Dragon Ball FighterZ review: High-flying action for low-flying earthlings

Dragon Ball FighterZ: The fighting game for both the common man and common fisticuff gaming experts alike.

Developer: Arc System Works
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Platforms: PS4 (version reviewed), Xbox One, PC
Release Date: January 26, 2018

I’m not usually one for 2D fighting games; between the high skill level they often necessitate for entry and the even higher number of button combinations you’re required to memorize, I just can’t devote the time to enjoy them. Friends have offered me the alternative of auto combos, like what’s found in the Marvel vs. Capcom franchise, but that frequently felt like a cheap solution; it didn’t satisfy me in the way I knew fighting games could. Luckily for me, I now have Dragon Ball FighterZ: the fighting game for both the common man and common fisticuff gaming experts alike. FighterZ is incredibly easy just to pick up and enjoy within minutes, but there’s tons of room to grow if you’d like to get a little more serious about defeating your competition.

Most of FighterZ playable characters have a fairly universal set of controls, allowing for an easy transition from character to character. On paper, this may make each fighter sound fairly similar to use, like what was true of its Dragon Ball franchise predecessor, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, this is far from the case. Each fighter plays uniquely straight from the minute they enter the arena. Everything, starting with a character’s gait feels like special, custom-made experience, which makes sense; everyone’s moveset in FighterZ’s 24-character roster heavily references the source material. You can’t find a character so much as uppercut if they didn’t do it already in the source material. The individuality of each character becomes more apparent the longer you spend with them, learning the character-specific combos that don’t fall under the universal control umbrella.

In any other fighting game, that may sound a smidgen tedious to master, but Dragon Ball FighterZ holds your hand through the entire experience, ensuring you leave as a fighting pro. The game features a combo challenge mode, where you can learn each character’s move sets. The mode encourages you by rewarding your progression with the Zenny at fairly regular intervals. Even if you only play FighterZ’s story mode, there’s still a significant amount of battles devoted to teaching you how to properly lay the proverbial smackdown on your foes. However, this can grow a little frustrating when you’re two hours into story mode, and the game is still reminding you how to charge your Ki.

This hindrance also ties into the actual difficulty of FighterZ single-player story. Unfortunately, it’s rather lethargic on its journey to becoming difficult. The game is somewhat easy until you beat the story and attempt hard mode. This does afford you with ample time to understand how the game is played, but if you pick up the control mechanics rather quickly then you’ll crave a challenge that story mode will seldom be able to give you.

The story does, however, succeed its intended purpose of having a story and a fairly interesting one at that. Dragon Ball FighterZ’s story focuses on an army of clones created of the Z Fighters as well as their enemies. There’s also the addition of the mysterious Android 21, a new Red Ribbon Army humanoid robot. Both of these mysterious new things are explored over the course of a three perspective, nine-ish hour story mode.

It’s absolutely delightful, and the best possible kind of fanservice.

The story is interesting enough to hold your attention, but the real charm of the adventure exists outside of the fighting ring, before the match. There are certain in-character cutscenes that happen when you have particular characters in a match together, such as Captain Ginyu and Goku. This causes some fantastic interactions between characters. We even get the perspective of people like Nappa, who has been absent from the Dragon Ball world for almost a decade. It’s absolutely delightful, and the best possible kind of fanservice.

That kind of fanservice, of course only comes naturally to a game like this, which was clearly made by fans. That much is obvious as you watch FighterZ’s various beautiful re-creations of scenes from the source material. These re-creations are special events known in-game as “dramatic moments” they occur when you group two characters that shared a pivotal moment together in the original anime. These can happen before or after a match depending on what the moment entails, and like their story mode counterparts, they’re just a beautiful moment of fanservice that I feel lucky to behold.

Of course, FighterZ’s single-player experience isn’t just fanservice and a walk-in-the-park story mode for tots on a beach eating hot dogs. I have to mention FighterZ’s incredible arcade mode, tailor-made for the experienced player or previously mentioned fisticuff enthusiast.

The mode begins simple, as story mode does, but after the first round quickly takes a turn for the difficult. The first match only exists as a litmus test for your skill level, to see where the game should place you next and man does it place you well. Each round after that becomes increasingly more challenging as the game learns your skills and begins to use a variety of techniques at once until you’re eventually caught off guard and falter.

From start to finish, Arcade mode is the peak of FighterZ and features some of the most thrilling, heart-pounding, spine chill creating encounters you can experience outside of taking yourself online and going up against real people. That being said, the online is quite lovely. In true Dragon Ball fashion, you can look for an online scuffle while doing another task like practicing or playing arcade mode. Players who are more fighting game savvy than myself will appreciate that the game tells you how exactly many frames of lag there are between you and your cross-continental foe.

Once you get online, there’s just about something for everyone. If you want to play just a casual match with some friends, you can just begin an aptly-titled casual match. Ranked play is great, as you’re given the choice of fighting someone stronger than yourself or closer to your own skill level, as well as somebody the game has deemed much higher if you’re looking for a challenge. It’s a really great time with very little or no lag time. Matches are simple to enter, and if you were doing a task, the game would just put that on pause for a minute, allowing you to pick it up right after you hopefully smackdown your opponent.

Dragon Ball FighterZ is both a great entry to the Dragon Ball fighting game series and a spectacular fighting game. Almost anyone can pick up a controller and reach a level competency shortly after, but even after that level is hit, there’s still just so much to learn before you can master the game. Each character also has great level nuance specific to them that’s simply a joy to learn. The game does struggle a bit in terms of single-player content, however.

This is a game for Dragon Ball and fighting game fans alike.

You’ll often feel ahead of the game’s story mode challenges as your skill rapidly increases, but arcade mode is a fantastically built proving ground. This is a game for Dragon Ball and fighting game fans alike. The fighting is phenomenal to play, and the developers at Arc System Works were clearly fans of Dragon Ball Z; you can see all sorts of nuggets of fanservice littered throughout the gameplay and interactions. Dragon Ball FighterZ is the pinnacle of Dragon Ball games, landing as powerfully as a Goku’s Spirit Bomb.

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A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.