You know what my favorite arc of Dragon Ball Z is? It's the Android/Cell Saga. Alternate timelines are my favorite part of any story. I picked up a PSP to play Shin Budokai - Another Road, because it featured my favorite DBZ character, Future Trunks, in an alternate timeline dealing with villains like Majin Buu. That's how you make an easy spinoff that isn't a rehash, I thought. Then I played the game and wondered how they managed to do one anyway.

--Plot--

Dragon Ball Xenoverse is unapologetically a rehash. You fight the same fights and follow the same DBZ storyline as a member of the Time Patrol! You create an original character and go back to fix events in the DBZ universe to how they're meant to go. Is it inaccurate to call it a rehash, then? Well, yes. Much of it has been removed.

Maybe I'm being unfair. Some of it has been altered. Vegeta doesn't kill Nappa, Ginyu switched bodies with your playable character, and Frieza transforms straight into his final form. Still, this doesn't change compared to what the cutscenes show you. I want to fight two Oozaru at the same time! I want to fight alongside Goku in Vegeta's body as he fights the Ginyu force! Hell, why not have Goku die and have secondary characters rush to bring him back to life on Namek? There are so many possibilities, but the game bring any of that to the table. It doesn't even bring much of DBZ's plot to the table, either!

When I say content has been removed, I meant it. Early DBZ games would bring you each and every fight from a certain character's perspective, but Xenoverse only puts you in particular sections of the timeline. So instead of fighting Nappa as Gohan, then as Piccolo, then as Goku, you fight him once. This gets particularly galling when you beat Frieza and then skip the entire Android saga.

What? The entire saga? Why is it that you have less story content than fighting games that came out almost fifteen years ago, Xenoverse? The What If saga in Budokai Tenkaiichi 3 were better than this, and that was only a fun little aside. So the game's plot doesn't reach its full potential. It's spread too thin and doesn't get up to much until the end. A great end, but the only time I felt invested in the story at all.

,In short, it's bland and lazy.


However the side missions provide a barrel of fun. You can fight alongside Raditz as any character you want to beat up Goku and Piccolo and Gohan. Help Guldo make the cut so that he can join the Ginyu force. Play through the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Android Saga. There are nice little nods given through dialogue depending on which character you choose to fight as or have on your team, and more than once, I was surprised on the sheer amount of character interactions there. More than that, you can play them in online co-op, unlike the story!

Not to mention, it covers everything and then some. Absolutely sublime.

C

--Gameplay--

Did you ever wish that Battle of Z came out on the PC? You don't need to gather up the dragon balls for this one, because here it is. Its a button masher, but it's a hectic and fun one. Repetitive, but somehow never boring. You have quick access to a variety of super moves and ultimate attacks to have fun with, and the flashy displays never tire. However, the game fumbles this advantage with truly awful character customization, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Ai, and a nightmareish difficulty. Not to mention a variety of tiny ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that make the game more frustrating than it ever has to be.

You get to pick your own race, gender, height, and build, all which have a massive impact on your stats and playstyle. The game doesn't balance for any of them. Take Saiyans. I played as a male saiyan and took on the slew of baddies with basic melee attacks, but I soon found myself losing, because I was running out of help too fast. Turns out that my buddies had sat back and were just watching me get my ass kicked because I was being too aggressive for the AI to keep up. Then, I played as a female saiyan--a character with virtually no health and with punches as effective as a feather duster--and stood back firing super moves, and my AI partners kept knocking my opponents away from me. Of course, they didn't do much damage, so eventually the enemy would get tired of kicking their ass and appear right behind me for the K.O.

Fantastic.

The more you build up your character, the easier it tends to get, but the game pulls no punches--fairly or not. While your partners' AI tends to hang around useless unless you want to fly so far away that they have no choice but to fight, the enemy AI have no such reservations. You will get teamed up on by two or three characters at once and be left to do nothing but be stuck in an unbreakable combo and then die constantly. It becomes the luck of the draw, trying to f get your partners to engage with an opponent so you can go attack the remaining one to go 1v1, the only even matchup. I suspect this difference in AI was made in order for the player to feel like they were completing missions and not their partners, but this was perhaps the worst way I've ever seen developers tackle this problem in a game.

In the side quests, since they're meant to be played with multiple people, this problem doesn't even exist.

Now, on to some nitpicky criticisms. DBZX wants to be an MMO, you see, and that means scattering everything around a hub town. Want to play a side mission? Go to one of the three areas, find the NPC, scroll down the list, then pick play. Don't worry if you forget, because after you complete a side mission, the game will throw you off somewhere in that area. You'll have it memorized by the end of the game.

You're free to use items in story and side missions, but they don't stack and you can't put the same item in multiple slots. So if you unlock the MEGA HEALING CAPSULE, you can only use one of them per fight. If you want another healing item, you'll have to settle for THIS MAY HEAL 25% OF YOUR HEALTH BAR. DON'T YOU WISH YOU HADN'T PICKED A RACE WITH ♥♥♥♥♥♥ HEALTH CAPSULE. More than that, if you die, you're dead. No matter what the senzu capsule tells you, there's no way to revive after dying. That's only for the side missions. On top of that, items that heal your allies are the same deal. They'll only work in the side missions.

Maybe you want to mix your own items? Best of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ luck to you. Walk across the map to the mixing station. Look at the recipes--which you can find no where else--walk across the map to the item vendor to buy ingredients. Walk BACK across the map to the mixing station to mix. Or if you're not dumb, just pull out your Z wallet and buy healing items from the item vendor and don't bother.

There's an excellent mentor system to teach you special moves and that provides real flavor to the text in the story, but potential mentors show up at random, two at a time, hidden somewhere in the city. Oh, and the game doesn't tell you the requirements to unlock certain mentors. Have fun. Also you can only level them fast in the side missions, because this game hates you.

But the most damning sin of all is progression. Maybe, you, like me, think that after certain story fights, you'll unlock special energy moves in the skill shop so you can get more and more powerful. Budokai had a system like this, where after particular fights, the game would say, "Bing, you've got a capsule! Here's what it is, how much energy it costs, the character who can use it, how rare it is, and its favorite food." Instead, special moves only unlock after you complete an arc, and there are few of them to choose from.

They're drops from the side missions only, and a few of the mentors only give you your ultimate in exhange for items in the side missions! Is that what you want us to play, developers? You seem to be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ over the main story mode in favor of it left and right. In a word, yes. That's where you'll get your money's worth. Forget the main mode and do that.

C+

You know what my favorite arc of Dragon Ball Z is? It's the Android/Cell Saga. Alternate timelines are my favorite part of any story. I picked up a PSP to play Shin Budokai - Another Road, because it featured my favorite DBZ character, Future Trunks, in an alternate timeline dealing with villains like Majin Buu. That's how you make an easy spinoff that isn't a rehash, I thought. Then I played the game and wondered how they managed to do one anyway. --Plot-- Dragon Ball Xenoverse is unapologetically a rehash. You fight the same fights and follow the same DBZ storyline as a member of the Time Patrol! You create an original character and go back to fix events in the DBZ universe to how they're meant to go. Is it inaccurate to call it a rehash, then? Well, yes. Much of it has been removed. Maybe I'm being unfair. Some of it has been altered. Vegeta doesn't kill Nappa, Ginyu switched bodies with your playable character, and Frieza transforms straight into his final form. Still, this doesn't change compared to what the cutscenes show you. I want to fight two Oozaru at the same time! I want to fight alongside Goku in Vegeta's body as he fights the Ginyu force! Hell, why not have Goku die and have secondary characters rush to bring him back to life on Namek? There are so many possibilities, but the game bring any of that to the table. It doesn't even bring much of DBZ's plot to the table, either! When I say content has been removed, I meant it. Early DBZ games would bring you each and every fight from a certain character's perspective, but Xenoverse only puts you in particular sections of the timeline. So instead of fighting Nappa as Gohan, then as Piccolo, then as Goku, you fight him once. This gets particularly galling when you beat Frieza and then skip the entire Android saga. What? The entire saga? Why is it that you have less story content than fighting games that came out almost fifteen years ago, Xenoverse? The What If saga in Budokai Tenkaiichi 3 were better than this, and that was only a fun little aside. So the game's plot doesn't reach its full potential. It's spread too thin and doesn't get up to much until the end. A great end, but the only time I felt invested in the story at all. ,In short, it's bland and lazy. However the side missions provide a barrel of fun. You can fight alongside Raditz as any character you want to beat up Goku and Piccolo and Gohan. Help Guldo make the cut so that he can join the Ginyu force. Play through the fucking Android Saga. There are nice little nods given through dialogue depending on which character you choose to fight as or have on your team, and more than once, I was surprised on the sheer amount of character interactions there. More than that, you can play them in online co-op, unlike the story! Not to mention, it covers everything and then some. Absolutely sublime. C --Gameplay-- Did you ever wish that Battle of Z came out on the PC? You don't need to gather up the dragon balls for this one, because here it is. Its a button masher, but it's a hectic and fun one. Repetitive, but somehow never boring. You have quick access to a variety of super moves and ultimate attacks to have fun with, and the flashy displays never tire. However, the game fumbles this advantage with truly awful character customization, shitty Ai, and a nightmareish difficulty. Not to mention a variety of tiny niggles that make the game more frustrating than it ever has to be. You get to pick your own race, gender, height, and build, all which have a massive impact on your stats and playstyle. The game doesn't balance for any of them. Take Saiyans. I played as a male saiyan and took on the slew of baddies with basic melee attacks, but I soon found myself losing, because I was running out of help too fast. Turns out that my buddies had sat back and were just watching me get my ass kicked because I was being too aggressive for the AI to keep up. Then, I played as a female saiyan--a character with virtually no health and with punches as effective as a feather duster--and stood back firing super moves, and my AI partners kept knocking my opponents away from me. Of course, they didn't do much damage, so eventually the enemy would get tired of kicking their ass and appear right behind me for the K.O. Fantastic. The more you build up your character, the easier it tends to get, but the game pulls no punches--fairly or not. While your partners' AI tends to hang around useless unless you want to fly so far away that they have no choice but to fight, the enemy AI have no such reservations. You will get teamed up on by two or three characters at once and be left to do nothing but be stuck in an unbreakable combo and then die constantly. It becomes the luck of the draw, trying to f get your partners to engage with an opponent so you can go attack the remaining one to go 1v1, the only even matchup. I suspect this difference in AI was made in order for the player to feel like they were completing missions and not their partners, but this was perhaps the worst way I've ever seen developers tackle this problem in a game. In the side quests, since they're meant to be played with multiple people, this problem doesn't even exist. Now, on to some nitpicky criticisms. DBZX wants to be an MMO, you see, and that means scattering everything around a hub town. Want to play a side mission? Go to one of the three areas, find the NPC, scroll down the list, then pick play. Don't worry if you forget, because after you complete a side mission, the game will throw you off somewhere in that area. You'll have it memorized by the end of the game. You're free to use items in story and side missions, but they don't stack and you can't put the same item in multiple slots. So if you unlock the MEGA HEALING CAPSULE, you can only use one of them per fight. If you want another healing item, you'll have to settle for THIS MAY HEAL 25% OF YOUR HEALTH BAR. DON'T YOU WISH YOU HADN'T PICKED A RACE WITH SHITTY HEALTH CAPSULE. More than that, if you die, you're dead. No matter what the senzu capsule tells you, there's no way to revive after dying. That's only for the side missions. On top of that, items that heal your allies are the same deal. They'll only work in the side missions. Maybe you want to mix your own items? Best of fucking luck to you. Walk across the map to the mixing station. Look at the recipes--which you can find no where else--walk across the map to the item vendor to buy ingredients. Walk BACK across the map to the mixing station to mix. Or if you're not dumb, just pull out your Z wallet and buy healing items from the item vendor and don't bother. There's an excellent mentor system to teach you special moves and that provides real flavor to the text in the story, but potential mentors show up at random, two at a time, hidden somewhere in the city. Oh, and the game doesn't tell you the requirements to unlock certain mentors. Have fun. Also you can only level them fast in the side missions, because this game hates you. But the most damning sin of all is progression. Maybe, you, like me, think that after certain story fights, you'll unlock special energy moves in the skill shop so you can get more and more powerful. Budokai had a system like this, where after particular fights, the game would say, "Bing, you've got a capsule! Here's what it is, how much energy it costs, the character who can use it, how rare it is, and its favorite food." Instead, special moves only unlock after you complete an arc, and there are few of them to choose from. They're drops from the side missions only, and a few of the mentors only give you your ultimate in exhange for items in the side missions! Is that what you want us to play, developers? You seem to be fucking over the main story mode in favor of it left and right. In a word, yes. That's where you'll get your money's worth. Forget the main mode and do that. C+