Genre: Action Adventure MMO RPG Fighting
Developer: QLOC, DIMPS
Publisher: BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment
Release Date: Oct 27, 2016

Next time on Dragon Ball Z…  Oops I mean… DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE 2 is a Dragon Ball franchise fighting game with heavy RPG elements. It is completely separate story from the first Xenoverse game, and can be played without worry of missing out on the story. Upon creating your character, which I will get into later, you begin your duties as a Time Patroller. You begin investigating changes in time from the beginning of the DBZ storyline and, through the DBZ Battle Of Gods movie, hitting major points in each saga within. Quickly, you find out the cause of these events is Towa and her creation Mira. As you progress through the story you find out her reasons for creating this alterations to time. I won’t spoil the story more than that for you.

That being said, you can choose between Majin, Saiyan, Earthling, Namekian, and Frieza races during character creation with each having its own strengths and weaknesses. After choosing your face, you can choose between male or female if your chosen race allows this. You then customize your character’s traits such as eyes, pupils, hair and so on. You also choose your name and voice, as well melee, ranged, or a balance of both skills. Ok so character created, cool, so what’s there to do you ask? Well there is a trunk load of content already in the game. There is the main story, which you can blow through and still be able to do the other content in the game. I say this because some of the content is gated by how much of the  story you’ve cleared.

For example, in the game you can train with a lot of the characters from the DBZ universe, but some only show up after you’ve cleared key story points. In the case of Broly, he only shows up after you beat the Buu Saga, but that is not all. Some of the trainers also will not train you unless you’ve reached a certain rank. You can increase your rank by taking advancement tests which you access them by training with the people you have already unlocked. Not to mention once you progress you unlock five time miniatures around the city that give you access to even more content, which ranges from fighting alongside Great Saiyaman, to helping Buu create a family by feeding him. There is even more, there are 100 repeatable parallel quests available for online and offline play.

Not to mention the expert missions you unlock after progressing in the story after a certain point. These new missions are more difficult and require several people to defeat. If you are not in online mode, several characters will be provided for you to assist in the mission. The only other content is the PVP system, which allows you to fight against other player’s characters. Let’s talk more in depth about the skills as they play just an important part of the game as the content does. As stated before, the Masters train you, and by passing their quests, they bestow up their personal skills from the series. This is not the only way to gain skills, you also get them then as rewards from parallel quests, challenge fights, expert missions, or just plain buy them from the store. Now they are divided into several groups, starting with Super and Ultimate Strike Skills, Ki Blast Supers and Ultimates, Awakened Skill such as Power Pole/Nimbus, and Evasive skills.

Let’s talk about the audio and graphics for a bit now. I can honestly say the quality of both are absolutely outstanding in the way they simulate the Dragon Ball universe. They truly immerse you into the game and make you feel like you’re in that world.  The cutscenes are like you’re watching an episode of the series, as well in addition to being high quality. I can say that the only complaint I have with the game is a discrepancy, sometimes, between what is being said and what text is present in the chat boxes.

BoxCatHero gives DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE 2 a Drastik Measure of 9.0 (90).

Pros:

• Does justice to the Dragon Ball franchise
• High quality audio
• High quality graphics

Cons:

• Discrepancy sometimes between what is said and what text is present in the chat boxes