If you're a DBZ fan, I think this is pretty much a buy. There is a lot to like about it, depending on your tolerance for MMO-style design and gameplay. The price tag is a little steep but it's a console game after all, and I'm enjoying it enough I think they've earned the money.
First off, it's a solid port which pleases me immensely. It's got PC config options, nothing too detailed but enough that someone took the time to think about it and do a good job. All the key remapping is solid, recognizes the 4th and 5th mouse buttons and all the onscreen prompts show the correct keys. Nary a crash or stutter to be found so far. My pc is way over spec for it so I can't really say how it performs, but the recommended specs are pretty easy going.
So you design your own character, picking male or female from the Saiyan, Nakemian, Human, Majin or "Friezian" races. Each one emphasizes some stats over others and have a few quirks each.
You've got stats for your Health, Ki, Stamina, Basic Attacks, Strike Powers and Ki Powers. You have 7 to start with you can map, grouped up into "Ultimates" and "Supers", with a couple subtypes within them (like your Evasion power.) You also have an item inventory for potions and buffs and other stuff you can use during missions. On top of all THAT, you have your wardrobe which has an impact on your stats, accessory slot and a "Z-Soul" slot which is kinda like a perk slot, various Z-Souls doing various things. Your first accessory is a Scouter, which actually is pretty cool in game. You hit the button for it and you look through the scouter lens to spot enemies, get data on them, locate portal and items. More on those last two in a bit. Even shows on your character model, too.
When I said the game is MMO-like, what I mean is it stops about 50 feet short of being an actual MMO. The whole game takes place out of a hub, the Time Patrol headquarters. Here you do the main story missions, side quests, sort of random missions, and straight up vs. fights. There's also shops to buy items, skills, clothing, accessories, and mix items to create new items.
Gameplay happens in roughly 3 ways. You have Time Patrol, which is the main story. You go through the classic DBZ moments...but before you groan, there's a twist to every scene. Represented by this evil purple energy, bad guys in the story do something different than they actually did, changing (sort of) what happens. Raditz throws off Goku at the critical moment and Goku gets hit by the full Special Beam Cannon, then Raditz finished off Piccolo. That sort of thing. Except you show up to stop it all.
I gotta give props on the story execution. If you've played even one DBZ game, you've probably relived the series enough times to be sick of it, between the games and the tv show. But they insert your player character into these scenes, which kind of seamlessly blend from actual moments in the show, to the revised bits. It actually has me paying attention to the story again.
So that's Time Patrol. It sort of serves as the leveling metric in the game. Do more Time Patrol Missions, unlock more characters to play, get more items in the shops, more missions to do outside of Time Patrol, etc..
The second way things play out is just traditional PVP fights you get set up. These are pretty thin and not really intended (I think) to contribute toward your progression. You get some money and xp for winning or losing fights but it's pocket change compared to the Parallel and Time Patrol missions, and you don't earn any items or stuff that I've seen.
The third way is what are called "parallel missions", which seem to be the real meat of the game. They're like Time Patrol, in that they deal with events in DBZ history being changed and you needing to fix it, but the format is different from Time Patrol and it's meant to fill in where the main story ends. This is where you find the bulk of items, equipment, new abilities and skills. They take the form of one or more areas connected by portals, which you fight some guys in one scene like a canyon, then fight some guys in another like the city, then fight some other guys in another like the wasteland, within the time limit and without dying (or failing any other other objectives of the mission.) The maps are reasonably large, and you can free roam them as you like even after enemies are dead. Which you'll need to, because there's items scattered around each area, sometimes hidden inside rocks you have to bust.
You end up bouncing back and forth between Time Patrol missions and Parallel missions, and you kinda need to do both to level up and unlock more stuff at the same time.
So, combat. Generally I think it's pretty smooth. It's certainly quick. It's pretty recognizable to me even after having not played a lot of the most recent games, although playing it on a mouse and keyboard takes some getting used to. It feels like it lacks a little punch, visually and in terms of the intensity of the back and forth in the fights, but there's a reason for that.
Fights are not simply you vs. another guy. It seems that there's up to 6 people participating in any one fight (3v3) at any one time, and it can make for a lot of chaos. (I had one mission to kill 20 Saibamen and a new one would spawn the instant the old one was killed. So far, it's been pretty easy (I'm up to the Namek part of the story) and the game is just now starting to get difficult. Victory, as you'd probably expect, comes from steamrolling the fuck out of someone with combos and not letting up until they're down. As the difficulty goes up though, this gets harder as other fighters in the match start laying into your flanks with heavy hitting attacks. Your attacks are generally single target, so you focus on one guy at a time and try to avoid damage where you can. Your two AIs are generally not all that competent, but they can keep the enemy off your back, allowing you to focus on the guy you need to fight. They will however, in some story instances, kick a lot of ass. But things don't play out in a highly scripted manner. Even though Goku is supposed to be fighting one guy, he might get tied up with another, or you might get bushwhacked by a pair of guys where they sort of left you alone last time. It feels kinda dynamic which is really cool and just further enhances the choice to let the player be somebody in the story.
If I have gripes about combat, it's this: it's kind of sloppy. Blocking is almost totally useless from what I can see, because you have to be blocking before someone attacks most of the time. Defense is largely a matter of offense and liberal use of the teleport dodge. There's not a lot of finesse to the combos, although they do stack up insanely and in a satisfying manner. So the game doesn't really feel all that precise, even though it's quick and smooth. Secondly, it has some soso terrain effects for DBZ. Which everything looks pretty lavish, there's little smashing guys through mountains or making gigantic craters. I suppose that's a trade off for having team battles, is that things visually are a little shallower.
After you do missions you get a rating and scored based on your performance, which is meeting the mission objectives and a whole load of other qualifiers (no damage, almost died, using 5 of some kind of attack in the mission, being the highest damage dealer, being the most aggressive, etc...) The higher the rating, the more exp and money you get. Items and skills seem to either need to be found on the map, rewarded at a certain performance level, or randomly (and I do mean randomly) drop off specific enemies in levels. (If a power or specific piece of gear drops in a PQ, chances are it drops from the guy it belongs to.)
Back to the MMO part, it's got some interesting features but plenty of tedium you'd associate with a F2P game too. In classic DBZ fashion, you can't sprint or fly in the hub, so you have to tediously walk back and forth to the mission terminals, the shops or to talk to NPCs. The game is a SP game, to be clear, but it's got MP features at your beck and call too. You can form a party with up to two other people and do Time Patrol, Parallel Missions or Team Battles. But the hub is still just you....sorta. See, other player's characters show up in your hub as NPCs just standing around. You can recruit their character (but not the player) to be on your team if you want. Which is kinda cool because it adds a little bit of life to the hub, even if that life is eye-gougingly colored Majins or Namekians, or tiny little Saiyans. (If you plan to do MP VS, prepare for people playing tiny characters with tiny fucking hit boxes. Yes, hit boxes are an issue with size in this.) I highly doubt I'll screw around with general MP but it might be fun with friends.
So all in all I think it's a pretty solid buy. I find the MMO style of doing things a little annoying. I like progression but I could do without the faux MMO appearance and what appears to be a fair amount of grinding missions to get the stuff I want. Still, it's pretty much everything a DBZ fan could ask for. There's enough game here to live in for a while.
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Topic: Dragonball Z Xenoverse. DBZXV-XYZPDQLMNOP. Bay12 Force, Assemble! *pose* (Read 56796 times)