Dragon Ball FighterZ is What a DBZ Game Should Be
- Chris Harrison
- Feb 1, 2018
- 4 min read
As kids growing up with overseas military families, we didn't have Cartoon Network, so my friends and I would go to great lengths to satisfy our Dragonball Z obsession. We'd rush to the store on base and try to snatch up the new DBZ VHS tapes, sometimes even hiding them from each other—my go-to spot was behind procedurals like Boston Legal—so we could add to our ridiculous stacks at home. We'd buy the knockoff action figures at the local Italian market. Oh, and we'd play lots of Dragonball Z video games.
In my lifetime, there have been more Dragonball Z video games than I can even be bothered to count. We played everything from Legendary Super Warriors on the Game Boy Color, a game with card-based combat, to The Legacy of Goku, to the Budokai series. The Legacy of Goku series captured the story and characters relatively well, but there was never any chance a Game Boy Advance game could match the frenetic action that made the series so popular. Legendary Super Warriors, Arc System Works' first attempt at a DBZ fighter, had the right idea, but the technology held back the execution.
Some of us diehard fans went out of our way to buy these games, but none of them really had any staying power, until Budokai came out. That game was pretty clunky—having to punch four times to fire off a kamehameha was ridiculous—but it led to some long sessions with huge groups of kids passing the controller back and forth for hours. If you lost a match, you might have to wait five or six matches before you could call "next." Still, 90% of the reason we played it was the source material. It wasn't until the second game's switch to cell shading that the art style felt right and it wasn't until the cult classic Budokai 3 that the gameplay was worth a damn. Finally, the series had a game that showcased the anime's high-speed combat, with fighters warping around the stage, powering up, and transforming. The gameplay was a bit shallow but it was extremely accessible and generally a blast.
Unfortunately, the console DBZ games took a turn for the worse after Budokai 3. Instead of fighting mostly on a 2D plane (Budokai had sidesteps but little else in terms of 3D movement), the Budokai Tenkaichi games and their spiritual successors became arena fighters, with a switch to a full 3D format and an awkward over-the-shoulder camera angle. It's understandable that the developers wanted to capture the freedom of movement, (particularly flight) found in the anime's combat, but, oh man, those games were absolute butt. The Raging Blast games were slightly better, but it was clear that 3D movement just wasn't working. That's why it was refreshing to see Arc System Works switch back to a 2D plane for the awkwardly-named Dragon Ball FighterZ, the finest DBZ game ever made (by a considerable margin).
FighterZ is fast as hell—far more so than previous DBZ games—and encourages lengthy combos, juggling, and overall aggression. Given that the anime was basically testosterone in animated form, the gameplay fits like a glove. There's an auto combo feature to allow scrubs like me to pull off cool-looking shit, and, although none of the commands are more difficult than a quarter circle on the d-pad, there's enough technical depth to open up huge gaps in ability between advanced players and beginners. Assists add another layer of complexity, and really force you to think about how your three-man unit complement one another.
One of my favorite things is how well it addresses some of the issues inherent to making a DBZ game: balance. In the series canon, the characters' power levels vary wildly, and by that I mean some characters are literally thousands and thousands of times more powerful than others. While none of the past games have taken things quite that far, characters who are weaker in the canon have generally been very unpopular choices in the games and are typically at a disadvantage in terms of gameplay as well. Needless to say, not a lot of people were rocking with Dodoria or Chiaotzu back in the Budokai days. FighterZ does away with the bloated rosters and limits the pool of fighters (sorry, I mean fighterZ) to 25, focusing on the characters with the most significant screen time and making them feel different from each other. Frieza's zone control game is nothing like Yamcha's all-out aggression or Captain Ginyu's unpredictability. The game also has exceptional competitive balance. Dudes like Yamcha and Tien, made obsolete early in the anime, even before the more ridiculous jumps in power level, are actually great additions to FighterZ, and either one can be a key part of a dominant three-man team.
The visuals not only imitate the style of the anime, but surpass the original at times (there were some filler episodes with some janky-ass animations) and the story mode does a fine job of recreating the tone of the show, even if the fourth wall-breaking is a little awkward. The game's also full of little nods to the show that players might not notice until they've spent hours in the game. The execution of the online lobby is a bit messy, but that complaint aside, Arc System Works has nailed the most important aspects of online play. For a game this fast paced, and so reliant on reflexes, it's important that the fighting feels responsive in online play and, luckily even playing during launch week, I've had zero issues with slowdown during matches. I have had issues with getting my ass kicked, but those are... unrelated.
Dragon Ball FighterZ exploded into its launch with a ton of hype and has surprised just about everyone by living up to its promise, balancing accessibility and faithfulness to the source material with just enough depth to sustain high-level competitive play. After dozens of attempts, it's finally happened: a DBZ game is one of the best fighting games on the market.
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