Rock the dragon
The past open beta for Dragon Ball FighterZ felt a little tumultuous, but ultimately enlightening. After a rough first day, a brief extension allowed a larger swathe of interested Z fighters to get their hands on a couple of matches, training be damned. Even though I was ready to die on a hill about no training mode to explore the beta, the straightforward learning curve made my first couple of matches a breeze to get acclimatized to.
The mood across twitter felt pretty stark. The casual commenter would say something along the lines of being constantly oppressed in the corner with perpetual pressure, while more accustomed players would remark at some of the surprising accessibility of the auto-combos and smaller movesets.
My favorite thing about playing DBFZ is the cold war mindset having meter means during a fight. At any time during a match, a poor decision can be punished with a vanish attack or a level 3 super. So much of the early game meta is mitigated just by using vanish attack against random supers. If it weren’t for Monster Hunter: World, I’d be picking this up day one. I settled on the unlikely team of Frieza, Kid Buu, and Krillin, the world’s most ordinary super human standing toe-to-toe with ultimate evil.
Below are just some of the hype thoughts of the game and the beta from our community from my last call out.
Korinb is glad to see a proper fighter compared to the Xenoverse shake up:
It’s a beautiful game and recreates scenes from the anime so well. I played the game at EGX last year and was so impressed by it. I wasn’t much of a fan of the Xenoverse games, so I was excited for a proper old style beat-em-up DBZ game again.
We should encourage The Actual Charlton Heston to dust himself off and try it again despite his performance:
I am generally bad at all fighting games. That said, the art is gorgeous. I may give it a whirl if I have room in my budget for it.
Agent9 is ready for some crazy, tag-battle action!:
I am excited for the game. I love these types of fighting games as the art style and animations appeal to me. It also helps that it’s a DragonBall game with a lot of my favorite characters with crazy moves and some unique mechanics like the dragonball system and the MVC style tag in tag out with 3 characters.
LaTerry’s brother is basically Cell:
My brothers are all DBZ fans, and each of us like fighting games to a certain degree, with my little brother being the best at them. We’re planning Dragonball weekends once we get the game where we watch the new Super episode and then just play Fighterz all night. My little brother is going to win against us constantly, but he is holding out hope that we’ll be able to provide a challenge for him someday so long as we play enough against each other and online.
Dango is ready for the rise of the button masher:
The one match I managed to play let me mash and bullshit a satisfying amount and do crazy stuff without too much trouble, so I already have a better shot at getting into this than any Street Fighter ever. I don’t think the FG snobs will like it as much, but maybe it’s time for their merciless rule to come to an end!
FakePlasticTree enjoyed it but, like me, is a monster hunter:
I tried playing it like I did Persona 4 Ultimax, but it plays a bit different. I’ve gotten good with Vegeta and Android 18 so I’ll main them alongside Hit whenever I get it. If I have enough to spare I’ll pick it up, as I had fun with the Beta. I’ll proritize Monster Hunter this time, as I got plenty of Dragon Ball fun with Xenoverse 2 already, for now.
Rasori is enjoying the in between for DBFZ:
Yeah I’m absolutely sold on it. I don’t really enjoy fighters that are crazy complex with it’s buttons and move sets, but FighterZ feels like an inbetween of simple and complex which I can get into.
Also I really loved Burst Limit, and how well it did it’s cel shading, and FighterZ feels very much like that which I love.
Jetfandam wants more spice, but it’s a fine soup overall:
I’m excited for DBFZ. It’s fun to play even though I thought it was a little bit simple after my 50 matches in the beta. The presentation is great and it looks amazing but the gameplay could use some more spice and depth in my opinion (more advanced air movement, more varied characters like in GG Xrd Rev 2). I also don’t like that they didn’t reveal the characters for the season pass one week before the release. The premium edition customers are going in blind.
Sir Shenanigans may be tempted to spend his Best Buy credit:
I was incredibly excited until the beta showed me I haven’t a hope in hell at playing the game well.
That said, I’m sitting on $45 of credit at Best Buy (which admittedly could be used for a game I’d be getting for sure…) and maybe I just need to dig in and practice. Still very tempted!
iacobus magnus may not be good at fighters but Dragon Ball Z deserves the production value it’s getting:
I’m definitely excited for this, just for the faithful recreation of the anime and the story mode. I’m terrible at fighting games and will never even try the online, though…
Lawman thinks although it’s suicide, there’s a certain nobility in coming out on the same day as Monster Hunter: World:
I still think that coming out on the same day as Monster Hunter World is suicide. I do want both but, put simply, I’m definitely diving into World before I go anywhere near DBFZ. Just trying to compete means it went from a launch date must-buy to something I can wait on, though I’m pretty sure I still intend to nab it eventually.
I played the beta and, when I could finally get the online working, I played five matches, won four and got my opponent to rage quit halfway through another. I’m worried about the game’s depth and play variety between characters, which are the things that keep me away from most Dragon Ball fighters nowadays. Having one button for auto-combos is one thing, but there’s practically four buttons that do that now. It seems there’s not a lot to the fighting at all, and that’s a shame.
Of course, and this is important to acknowledge, it’ll probably be hard to ascertain the amount of depth the game truly has until it’s out and people can dig deeper into it through training mode and somesuch. It does play extraordinarily well, moves fast and has nice little touches here and there – like Goku changing his Super Saiyan form for his level 3 super combo, and Gohan having Goku and Goten jump in to help with his level 3. the game doesn’t seem as great as I’d initially hoped, but so long as there’s a decent single-player element there, I think I’ll be satisfied with what’s up on offer.
Fuzunga is:
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Did you participate in the beta? Has it sold you on the game? Did you find yourself picking the mechanics up quickly, or were you just horrible at it? Let us know your thoughts!
