Dragon Ball: Xenoverse 2 Review

I never really planned on playing this game, I'm not really into the kind of game Xenoverse 2 tries to be but I wanted at least one more Dragon Ball game and I was planning on it to be Buu's Fury but that game turned out to be more annoying than fun. I also got the PS5 version for free since the PS4 version was already bought years ago so if I dislike Xenoverse 2 there isn't much lost. As a whole, the game is just "okay". I might prefer Kakarot and FighterZ over this as far as modern DB games are concerned but I had some fun from Xenoverse 2.

Some good things about the game is that the character interactions, english voice acting, cutscenes and overall production values while not amazing get the job done. It's not an Kakarot's and FighterZ's level but Xenoverse 2 also tells an original story which is something Kakarot doesn't have so there is some novelty to the latter. The plot in Xenoverse 2 sort of just seems to be Kingdom Hearts' story in the Disney Worlds except with a time travel twist in that it's esstentially an over the top fan fiction, after all the character you create is a self insert of the player. The character interactions and over the top scenarios does carry much of the game more so than the writing itself being geniunely well written. If you ever wanted to play out a DB fan fic here is a game for you.

The gameplay is just kind of...there. The idea of building your own character and doing missions with any 2 characters you want is a pretty concept. The main problem is that the 2 characters are basically just meat shields.

That and the game's campaign is also padded, you need to do "parrallel quests" in order to be properly levelled for story missions but these quests are harder than the main story missions. I eventually got so sick of doing them that I lowered to easy, I also did it because enemies can level your health bar pretty fast when they do a ultimate attack but on easy you can tank more hits and enemies have less HP and on top of this, you can the same rewards no matter what difficulty you play so playing on normal you don't need to do.

Most of the game is spent in combat and I have seen many rip apart Xenoverse's combat for being "simplistic" and I'd say they are right. The Tenkaichi especially 3 and Sparking Zero have far more going on with it's combat. Comparing this unfavourbly to FighterZ would just be too much since that is a more of a technical fighting game.

Xenoverse 2 is basically a game of hitting someone with a combo, then another combo, then slamming them across the map and then hitting them with a ki attack particularly an energy volley.

Close quarters combat is no different than subsitition jutsu from Naruto Storm where you can get endlessly comboed unless you have a teleport lined up on a separate meter, this case being stamina.

That pretty much sums up Xenoverse 2, you basically do all this for a couple of hours and roll credits. There is probably more fun to be had in multiplayer and DLC.

Overall, I played the game because I wanted to a DB game that I haven't played before and I guess I got just that. It wasn't really a game for me but I am happy I got to the end at all.