Review: Dragon Ball FighterZ

First, I would like to say that I - like many other early 90’s kids – have always been a huge fan of Akira Toriyama’s beloved manga-series Dragon Ball. As a kid, I used to read all the books and watch the animated series as often as I could. Every month I would go down to the local bookstore in the small city I grew up in, in Denmark to buy the newest version of the book. My all-time favorite DB book (from the Danish Carlsen edition) is still number 27: “Son-Goku – Super-saiyajin” (It’s from the Frieza Arc, where he finally transforms and kicks Frieza’s ass!).

Well, enough of that! Dragon Ball FighterZ is really a game that takes you back down memory lane. The game is very pretty and is really bringing forth the feelings you get from reading the manga or watching the anime. But as good as it sounds, the game also has its downsides, which I will discuss down below.

The gameplay is very good! It is as easy to handle as it is complex. The interface is easy to understand, the controls are very intuitive and the game runs smoothly. All characters got different fighting techniques and I was instantly reminded of the manga and the anime – from Vegeta’s Final Flash to Captain Ginyu’s Body Change-technique (yes, I was fooled by this technique).

The character roster consists of 25 characters (22 at first), and the ability to buy Vegeta and Son-Goku in their SSJ-Blue form. I haven’t received Android 21 yet. You can either buy the characters by spending Zeni or by purchasing them from Steam – which I must be honest to say, that I did.

While fighting you can switch between three characters – which I at first was very skeptical about, considering I’m not the best at these types of games. But it felt intuitive and wasn’t really that hard.

I haven’t had much experience with fighting games in general because I always tend to find them boring and lacking stuff to do, but Dragon Ball FighterZ is an exception to this. From the beginning I started playing, I didn’t feel like I missed anything to do.

You start your journey in an online (or offline) lobby with up to 64 other people from your preferred region, where you control an avatar of your liking. As you start out you won’t have the option to control more than three characters, but as you earn more cash (Zeni) you will be able to buy capsules, which will grant you a lot of different things, including other lobby characters to run around as. It didn’t take me more than 5 hours to have at least 20 different characters. The lobby is the place where you meet other players, enter matchmaking, playing locally with your pals, practicing combos on your favorite Z-fighter or playing the story mode. There are a lot of things to do in this game - considering it’s a fighting game.

What is very irritating though, is that you can't see peoples steam-name. I would love to see that implemented since I had a lot of close and fun fights with people that I would love to play with again.

The singleplayer campaign is a fun and good way to learn the basics of the game’s mechanics. As most of my time playing the game was used on playing ranked matches, I only completed the first act. But even though I did play the story for at least 2 hours, I had only completed 30 % in total, which I think indicates that the story is long for a fighting game. That’s nice.

But it was very easy. Not one of my characters died a single time while I played the story. I know that I only completed the first act and I’m sure it will become harder, but it shouldn’t be taking this long to have the difficulty increased. Even Android 21 was just a walk in the park. But luckily the characters made up for this.

I love that it is completely voice-acted by the same people that are used in the animated series (Yes, Goku is played by Masako Nozawa – makes him sound like an old lady). The cutscenes are fun and the characters got soul – it feels like a new act in the anime. But even though the characters are very well made, the story itself isn’t exactly Shakespeare - or a good DB-story. They try to engage the player by pulling him or her into the story to give it an immersive feel, but in my opinion, that just makes the game lacking and you are left with a bad Dragon Ball story.

But where FighterZ really shines is its multiplayer mode. The fights are intense and can last a long time if you are good enough at switching between your characters. As I have already mentioned I have no real experience in fighting games, so I didn’t really win anything for the first 10 matches (wow I suck!). But after getting a feel for the game by practicing 1v1 with my girlfriend (to get back some self-esteem), I returned to the matchmaking-system and I started to win a few fights – making the game a whole lot more fun! Even though the game was hard for me at first, I could see why this game was a very well made fighting game: It is intense! Never in any game have I been so mad from losing or so happy from winning! As yesterday was the release-date of FighterZ there was a lot of people online, which was nice. But it did take some time to find anyone to fight against in the ranked matches. Sometimes I had to wait up to 5 minutes before I could enter a match, and I did notice some lag-spikes. Today was a little different, and I didn’t feel any real idling – and I haven’t felt any lag-spikes.  So, my overall experience from the multiplayer-mode is very good!

Points: 8/10

FighterZ is a very good fighting game – It is easy to learn but hard to master. But even though It is near to a perfect fighting game, the story is only half decent. I am really hoping for some good DLC packs with a better story and more characters - I would love to be able to fight with Jiren (might be to OP) and Master Roshi.

Written by SamFanKun