Weeks ago, when I first played the open beta, I had one major concern about Dragon Ball FighterZ. Would the gameplay hold up to the rigors of competitive play? While I certainly had fun in those first few hours, I had concerns that the game’s design was overly rigid, from half of the characters being Saiyans, to a combo system that isn’t as open ended as something you would find in a Marvel vs. Capcom game.
Now that we’re a few weeks in, I’ve really grown to appreciate what Dragon Ball FighterZ has to offer.
Looks go a long way
Graphics are an important part of the fighting game experience, as much of the excitement from the genre comes from seeing these characters partake in fantastical battles. Dragon Ball FighterZ delivers in spades. Arc System Works translates the presentation of the show perfectly, from the sounds of the ki blasts, to animations that perfectly match the source material, to planet-demolishing super moves that make you feel like a Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan. At this point, I’ve dunked hundreds of opponents into the ground with Android 16, and the satisfaction I get from doing so hasn’t worn off because the slam just looks so good. Even if you’re coming into this game without a history with the source material, it’s sights and sounds are jaw-dropping on their own.
The game rewards aggressive play
For a game where many characters can fill the screen with projectiles, this isn’t a game defined by ranged combat. Ki blasts and beams work great to pester your foes from distance, but they do minimal damage and virtually no chip damage on block. On top of that, for the cost of one ki gauge, one can simply teleport behind the projectile user and kick them out of the way. Instead, the game is tuned for in-your-face action, which is what Dragon Ball should be all about. By weaving your way in, and by leveraging your assists to apply pressure, you can land a first hit that can turn into a big combo.
Deep blue sea
My #1 concern leading up to this point was depth and variety. At first glance, the general combo structure felt overly basic, as it seemed like it consisted nothing more than ground combo into air combo into super. On top of that, with roughly half of the cast being some form of Goku-like Saiyan, I feared that much of the cast would feel like slight twists on the Goku archetype.
As it turns out, there’s much more to the combo system than auto combos. Above, Maximilian shows off some of the building blocks for more advanced combos. Once I began to understand the expanded combo structure, as well as how assists could be used to extend things even further, the game really opened up for me.
On top of that, in true Arc System Works, each character has very distinctive attributes that you have to manage in combat. For instance, Tien is generally sub-par in combat, but he has some of the most devastating super moves in the game, even if he has to sacrifice his best friend’s life and his own health to perform them. Yamcha can’t really do much while fighting from the skies, but on the ground, his Wolf Fang Fist maneuver will keep you locked down in an endless guessing game. Android 21 is a formidable opponent at the start of the match, but she can get even stronger by absorbing moves from her opposition.
I still don’t think this game is as open-ended as a Marvel vs. Capcom game, but there seems to be more than enough to explore. Now that I’m getting a better sense of how everything works, I’m having a blast building up my skills in hopes I can fight more like Frieza than Krillin.
How the combat can get even better
Off the top of my head, the one thing I really want to see included someday is for each character to have multiple assist options. Right now, with only one assist per character, it really limits your team composition options. For example, in the current meta, Vegeta is a wildly popular support character because he has one of the best assist moves in the game. I personally have little interest in actually playing as Vegeta on point, but I may feel obligated to have him on my squad because his assist alone can make my other two characters so much stronger.
As much as I would like to see a Skullgirls-style assist system where any move can act as an assist, that’s probably way too intricate for what is probably an audience made up mostly of casual gamers. Heck, I would suspect that most Dragon Ball FighterZ players are still struggling to wrap their minds around how assists in their current form work. As a somewhat solution in between, I would love to see a Marvel vs. Capcom approach where each character get three assists each, of which you can choose one for a fight. This way, it gives players much more control over which characters they choose, what order they’re arranged in, and how they approach a battle.
;)
The art of war
There’s still much to explore when it comes to combat in Dragon Ball FighterZ, but so far, I’m glad to see that the game has a lot more going on beneath the surface. Not only does the auto combo system give new players just enough to get them started, but there’s a ton of depth for them to explore as they improve. For the time being, I plan on playing a lot more of it, pushing the limits of what I can do while kicking butt along the way!
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In Third Person 