Dragon Ball FighterZ may be the flashiest
fighting game of 2018. Though only the latest in a long line of licensed
fighting games based on the beloved anime franchise, FighterZ is a cut above those that came before.
Publisher Bandai Namco handed the license to developer Arc System Works, makers
of the niche, but well respected, Guilty Gear franchise. The series has also
adopted a familiar format — 3-on-3 swap-in, swap-out team-fights, like those
found in the Marvel vs. Capcom franchise.
Oh — and the game looks incredible.
When
it was first shown at E3 2017, FighterZ dropped
jaws with its 3D cel-shaded visuals, which look nearly identical to the anime
that inspired them. (Actually, having gone back to watch some old episodes, I
can confirm the game looks much better than Dragon Ball Z ever
did). FighterZ genuinely looks and feels like an epic
fight from the show that inspired it.
It
helps that FighterZ is one of the easiest fighting games to
pick up and play. Though it may lack the mechanical diversity found in some of
its peers, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better brawler to simply pick up
and play.
Anime you can
play
Before
you play Dragon Ball FighterZ, you might want to just look at
it for a while. In combat, the game is incredibly smooth, the graphics look
sharp and crisp. It looks like the real thing. We can’t understate how cool it
is to press a button, and watch a cartoon to come to life. Though its animation
is not the technical marvel that Cuphead was, there’s something even more surreal
about the fact that these are characters you’ve seen elsewhere.
The
game features a roster of 24 fighters from Dragon Ball Z and Super,
21 of whom are available right away — with two more currently available as downloadable
content. The characters all use many of their signature moves from the show.
Not every fighter can do every move in DBZ history, but each one has a look and
feel that’s distinct, and conveys personality.
The
game makes the most of its aesthetic by piling on crazy visual effects. Every
match is chock full of giant colorful energy beams and exploding auras. Though
the fights are 3-on-3, which means there can technically be as many as six
characters on-screen at once, it’s never hard to keep track of what’s going on
in the fight. It’s difficult to balance flash with function, but FighterZ has done it.
Dragon Ball FighterZ Compared To
Those impressive
visuals don’t come without a cost, though. On Xbox One, it takes more than 30
seconds to load in and out of local and story mode matches. Even without lobby
wait times and connection issues, you will spend a good amount of time waiting
for fights to start and end.
Anime fighters:
Not just for fanboys anymore
FighterZ takes more than its
fair share of cues from Capcom’s Marvel vs. Capcom franchise, specifically,Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Like MvC3,
each player selects three fighters from a roster of 24, who they can rotate in
and out of the fight at will. The three-fighter format adds an extra layer of
strategy, as it’s possible to rotate members of your team in and out to keep
them alive. Your backup fighters can recover a portion of their lost health
over time, allow you to draw out the fight, and recover from your mistakes.
Better
yet, FighterZ mimics
the MvC series’ spectacle. Both games use bombastic visual effects to make even
simple attacks look crazy, cool, and out of control. Nearly every Dragon Ball
character has a powerful attack that could put a giant crater in the planet,
but most of them require hardly more technique than a simple fireball in Street
Fighter.
Indeed,
one of FighterZ’ great appeals is its simplicity. Every
character has four attacks — light, medium, heavy, and special, which is often
a projectile. Every character also has access to same pool of simple, yet
powerful advanced maneuvers: The right bumper (R1) triggers a flying dash that
allows you to dodge projectiles. Both the left bumper and trigger can call in
your partner characters to perform a quick special move, often a large Kamehameha
beam or destructo disc.
Combat is simple, but also fast, and the
penalty for missing a step can be severe.
Pressing medium and
heavy attack at the same time lets you teleport right behind your opponent and
hit them with a heavy kick that knocks them across the screen. These moves are
generally easy to pick up, and with that basic skill-set you have the tools you
need to control the tempo of a match. While each character has their own
special and super attacks (which require you to charge up energy), the buttons
are mostly universal.
While there is a
learning curve for getting to know how each character works, the mechanical
barrier to entry is as low as we’ve seen in a fighting game in a long time.
It’s an impressive
achievement. While many fighters boast that they are “easy to pick up, but
difficult to master,” in a world where pro-class players are thrust into the
same matchmaking pool as novices, that rings hollow. Learning how to play a
fighting game well enough that you have a chance online usually takes a lot of
time and dedication.
It
doesn’t take long to learn all the basic maneuvers of FighterZ,
and that basic skill-set gives you the tools you need to compete. Does that
mean a novice will take down a champion? Probably not — but they’ll feel they
have a fighting shot, which is more than you can say about Street Fighter,
Tekken, Injustice 2, or MvC: Infinite.
Since both players can
easily dodge, fly, teleport, and execute crazy combos, there’s a strong
emphasis on positioning and momentum. To excel, you need to know how control
the map and maintain your momentum. While it’s simple, the combat moves fast,
and the penalty for missing a step can be severe.
The system’s
simplicity does not come without flaws. While there are ways to break up an
opponent’s combos, including a parry, a moment of invincibility when recovering
from a mid-air combo, and the teleport attack, it’s easy to get locked up by
repetitive strings of attacks that bounce you around the screen and provide few
openings to counter. It doesn’t help that you can’t switch fighters while
taking damage. It’s easy to instinctively call in one of your teammates when
your health gets too low, only to realize no help is coming.
Anime game, anime
storytelling
Though
built on a great foundation, FighterZ is
still a Bandai Namco anime fighting game. For better or worse, fan service
reigns supreme, especially in the game’s story mode. FighterZ makes a good-faith attempt to craft a
campaign that can be enjoyable for both fans and newcomers, but it’s far from
perfect.
FighterZ features an original
narrative that feels right at home among the anime show’s many arcs.
Written
by series creator Akira Toriyama, FighterZ features
an original narrative that would feel right at home among the anime show’s many
arcs. A mysterious force drains the fighting power from series hero Goku and
his friends as an army of android clones attacks Earth.
Though powerless on
their own, the Dragon Ball crew can fight with the help of a “human soul”
(you!) that’s immune to the “waves” blocking their energy.
It’s a thin excuse to
explain away why you’d fight the same 20-ish people dozens of times — not every
fighter appears in the story — but slow, drip-fed exposition feels right
at home in the Dragon Ball universe. Fans will be relieved to hear that you can
watch the cutscenes in Japanese with English subtitles, or an English dub
track.
The story is broken
into chapters. You’re dropped onto an overworld map and cross it to complete a
single boss fight in a certain number of turns. Each map has at least a few
battles. Most of them are optional, but if you want to maintain a similar
amount of health and strength as your opponents, you’ll need to fight every
battle and grind out your “link level” to improve your fighters.
Here’s the catch; you
only get a small amount of health back at the end of each fight. As the fights
get tougher, you’re all but forced to rotate characters in and out of your
starting trio so your favorite characters can heal.
While the story could
be worse, it’s certainly too long. The narrative comprises three “story arcs,”
which tell three versions of the same story, giving you different rosters to
work with. With anywhere between 3-10 fights in each chapter, the cutscenes and
actual story feels secondary to the grind, which isn’t satisfying beyond the
basic, visceral validation of watching your link level rise.
What else is
going on?
Outside
of combat, FighterZ looks
and feels like a conventional Japanese multiplayer game. Players engage with
the game’s various modes — story, arcade, local & online multoplayer,
in-game store, practice mode, etc. — through a small hub world. The hub,
populated by chibi versions of Dragon Ball characters, also doubles as a social
space when the game is connected to the internet. You can exchange stickers and
pre-written messages with other players. As a lobby, it isn’t great: You can’t
chat or coordinate with other players in a meaningful way, but it is a fine, if
benign way to let players interact and revel in their fandom together.
On launch day, we
found ourselves waiting for minutes to get a match, even in a crowded room.
The
social hub lobby system is indicative of a larger issue with Dragon
Ball FighterZ’s online infrastructure. Even when you enter a full
lobby — players are separated by region into groups of up to 64 — there
are long waits between matches. It doesn’t help that the game breaks up the
player pool into many different types of matches. There the standard ranked and
casual pools, plus spectator-friendly “arena” pools, and “ring matches,” where
you can challenge another player in the lobby (without talking to them first).
On launch day, when
the servers were turned on, we found ourselves waiting for minutes to get a
match, even in a crowded room. In the months since launch, Namco and Arc System
Works have patched the game to optimize matchmaking and cut down on wait times
slightly. The “ring match” option, which allows players to match with each
other within their individual lobby, has significantly improved — At launch, it
barely worked, but it’s quick and easy to use now.
Aside
from the story and playing online, where most players will spend the bulk of
their time, it’s worth noting that FighterZ does
have an interesting spin on the classic “Arcade ”
single player. Like other fighting games, arcade mode simply lets you fight
through a predetermined number of fights in rapid succession. Unlike other Arcade modes, which ramp up the difficulty in
predetermined intervals, FighterZ tracks your performance, gives you a
rating at the end of every match, and gives a new opponent based on that score.
The change gives Arcade , a largely
anachronistic mode in the era of story driven campaigns, a bit of new life.
When you complete Arcade with a “B,” you feel
the drive to get an “A” or “S,” the highest rank. That’s enough to keep players
in the mode, fighting, and improving.
FighterZ also takes a
surprising and refreshing tack when it comes to loot boxes. The game has blind
“capsules,” which you can buy with in-game currency, but there are no real
money microtransactions. The capsules give you new stickers, new characters for
the in-game lobby, and other cosmetic items. FighterZdoes not offer new characters, stages, or
costumes for fights through the store, so the offering feels a little thin, but
it’s a small price to pay for not having any ads or intrusive mechanics.
Our Take
Dragon Ball FighterZ is major leap forward
the Dragon Ball game franchise. Where previous games have amounted to pure fan
service, FighterZ has hooks and mechanics on par with other
elite fighting games. And, again, the visuals will be a tough act to follow for
nearly every AAA game coming this year.
If
you’re a hardcore fighting game fan, you need not worry about the game’s
long-term viability. Months after launch, Dragon Ball FighterZ has retained a sizable player base —
despite its initial online issues. Even for casual players, though, Dragon Ball FighterZ is a fun time with friends.
Is there a better alternative?
Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a viable
alternative, though it is much more complex. More importantly for anime fans,
this is the latest and greatest Dragon Ball game out there.
How long will it last?
We completed all three
arcs of the story campaign in approximately 22 hours. Technically, you can keep
playing the game online or with friends locally for 100s of hours, or until you
get bored.
Should you buy it?
If you like fighting
games, watch Dragon Ball Z, or just need a game to show off how good your new
TV looks, Dragon Ball FighterZ is worth playing.
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