on missions. While the story mode is good it seems to not have a training mode like other fighting games. I was very confused at first. Here is why. When you first start it throws you into 3 random battles and does not tell you anything. There was not tutorial on how to play. While it was not diffucult it was unexpected. Story mode can be very frustrating in the begin. A lot battles consist of fighting the same person over and over again. While they keep getting full health and you stay with the same health. The game does allow you to use 4 items. The story mode has the sagas in them and I found myself having to grind the end boss just to make it on to the next saga. Also the enemies will often spam the same move over and over again.

 

Gameplay

While the gameplay is not the best. I will say the gameplay is fun but at the same time can be frustrating. While playing ranked online I noticed some moves are over-powered and some z souls as well. Often going Super Saiyan online can result in people just flying around to avoid you.  Some ultimate supers don't connect on vertical scale. What I mean by this is the ultimate move will be horizontal but another play can just move vertical to avoid it. While the ultimate move works on npc's at a veritcal level it doesn't with human players. A lot of online battles consist of people using the same skills over and over again. While I have been able to beat these players I just find it annoying that people don't use more combos. The game consists of three different playing styles. You have ki which are energy based skills. Balanced which is a combination of strike and ki. Strike which is melee based skills. You also have 5 races to choose from. Each race has it's own special perk over the other. Humans(male/female), Saiyan(male/female), Namekian, Majin(Male/female) and Frieza. You can use characters from DBZ/GT as well. I have to say I love character creation. The customization is not the best but it will do. Leveling your character to level 80 is fun and you get attribute points to improve your character. 237 total attribute points. You can put it into Health, Ki, basic attacks, Strike, and Ki blast. 100 is the max you can put into a trait. The game has several rpg elements and a lot of skills to choose from. You can also buy and earn clothes. Clothes will have positive and negative stat gains based on your fighting style. Some clothes are race bound or gender bound. Some clothes can be colored. You can wear 4 clothes, 1 accessory and 1 Z soul. Accessories are items that you can play on your character for looks.  A Z soul will help you with stat increase and even ki and stamina boosts as well. Make sure to read the Z soul description for what it can do. Some can bring you back from a ko or even neglect the ko one time. You can also make Z souls in the mix shope. You can make items as well. Items can be equiped 4 times. Team based items and individual items as well. Team based items do not work on NPC's from what I have seen. Health, stamina and ki items and different sizes. For example you can use smal, medium and large. You can not use items in ranked matches. Ranked matches seem to be broken. I would choose same skill level and it would place with an opponent that was level 80. I was level 33 so I died in 2 super hits. One last thing about gameplay. You do basic combos with x and y (microsoft controller) so like x x x x x y y can lead to a nice uppercut combo. You can use a to teleport but this will use stamina. Y is the strongest basic attack. You can hit y b to kick an opponent then teleport to them with another. Now some basic combos do not use stamina when you teleport. so you could hit x or y or even follow up with a super or ultimate in that combo. I use a strike character and a ki character. Forgot to mention when you choose ki, balanced and strike at the beginning your basic stats will start on what you choose and will level up based on those stats. It's in a hexagon shape and will show it when you look at your character. Also you earn Zeni from missions parrellel quests and matches. Use it to buy skills, items, clothes, and even offline mode players to hire for offline parallel quests. Some parallel quests will be single player only and I noticed the npc likes to match you on a 3 vs 1 or 5 vs 1 etc. The npc will then spam its ultimate until you die. Often fighting one npc will result in another spamming the same move or hitting you in the back to interrupt you. This often led to me wanting to break the game. Big bang Kamehameha from ssj Goku and ssj Gohan and ssj Goten made me hate that word. As it was spammed by all 3 multiple times until I died. My character was stuck there. The single player parallel quests seem to consist of that. Evasive skills use stamina. Supers use ki and some use none. You can have 4 supers and 2 ultimates and one evasive.

 

Online Mode

To achieve online mode you will need to complete the first saga and Trunks will explain it to you. You can use the in game chat system and even do emotes with other players. You can look at a profile of another player and even challenge them. You can create a team and invite people or make it open. As a team you can do unranked online battles or parallel quests.

 

Parallel Quests 

You can play with 2 other players or npc's. You can use the scouter to check the level and skills of the enemies in each pq. So far 49 pq's for me at this time and some of them are single player only. You will need to talk to a character with a question mark to get that parallel quest. Once you beat it you can play it with a team. Beating a pq will give you Zeni and XP based on your rank. Any level can play a pq. You can obtain Dragon Balls from the pq. 7 Dragon Balls can then be turned in to make a wish. You can have your stats reset. You can wish for a new character. I believe 7 new characters can be unlocked this way. 5 Time Chasm Shards can be turned into Trunks for the Legendary Saiyan saga. I believe you can unlock Brolly and his clothes there.

At level 80 I found the first mission to be rather annoying. You have to defend Bardock and he don't let him die. You fight several of Frieza's henchmen and then Frieza who only goes after Bardock and can kill him in one hit. Despite beating the crap out of frieza. One miss on my combo led to him flying over to Bardock and killing him. Frieza's henchmen kept spawning and you need to kill 15 to get Frieza to come out.

. Certain skills, items and Z souls can only be achieved in parallel quests. A pq with have 3 objectives for you to complete. 1 will be listed and 2 with ??????????. Sometimes you will have to draw out a character or transformation to get the drop you want. I found the system to be some what broken. While completing the task and doing everything that was needed the event would not start. Also the ranking system for pq's are broken. Sometimes I would not even get a rank or item for reasons unkown. Completing a quest in one minute and not even being touched would result in me not even getting a rank or item. Overall parallel quests are fun. You can even combo moves with other players.

 

Ranked and unranked battles

I found the ranked matches to be broken. Often making me fight level 80's as a level 33. It's not fair at all because levels do matter in this game. You don't get upscaled at all. The only way I would avoid it was to create a room and check the profile of the person. You can then leave the match and not get penalized. Often times result in people messaging you. Because being killed in 2 hits is fun /s. You start off with 0 battle points and a win will result in x amount of bp. You can lose bp but I found it to be random. So far I'm ranked 56 in the world for that game. Once I reached level 80 I often would search and play a level 8. It was not fair at all and I took no pride in beating someone in one combo. You can choose several stages from the story. You can use unlocked characters. 1 vs 1 only. If your playing ranked I advise you wait till level 80.

 

I liked unranked as well. 1 vs 1 and up to 3 vs 3. If you did not have enough then it would put in a bot of a person. I like the idea that you would play against other user created characters and you can even fight them in parallel quests. Typical hosts creates the match and based on his/her connection. Endless battles are cool as well. 2 people fight and 4 can watch. Winner fights all untill beaten. I have to say unranked is very fun but will consist of a lot of low level people.

 

Ok so here are my final thoughts. I'm not going to put this on a scale. I will say I highly recommend this game if you're a DBZ fan. It's a must. If you don't like DBZ or neutral but you're a fan of rpg/fighting games then I will recommend this game if you can get past the cons I listed. I have to say when the game works I love it. I hope they patch it soon. The online server consists of Toki Toki city. 3 parts. You can even find Masters in it to train with. 4 fights with each one and 4 unique skills. Several Masters to choose from but Goku is level 70 only.

 

 

Edit: Forgot to say that once you beat the game you can create more characters and they can use the skill moves you unlocked. Some skill moves are based on race.

[GrimNeo]

Game update.

I played for 10 hours last night. I just want to say that while I love the game it is broken. The game favors ki blast characters. Here is an example. I beat the final boss on the game when I was level 18. Here is what I did. I put on Vegeta's move final flash and equiped his z soul.  I then turned super saiyan during the battle and killed the boss only using final flash. Then at level 30 I got a Z rank on that mission. This is proof the game favors ki blast characters. Alright let me just say I have a level 80 strike character and I have 100 in basic and 83 in strike supers. At level 80 the best rank I got on the last boss was an S. Keep in mind I was never hit and I was able get a 80 hit combo on the boss using different moves and supers. Finished the boss with an ultimate Spirit Sword. This is my proof the game is broken. Now I am talking about single player and parallel quests only. I am currently ranked 50 in the world for ranked battles. I can say that while ki blast characters are op with the right attributes they are very easy to kill. I tried a unranked battle with my level 77 ki blast character. I have 100 in ki and 100 in ki blast and the rest in health. I fought a level 80 strike character and I killed him while in super saiyan 2 and I used Vanishing Ball. I took 90% of that players hp bar with that move alone.

 

Continued.... I was able to beat the Legendary super saiyan saga with my op ki blast character while my level 80 struggled. Keep in mind I was level 50 when I played it. I unlocked the last parallel quest 55 and I got a Z rank on it spamming my Vanishing Ball skill in super saiyan 2 lol. I then played it with my level 80 strike character and I did not even get a rank. My ultimate move takes 60% to 80% off of some bosses and I got 60,000 xp from getting the z rank and this took 5 minutes. I leveled to 77 in no time at all.  

 

So now that I played as a ki blast character what are my thoughts. The game is broken. I can't believe how op ki blast spammers are. I can now see why people do this online. I just find it frustrating that I can be so good with my strike character and constantly fail single parallel quests while my op ki blast characters gets z ranks on them. I will still play the game and I will use my strike character online because ki blast is op. I think melee takes skill and ki blast is for the novice. I will say last night no ki blast character even came close to beating me. I only lost once to a very good strike character. Ki blast characters are op for single player and parralel quests. I suggest strike for ranked matches when you reach level 80. Spamming the same move over and over again is boring. Thanks for reading my final thoughts on Dragon Ball Xenoverse. Any questions just ask me. I am able to Z rank anything I play with my op ki blast character.

[IceCold007]

My 8 year old son will be happy.

[GrimNeo]

My 8 year old son will be happy.

The game is really fun. Just some elements of the game are broken. I would just let your son know the online Xenoverse server is having problems. I would suggest you have him login into single player lobby. The Xenoverse will kick him off of that as well. I hope they fix it soon. The Xenoverse server is the main problem. Also no training mode in the game. The tutorials are short but give a baisc understanding of the game. I will say I love all the skills in the game.