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On October 25th, 2016, Bandai Namco released a game to the United States called Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, sequel to the surprisingly good Dragon Ball Xenoverse game that came out of the Playstation 3, Playstation 4, X-Box 360, X-Box One and PC. Xenoverse 2, however, is only available on Playstation 4, PC and Xbox One.

There are a few “tier” pre-orders that you could do for Xenoverse 2, the Collector’s Edition, which comes with books and a Goku figure, and in Europe, a steel box with a Metal Shenron in it as well as pre-order bonuses, the Deluxe Edition, which has Day One DLC, Season Pass and access to Future Trunks

of Dragon Ball Super, and finally the Day One Edition, which gives you access to Goku Black (who will be a later DLC) and Tao Pai Pai’s mode of transportation for a vehicle.

When I pre-ordered the game, I pre-ordered the Day One edition, however, and I’m sure Bandai Namco isn’t going to be happy to hear about this, the Gamestop clerk gave me the Deluxe Edition by mistake. I didn’t realize that I had gotten the Deluxe Edition until much later. So, yay for me, free stuff. Any ways, I’m here to give you the low-down of the game (you know, the plot, the gameplay and any pluses or minuses the game might have?). So I hope that my review will help you decide if Xenoverse 2 is the game for you. I will also give a run-down on Xenoverse 1 and some differences between the two games.

So the Xenoverse games, what are they, you might ask. To put it simply, they’re Action-RPG games with MMO elements built-in. You go around talking to NPCs, take on quests, perform missions, find rare items and skills on those same quests and what-not. Xenoverse 1 took place in Toki Toki City, a very small hub world of three tiny areas that were connected by magic doors. For a hub world, it did its job.

However, in Xenoverse 2, the hub world massively expanded into Conton City, which is over seven times the size of Toki Toki City, far more areas to explore, elevated landscapes, more NPCs to interact with and just more to do in general than in the first game. Plus the hub world in Xenoverse 2, unlike in

its predecessor, is all connected into one area, save for some small parts.

Because it’s so large, the makers, thankfully, included some options to make traveling through the world easier. First of all, are the warp point robots that litter the landscape of Conton City, going up to one lets you access areas you can’t get to at first and lets you fast travel from one area to another if you’ve already been there once. Secondly, you get a vehicle to fly around on. If you didn’t get the pre-order bonus, you got a scooter, if you did, you get Tao Pai Pai’s staff to ride around on. And lastly, later in the game, you get the ability to fly throughout the city and get to the last places you couldn’t get to before.

Areas in Xenoverse 2’s hub world seem to be made up of various areas of the Dragon Ball franchise all cobbled together. After all, I don’t think Pilaf’s castle was ever that close to Orange Star High School or Namek in the series. There are also five large time rifts that exist throughout Conton City, but we’ll get back to those later.

However, there is a major downside to this nice open world. The loading times, at least on the Playstation 4, are very long. And that is a legitimate complaint I have about the game. I can do a mission that doesn’t take very long and then sit between thirty seconds to a minute waiting for the game to load. While that might not seem like so long, after a rather intense mission, those loading times are killer because it can turn what would be a “wow, I just finished that, let’s get right back to it” into “can this take any longer?!” mentality, and let me tell you, that isn’t fun. I don’t know if it’s because of the hub world, my Internet connection or whatever, but even when the game switches to offline mode, the loading times remain the same.

So now that we got that out-of-the-way, let’s talk about the story of both Xenoverse 1 and 2. In both games, you are a warrior brought in by Trunks and Chronoa, the Supreme Kai of Time to help defend history. And, no, I didn’t make that name up. That’s actually the Supreme Kai of Time’s name, though you would only know that if you know about Dragon Ball Heroes (or cheat and look it up on TV Tropes like I did). In Xenoverse 1, Trunks uses Shenron to wish for someone who can help, in Xenoverse 2, your character is a student of the Time Patrol that Chronoa chose to help defend history.

In both Xenoverse 1 and 2, there are some villains who are running amok throughout history, enhancing the bad guys and threatening to throw all of history out of whack, which can lead to the destruction of reality if it’s not fixed quick. In the first game, this was merely “power up the bad guys so that they do things they shouldn’t”, while this is still the modus operandi in the second game, there’s more than just that as movie villains are brought in to mess with time. The main villains in both games are Mira and her creation/husband Towa, who is making changes to history to gather energy from across all of time to break the seal on the Demon Realm.

While you do follow the events of history in Xenoverse 2, your job is to correct history to keep it from being changed, such as making sure that Goku dies against Radditz or making sure that Cell absorbs Android 17 and has to face Trunks and Vegeta before absorbing Android 18. So that’s the general story synopsis of both games. I’m not going to spoil the ending of either one. You need to play the game to see for yourself.

Though, before I continue, I must bring up that during the Battle of Gods arc in Xenoverse 2 some of Chronoa’s dialogue is swapped around. You hear her say lines that should be in the post battle before the battle starts, and then you hear her say lines that should have been said to Beerus before the fight started said to your character after the battle. The text is still correct, but it is a bit… Unusual, I guess.

So when I said “your character”, you might be wondering what I mean. Well, in Xenoverse 1 and 2, you can create a character using one of five races:

Earthling

Namekian

Saiyan

Majin

Frieza Race

For the rest of the review, I am referring to the Frieza Race as Frost Demons, as that is what they were called by the fandom for years before Xenoverse, plus with Frieza, Cold, Cooler, Chilled and Kuriza (who is Frieza’s son, he shows up in Nekomajin) theme naming, it only made sense to call them Frost Demons. Seriously Bandai Namco, Frieza Race? That’s kind of lame. Note that the name “Frost Demons” was thought up way before Dragon Ball Super and the introduction of Frost in the U6 tournament. So, there’s that.

Of the five races, only Namekians and the Frost Demons have one single gender, which makes sense for Namekians, seeing as they reproduce Asexually, but Frost Demons? Eh, I have no clue why they’re only male.

One of the big things about Xenoverse 2 is that each race has the ability to transform, unlike in the first game where only Saiyans had a unique transformation and each other race didn’t. There are two generic transformations for all races. Kaioken and Potential Unleashed. Kaioken drains stamina and Potential Unleashed requires the most Ki to activate, but as a benefit, you can charge Ki up the fastest of all transformations.

Saiyans have three distinctive transformations available to them. Super Saiyan, Super Vegeta and Future Super Saiyan, and each transformation have a different advantage. Super Saiyans can go to level 3 and the transformation just gives them a general power up. Super Vegeta transformation only goes to level 2, but increases the power of your Ki blasts. Future Super Saiyan only goes one level, but allows for you to charge your Ki quickly.

Frost Demons get a Golden Transformation a la Golden Frieza in the Resurrection of F movie, no drain on Stamina or Ki though, the form increases their speed, attack power and Ki blast damage. Namekians can grow large, though it costs them stamina to maintain, but as a plus, they basically can’t be hurt while transformed, also, the skills the Namekian would have are gone, but, then again, you’re now Godzilla and everything around you is a bug.

Majins get the ability to transform into a Pure Majin (which is basically Kid Buu). However, since it drains stamina, maintaining it can be hard. Now this has gotten a lot of flak from the fanbase and I have to say that the fanbase is rather stupid in this case. After all, Kid Buu was the original form of Majin Buu, all Majins in Xenoverse are descended from Majin Buu, and since Majin Buu’s primary form is Kid Buu, it would only make sense that a pure Majin would be Kid Buu.

And Earthlings… Get the Flying Nimbus and Power Pole. Whoo. Actually, the Nimbus and Power Pole is really good. As it requires no Ki or stamina to maintain, and you take no damage if you get hit while riding it. However, the downside is, if you get hit too many times, you get knocked off the cloud. Now then, remember the rifts I mentioned earlier in the article? Well, that’s where you go to learn how to transform for each of your races. There are five rifts, which are as follows.

Hercule’s House:

Capsule Corporation

Majin Buu’s House

Elder Guru’s House

Frieza’s Space Ship

That may not be in the correct order, don’t yell at me if it’s not.

When you go to the rifts, there are things you can do in each one. Depending on your race, when you manage to clear certain events in each rift, you get your transformation ability. Elder Guru’s House has a couple of bonus features for you when you clear his trials. The first is that he will give you “Unlock Potential”, which allows you to max your stats out at 125 instead of 100. I’ll explain this more in detail later. The second is that he will increase the power of Shenron so that you can wish for more things. If you know Dragon Ball, you know how it works, collect seven Dragon Balls, bring them together, and you can make a wish to the magical dragon.

Majin Buu’s house is probably the easiest trials to complete, all you need to do is feed him food (32 waters is the fastest) for him to create children. When six are made (10 if you chose a Majin class), his trials are done. After words you feed his children some food, and they’ll go off to hunt down items, Super Souls or outfits for you. It’s random, and I think it depends on what you feed them to start with.

Capsule Corporation has a device that can combine two articles of clothing, plus a mixing device, for a set amount of money, to create what is known as a Q.Q. Bang. Equipping this will over-ride the stat bonuses your clothes give you, but as a benefit, you can equip whatever you want so you can look as good as you want to, without worrying about the stats that go with it. In other words, if you have a female character that you want to dress up as Launch or young Bulma, you can do that easily and if your Q.Q. Bang is strong enough, well, you could fight naked if you wanted to, if the game allowed it that is, you’ll be in your underwear instead of being naked.

By the way, Bandai-Namco, could you please put out a master list of how to get the best Q.Q. Bangs? It would be really helpful. As an aside, the Kaioken technique can be combined with Tien’s Neo Tri Beam attack to slam your enemies repeatedly near infinite, since the attack requires stamina to maintain after the first attack and Kaioken over-rides the Stamina requirements for the attack. Well, to put it simply. As long as you have the Kaioken technique up, then you can spam the Neo Tri Beam.

Super Saiyan and Super Vegeta worked similarly in the first game, which turned Saiyans into “beam spams a lot”, as the final DLC, which had “Emperor’s Death Beam” for your character to learn, made the game too easy. You can learn techniques in Xenoverse 2 by completing Parallel Quests, learning them from Mentors,

Expert Quests or simply buying them in shops. To unlock more, you need to advance in the story, after all, the game’s not going to let you train with Goku until much later as compared to Krillin, you need to prove yourself worthy of his techniques, which means, you better get good.

Speaking of getting good, Xenoverse 2 tries to pretend it’s a fighting game, but with the way it’s set up, it’s not. If you want good DBZ fighting games, I suggest the Budokai-Infinite World or Tenkaichi series games on the Playstation 2 and Playstation 3 instead. This is an Action-RPG-MMO.

So when you gain enough experience to level up, you get skill/attribute points that you can use to boost your parameters, for the first 40 or so levels, the amount you get goes up consistently, starting at 2, then going to 3, then 4, then 5, then 6 before capping off at 7. However, right after hitting 7 per level, it starts to decrease how much you get per level, which makes maxing out your character much harder to do at later points. Nevertheless, you will get enough attribute points to max out two stats to 125, so it’s not too bad.

When doing missions, you’re in a 3rd person, over the shoulder view of your character, in a completely free-moving 3D environment. However, because of that, it can be really easy to miss your opponent, which is thankfully not an issue normally because of a handy lock-on feature that lets you constantly track your opponent and not lose sight of them. Which I’m thankful for, I wouldn’t be able to play the game otherwise. When fighting opponents, there are three levels of techniques. Which would your basic, supers and ultimates.

Basic techniques are just punches, kicks, dash, dodging and basic Ki blasts. Super attacks require you to use the R2/Right Trigger button on your controller to bring up a list of them. You can use any super technique you’ve learned and map it to any of the four face buttons. To use ultimate techniques, you need to hold both the R2 and L2/Left Trigger buttons at the same time, this will allow you to use one of your two ultimate attacks, a transformation skill or a super evasion skill, which uses stamina instead of Ki, if you want to.

It should be noted that most ultimate attacks require far more Ki than super attacks and leave you very vulnerable while doing them. Thankfully, you have your stamina bar to tank blows while you charge up your move.

Or at least, you SHOULD have your stamina bar to tank blows, but there is some serious issues with ultimate attacks in Xenoverse 2. First of all, the computer can shatter your stamina, even if you have 10 full bars of stamina, and knock you out of your ultimate attack in an instant. Which gets very frustrating when you’re completely vulnerable while doing an ultimate attack. Another issue is that the computers AI set to dodge like crazy, even the lower-level AI enemies are set to crazy dodge, so if you try to hit with anything that doesn’t lock on, you’re just wasting your Ki and it can get very frustrating to see your opponent side step to the side to avoid getting hit.

It’s very frustrating that those two things just makes it far harder to enjoy the game to the fullest. They may have been implemented to make PvP matches more fair, but the computer AI shouldn’t be allowed to make use of them (I can live without computer AI cheats, thank you very much).

There is one more thing that needs to be brought up, and that would be the part about importing your character from Xenoverse 1 into 2. If you played the first game and have a character that you created with skills, clothes and levels that you want to bring over to 2, you can do so, but there are some caveats. First, you can’t bring any transformation skill from 1 to 2. Secondly, no skills from Whis or Bardock can be transferred from 1 to 2. Thirdly, you can only have one character from Xenoverse 1 be the Hero of Toki Toki City. If you want to change your character, you need to delete the data of Xenoverse 2 off of your system. Which brings up the final caveat, as of right now, you can only port over the first character that you created in Xenoverse 1.

If you try and transfer over any skills that you aren’t allowed to, those skills get converted into money and TP medals for you. So, overall, is this a good game? Well, while it can be a bit frustrating at times. It´s fairly enjoyable. So if you’re a fan of action games, MMo´s and RPG´s, then you’ll probably enjoy it. Simply put, if you ever tried to go Super Saiyan as a kid, call down the Flying Nimbus or just pretended to ever be in DBZ, then this game is the closest you’ll ever get to that.

Pros:

+ Amazing artwork

+ High Speed combat is extremely enjoyable

+ Character customization is very nice

+ Much easier to get items, skills, Super Souls and equipment from Parallel Quests compared to Xenoverse 1.

Cons:

– Ultimate attacks are too easily avoided and interrupted

– Loading times are far too long even if you’re playing in Offline Mode

– Several character slots are just alternate forms of characters, for example, Frieza 1st Form, Frieza Final Form and Frieza Full Power Final Form, or Cell 1st Form, Cell Perfect Form and Cell Full Power Form.

– Rather short game if you just play through the main story, need to do Parallel Quests, Expert Quests, Mentor Missions and Rift Quests to get the most out of the game.

– Intro could have been far better. I mean, Xenoverse 1 gave us a Cha La remix with some awesome action. Xenoverse 2’s opening is just Trunks and Chronoa trying to enlist more Time Patrollers

Gameplay: 3.5/5

Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 is a solid 3D crowd brawler. While some games do a far better job, it’s very solid for what it is.

Graphics: 5/5

Set the brightness to max, and it feels like you’re playing a character from the anime.

Sound/Music: 3/5

Some tracks are pretty good, nothing hitting, irritating nor annoying. However, nothing truly sticks out.

Controls: 4/5

Very solid, overall, no real issues, though sometimes I can’t tell if the controller read my inputs at all.

Replayability: 4/5

The main story is very short, only a few short hours in length, to get the most out of the game. You need to do side quests, which forces you to leave the area where progression is to do them. Plus Guru keeps getting attacked, constantly, it gets annoying.

Final Verdict: 3.5/5

Dragon Ball: Xenoverse 2 is a very solid game, and if you can enjoy it, then there is a lot to enjoy for sure. However, there are some issues that need to be addressed (hopefully, all of that will be sorted out via patches). Furthermore, it would be nice if we could have more options for designing our character’s body, besides height and how thick or thin the character is. On a final note, I have a DLC character wish list that I hope to see with future DLC of Xenoverse 2, with both Frost and Cabba of U6 confirmed, I won’t put them on this list. Nevertheless, if you enjoyed the original game, then you´re most likely going to have a blast with DBX 2.

Title: Dragon Ball: Xenoverse 2

Developer: DIMPS

Format: PC

Genre: Action/adventure

Resolution: Highest possible on PC

Release date: 2016-10-28

Difficulty: Normal

Spent time: +10 hours

Average grade internationally: 85% Metacritic.com

PEGI age rating: 16+

Price: 49,99 Euros via Steam

Credit:

Robin Ek, Editor



Phil Weigel

The Gaming Ground

Twitter: @SilverScarCat

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Tags: Bandai Namco, Dimps, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Xenoverse, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, PC review