The end of October marked the release of a video game long-awaited for fans of the Dragonball franchise: Dragonball Xenoverse 2, the sequel to the original Dragonball Xenoverse. With it came a plethora of new characters, a revamped combat system, and a new look on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
Dragonball Xenoverse followed the story of a custom created character as he fixes the tampering of events within the Dragonball timeline. These tampering were done by an evil duo known as Towa and Mira. As the game progresses, the player learns that there is a puppet master controlling the evildoers, Demigra, a powerful foe bent on destroying Toki Toki City, the game’s hub-world.
After stopping the duo and defeating Demigra, the final scene seems to set up for a sequel with Towa attempting to revive a vanquished Mira. Xenoverse 2 picks up with that ending scene. After a period of preparation, Towa takes control of powerful fighters from other timelines to interfere with the established continuity.
All of this becomes easier with a revived Mira who gains more power as the controlled villains battle more fighters. With a new custom created character, only the player can stop what the returning duo has in store.
Aside from a gripping story mode, there is a multitude of things to do: from side missions called parallel quests, of which there are 100, to raid-like “Expert Missions,” and in-hub side missions Xenoverse 2 offers a larger number of activities than its predecessor.
All of these components make the game more rewarding to play and gives the player something to come back to. While Xenoverse 1 offered a deep combat system and a character roster where every character played differently, it came up short with the clunkiness of the unrefined combat system and the seemingly endless combos that could be performed by spamming a certain button combination. Xenoverse 2 solves these problems and adds fresh, new characters to an already expansive list.
The improved battle mechanics of the sequel add a deeper level of skill to every battle, whether online or against the computer, where the amount of practice and familiarity really shows. Mastering the new and improved combat mechanics of Xenoverse 2 benefits the player greatly compared to the mechanics of Xenoverse.
The character roster of Xenoverse 2 is also greatly improved upon. On top of including all of the characters from the previous game, from both the base game and downloadable content (DLC), Bandai Namco includes characters from movies and the new series, Dragonball Super.
Every character and combo plays like they are built from the ground up to be different. There are some characters that are easy to dominate with and others that take a great amount of practice to be able to use properly. Regardless, the level of difference between each character is something to behold.
After a long drought of good Dragonball-based games, the Xenoverse series has finally found a working formula. Whether you are a hardcore fan of the Dragonball franchise or just like fighting games in general, Xenoverse is a worthy addition to your list of to-buys.