So, I guess I'm doing this. I've seen everybody talking about how Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 is a game that's worth getting for any Dragon Ball Z fan. I've heard it from my friends, I've heard it from Youtubers, and I've heard it from Team Four Star now, so I guess it's time to talk about it.
I'm not going to buy this game and here's why. It's because the Developer of this game is Dimps. Some of you who are reading this might be thinking about how insane this comment is right now so allow me to elaborate.
I grew up on Dragon Ball Z games. They weren't my entire library, or even close to it but, back when I was in elementary school, I got all of the PS2 Budokai games, Budokai Tenkaichi 1-3, and even Dragon Ball Z: Sagas. If it was DBZ, on the PS2, and released in America, chances are I had it at one point in my life. My point is that I'm judging Dimps based on my experience with them, namely Budokai 1-3. I'm not counting Burst Limit, the Shin Budokai games, or Infinite World in this because those are a bit different, and some of them are debatable whether the state they ended up in was their fault or not to begin with.
Now, Budokai 1 was entertaining for child me. I had fun just playing around with the characters but it did have problems. There was an over-reliance on cutscenes in the story mode, which I believe because this game is always complemented on the cutscenes first and foremost and it's telling to me that my favorite game they've made also happens to be the only one that does not have cutscenes in the same vein as the others. The special skills were all tied to a combo in some way or another and limited by Ki, which meant that the only special moves you were going to end up using were the ones involving 4 punches because those were the easiest to pull off and often required the least amount of Ki. Ki charging was an esoteric mechanic in the sense that it was a mechanic that was integral to the function of high-level play, and even DBZ players just wanting to have fun but I didn't really find anywhere where the Ki Charging Mechanic had any instruction on how to use it, which was largely the reason I didn't know how to do it until Budokai 3, more on that later though.
Some of the story sections were reliant on gameplay gimmicks that were really not welcome, there was no legitimate way to change the costume your character is wearing except by selecting them with Circle rather than X, which meant that a lot of costumes that were usable in the story mode because they were on by default, didn't get used in the versus or tournament modes either because the character in question had too many costumes to fit two slots, or had a second slot taken up by a costume that was not part of the story or canon in any way.
With the exception of Trunks, the only characters that had every canon costume available to use were the ones who only had one canon costume to begin with, which meant that their other costumes were usually pallet swaps. The only exception to this rule is Recoome, who managed to have only two real costumes in the entire canon anyway but had his second costume as one that we never see anywhere else in the entire DBZ canon.
The skill system was also really terrible because the skill tray where you place your skills had only seven slots and the vast majority of characters had more than seven skills, which meant that the only way to use every skill available to that character was to equip breakthrough, which not only prevented any support or item skills from being accessible but, it also negated the point of having a skill customizer to begin with.
And, finally, Hercule was broken. The reason I say that is because, his Primary 4 Punch combo results in Dynamite kick, which consists of three kicks that, while I'm fairly certain are just the same damage output as his regular attacks, give him extra ki for each attack he lands, which means that his ability to gain ki from attacking in a combo was much more similar to a 7 hit combo rather than the actual limit of five, which meant that if you spammed Dynamite Kick constantly, you were not likely to suffer punishment for it and you would never run out of Ki unless you activated Hi Tension for some moronic reason.
Because of this, the most effective skill makeup to have during any engagement with Hercule consists of 1 Dynamite Kick, Viral Heart Disease, and Vaccine. Dynamite Kick for the most broken Special Move in the game, Viral Heart Disease to make your opponent's health drain until it's part way through its last bar, and Vaccine to prevent the effect of the Viral Heart Disease from affecting you.
Then we get to Budokai 2, which I ended up getting and playing some time after playing Budokai 3 extensively because I never received word that Budokai 2 was made until I got a hold of Budokai 3. Budokai 2, speaking about it as a sequel, fixed some of Budokai 1's problems but maintained a good majority of them. Firstly, the mini-games were removed from the Story Mode, which was good because they bogged down the gameplay a lot. Special Moves were also improved by allowing you to just hit a single button combination to activate the move. It only had 2 button combinations, even though it could've easily had four, but it did make using some skills easier, and accessibility and High Level Play easier as a result.
Some skills or transformations from Budokai 1 were streamlined greatly. For example, Goku's Kaioken, which was divided into 3 separate transformations for some stupid reason, were all combined into a single Kaioken which gave Goku more room for Super Saiyan 1-3, and also gave him the Super Spirit Bomb, which is a welcome addition.
Frieza also doesn't have the problem of going from 1st form to Final without really any effort or in-universe reason but the way they achieved this is somewhat cheap. Namely that, rather than use the models they already had for the forms that were in the previous game's cutscenes, they instead removed the first form and made Frieza's Final Form his default. They also did this with Cell for some reason, despite Cell having all of his previous forms playable in the previous game.
Hercule was also nerfed quite a bit, which was a welcome addition. However, many of Budokai 1's problems remained.
A lot of forms or costumes that were used by characters during the story mode ended up not being usable in the versus mode despite some of the forms actually being really cool. For example, Frieza and Cell get a Majin form in the Story mode but not in regular play, Super Buu could absorb Frieza and Cell, and the Saibamen and Cell Jr. did not become playable despite, again, having movesets and models already completed.
Budokai 2 was heavily criticized for the new story mode, which was a board game where everyone except Goku was represented by a board-game piece, and there were no cutscenes. However, I think this is actually an improvement on Budokai 1's story because it takes some liberties that I actually enjoyed, like allowing Trunks to appear during the Buu Saga, and it didn't have mini-games that I had to suffer through.
Then Budokai 3 came out and, oh boy, did this one have an impact. Budokai 3 had enough changes from the previous two games that you could argue it could be a stand alone title with the same mechanics and it would be a competent fighter by itself.
The story mode was changed drastically. There were still no animated cutscenes but there were plenty of characters that had individual story modes that, for the most part, had divergences you could go to to modify the plot of DBZ a bit and just have fun with exploring new options.
The gameplay was also heavily modified. Skills from the previous games that required cutscenes to play out, with the exceptions of Dragon Rushes and Ultimates, were removed in favor of moves that had to be used and reacted to in real-time, which pretty much meant that the only characters that had trouble fitting all of their skills into the 7 slot skill tray were Goku, Vegeta, and Adult Gohan. However, even for characters that had very few or, in some cases, 1 special move, Breakthrough was still a viable option because it amplified the damage output on your special moves higher than any combination of support skills would've allowed, which meant that damage could be prioritized for some characters, while other characters could have specific builds that suited their particular abnormalities. In the entire game, pretty much the only characters that were almost completely useless were Hercule, Videl, and Yamcha. Every other character, except arguably the Saibamen and Cell Jr. were viable in a competitive setting, which made the whole roster pretty balanced.
More defense options were given to the characters. Now, instead of just blocking and sidestepping, you could also teleport dash behind your opponent, teleport counter, block-dodge as an evasive maneuver, or fire a special move at the right time to prevent your opponent from getting off damage.
In short, the experience I had with the Budokai games were as follows: Budokai 1 was a clumsy start, Budokai 2 was different but had some improvements, and Budokai 3 was amazing in every single capacity that was important.
As such, my expectations for the Xenoverse series are as follows: Xenoverse 1 was a clumsy start (which is par for the course, I guess), Xenoverse 2 will end up being somewhat of an improvement but not by a whole lot (correct me if you think I'm wrong), and Xenoverse 3 will be such a massive improvement that it will overtake or match Budokai 3 as the best DBZ game ever made.
That is my expectation and as a result I'm not going to buy this game. I will get the next one to see if it pans out the way I predicted.
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