Dramatic Finishes are a surprising and creative touch that accentuate the game's epic atmosphere.
When you’re matched with another player of the same skill, FighterZ is fast, fluid, and cerebral. It hits that sweet spot of being easy to learn, but hard to master, but most importantly, it feels like Dragon Ball. There’s just something so satisfying, and so uniquely Dragon Ball about taking someone up into the air, smashing them away at high speeds, teleporting behind them, pinballing them back, and then finishing it off with a huge energy blast.
The game makes the most of its aesthetic by piling on crazy visual effects. Every match is chock full of giant colorful energy beams and exploding auras. Though the fights are 3-on-3, which means there can technically be as many as six characters on-screen at once, it’s never hard to keep track of what’s going on in the fight. It’s difficult to balance flash with function, but FighterZ has done it.
Dragon Ball FighterZ triggers a short cutscene that sees the next fighter fly into the scene and lock horns with the active character. This is a super cool visual transition that's about as Dragon Ball as you can get, and despite you seeing it multiple times per match, it never gets old.
Many of the sound effects are directly lifted from the series’ library, or are great recreations. The voice acting is occasionally spotty, but mostly improves the wacky script.
In FighterZ, you’re shown a running display of the current match’s frame delay as it fluctuates. This feature precisely illustrates how many actual frames of lag you’re experiencing at any given moment. For casual players, this will give them a more granular awareness of how much lag is currently affecting their match.
The visuals are absolutely perfect for this game. Characters look exactly on model, and the art-style captures the look of the anime. You could take a screenshot and easily mistake it from a still from the show.
On that note, the story mode is fun and interesting but also long and grindy, offering a move-based board that lets you level up fighters, collect power-ups, and generally experiment, before moving the story on with a boss fight.
Dragon Ball FighterZ is a game that does so much right. It’s a hardcore fighting game experience, as well as a more casual button masher. It’s a competitive fighter, as well as a Dragon Ball side story. Other Dragon Ball games have done Dragon Ball style mechanics better, Xenoverse’s 3D flight feels very authentic, but Dragon Ball FighterZ feels like the best of both worlds, and is one of the very best Dragon Ball games of all time.
Perfectly nailing the look of the anime is what immediately puts this game in a league of its own and voice acting by both the English and Japanese voice actors will keep any fan engaged. The flashy colors, taunts, and attacks fit each character so well that you'd think the original DBZ team was behind this development themselves.
The most striking feature of Dragon Ball Fighterz is how closely it resembles the TV show. From characters’ facial expressions to their special moves, there’s little amiss. So much so that you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was an episode from the series, instead of a game.
Accessible enough for newcomers with room for pros.
Gameplay is king in fighting games and can make or break the experience. Arc System Works has without a doubt made Dragon Ball FighterZ one of my favorites in the genre. Tekken will have to make room. As you can guess, battles are of the 3v3 variety between over twenty fighters. New and classic characters make up the beginning roster and if certain leaks are true we’ll be seeing the likes of Bardock, Broly, and more soon. Each character has a distinctive move list and all suit their owner perfectly.
FighterZ is clearly the best Dragon Ball game every made when it comes to graphics. Everything from animations, artwork and conversations are top-notch thanks to Arc System Works, the team behind Dragon Ball FighterZ. Only after you've seen at least a couple of the manga series, you'll be able to truly appreciate the level of polish Arc System Works managed to achieve.The special effects after each combo or finish move are stunning, while the animations during fights look absolutely impeccable. Dashes, teleports, double-jumps and every other combo that one can achieve in the game are graphically flawless.
Dragon Ball FighterZ is quite simply the best looking, most faithful recreation of the classic anime/manga ever produced in video game form.The controls are pretty easy; you've got three attack buttons, light, medium and hard, and the fourth attack button is usually a projectile or energy blast, depending on the character.
The graphics are absolutely stunning. Arcsys has effectively translated frames of the anime and still shots of the Dragon Ball manga into fighting game moves, and it looks phenomenal.
Thanks to easy to learn but difficult to master controls, Dragon Ball FighterZ, changes my attitude towards the fighting genre entirely. This gorgeous, frantic, three-on-three fighting extravaganza is uncomplicated, therefore extremely accessible to newcomers. Although it’s true the controls are straightforward to learn, overall, FighterZ still offers a versatile experience.
Dragon Ball FighterZ is not just the best Dragon Ball game, it’s also in competition for the best current-gen fighter, period. It’s a joy playing the game, and the combat engine can make any fighter, whether hardcore or novice, feel like they know what they are doing.
An incredibly faithful visual adaptation of the source material.
One of the charm for Dragon Ball FighterZ is how much effort went into the little touches. As matches begin, having certain characters open the match on certain stages will lead to a dramatic intro, such as the infamous scene of Krillin being murdered by Frieza on Namek which lead to Goku’s first Super Saiyan transformation. While players are fighting, the ground will become damaged with each hit and will stay that way for the duration of the match. If “easy combos” are performed, the players will collect a Dragon Ball.
The visuals are gorgeous. While it might seem a bit awkward to fully flesh out a 3D model and put it in a 2D space, I've never been wronged by Arc System Works. Goku has never looked better in the third dimension, and neither have his companions and the worlds they live in.
I honestly can't speak much to the story as I'm not a fan of the series, but it was enjoyable enough just to go through all the fights and learn along the way. While there are tutorials in the training section of the game, the story is essentially just a glorified tutorial as well. You gather up new fighters, maneuver increasingly complex battle maps and slightly tougher foes, and learn how each fighter plays along the way.
Dragon Ball Fighterz has amazing graphics and music.
Here’s what really matters: the combat. To put it bluntly, this game feels perfect. The biggest praise I can give FighterZ is that it convinced me on so many fronts when I initially had qualms about its gameplay mechanics.
The 3-on-3 tag team setup (akin to the Marvel vs. Capcom series), along with these easy-to-pick-up controls, almost guarantees that players will use more than a few characters. There's a fine attention to detail in both character animation and its adaptation. Meaning the smaller roster still feels complete even if they're familiar faces, and each animation feels unique to each character. The simplified control scheme can lead to messy situations, especially given its gearing toward more aggressive tactics. But the character animation is so crisp, that even when multiple supers are activated at once, players can still parse out where they are on the screen at any given time.
It’s incredibly slick in not only how it looks, sounds, and moves, but also in acknowledging the source material; it’s a love letter to the beloved manga from Akira Toriyama. While non-Dragon Ball Z fans may not get why the Ginyu Force are obsessed with posing, there’s no denying just how well it captures the feel of Dragon Ball Z. Some liberties were taken with the music, having a mostly rock vibe that Arc System Works are known for, but it certainly has the sound effects from the anime.
On top of these traditional genre mechanics, you've got specific strategies to consider. Team composition is something that's worth exploring since certain super attacks chain together a lot better than others, and naturally, there are things like timing your character switches, combo cancelling, and parries to think about. FighterZ doesn't try to match the open-ended combo madness of Guilty Gear, but improvisation and on-the-fly adaptations are still hugely important. "Easy to learn, hard to master" is a cliche, but the phrase rings true here.
Online play is where people will get their most value out of FighterZ. The online component of FighterZ allows 64 players to roam around its hub world, each using unique avatars and unlockables to make their own online identity. This portion of the game allows players to square off in multiple online battle types from casual to ranked matches, world matches, arena matches, ring matches, and a number of features that help players communicate and connect with one another.
This is truly the best Dragon Ball fighter I’ve played since the Super Famicom imports. It’s pure fighting bliss that makes you feel as OP as the characters on the show by adding so much style and flare. Longtime fans and newer fans who may just be familiar with Dragon Ball Super will find something to enjoy here if they’re fans of fighters.
On the plus side, Android 21 serves as not only a great foil but also as the kind of fun villain that Dragon Ball has been missing for far too long. She’s adorable, maniacal and she’ll turn you into candy given half the chance. I can’t get enough of her. Even with a whimsical villain, the story still drags on an on even when it reaches the halfway point, let alone the ten to twelve hours you’ll need to invest in the entire narrative.
If it wasn’t obvious, I love Dragon Ball FighterZ. The perfect marriage of source material enriched gameplay and original presentation has created a fantastic experience that a wide audience of players are sure to enjoy. The gameplay is simple enough that any level of player can pick it up and recreate infamous attacks from the show, while at the same time it’s mechanics are so deep and unexplored that the game feels ready to support a competitive community of fighting game enthusiasts.
The sound is perfect too with the music and sound effects being spot on to capture the feel of the show and help add the right feel to the intense matches. Along with this is the stellar voice acting delivered by the proper voice cast from the show. This means the conversations feel more true to the show and adds wonderfully to the faithfulness to the source material.
Character models are gorgeous, too, and animated with such incredible fluidity that I'm not sure how the developer actually managed to do it. Insofar as 2D fighters go, the animation for Dragon Ball FighterZ is as good as they come.
Blowing enemies away with super attacks, then seeing the result from outer space.
Graphics/Sounds: There’s not a single thing about this category that I found lacking. It’s an almost perfect representation of the anime from Goku’s Kamehameha to the banter between rivals during the story and after matches. Not only does the gameplay look like it was perfectly pulled from the show but key voice actors like Sean Schemmel (Goku) and Christopher Sabat (Vegeta) were also brought in to make the game sound authentic. There’s nothing else to say here besides Dragon Ball FighterZ looks and sounds amazing.
The most immediately obvious and consistently striking quality about FighterZ is simply how good it looks. Using the same technique found in Guilty Gear Xrd, models in FighterZ appear 2D through clever use of cel shading but are actually 3D. The result is a very faithful adaptation of Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama's style. While the game is of course visually impressive at face value, what pushes it to truly remarkable territory is how the identity of the characters pours out through character introductions, specific moves, and victory animations.
Every character on the roster has their signature moves from the show and unique fighting style that makes them stand out from the rest of the cast. While everyone uses the same four button layout, their strategies in battle and various strengths in matches will vastly differ. This makes each fight you partake in feel incredibly intense and exciting throughout, but never feeling predictable.