DRAGON BALL LEGENDS

The game concept

Bandai Namco announced Dragon Ball Legends during the Games Developers Conference. It was strange why the game was sandwiched between lectures about monetization and how to analyze data to give players what they want. However, when you start playing the game, it starts to seem logical enough. The game is so finely addressed to its target audience that it’s only a mystery why it hadn’t become a new Pokemon GO.

Dragon Ball Legends is not a fighting game as of how you might have thought, although it does have some familiar mechanics. You start the game in role of Shallot, completely new character by Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball creator). You start in some sort of ruined field and meet Trunks and Goku who help you get away from Saiyan Broly. You have absolutely no memories of who you are and how you got here but soon enough King Kai tells toy that you were brought here to participate in a great tournament. The winner of the tournament will get Super Dragon Balls, but it won’t be an easy task as all the heroes of the Dragon Ball universe are also willing to take their chances.

Mechanics

The battles are three on three where you have to choose your teammates. You get the third-person view during the battles and by swiping over the touchscreen, you can control your character. You can either move forward, backward or do strafing. Swiping horizontally twice will do an evasive maneuver that allows you to avoid an attack. The controls fit the game surprisingly well and feel very responsive. To perform simple attacks, you can simply tap the screen. In order to perform more complex attacks, there’s a deck of cards available for you. You start with 4 cards and after using one, you get to draw another one from the deck.

Fighting is more than just simply spamming all the cards you have. Each card depletes your energy bar so think wisely what you’re using. It can be refilled however by either waiting long enough or holding finger on the screen, which activates fast regeneration. Each character also possesses a unique ability which can be activated during the battle. These abilities can vary from healing your teammates to lowering the overall price of cards.

Comparing this game with previous titles, it’s obvious how far it has gone in terms of graphics improvement. Each character matches his counterpart from the original series. It’s also nice to see how beautifully the art was drawn on the cards and it makes you want to collect all of them. The sounds, however, are underwhelming, as most of the time you’ll hear generic, repetitive sounds.

The final thoughts

Dragon Ball Legends will definitely surprise you in a good way. The game features amazing graphics and a great combat system that’s really entertaining to play. The story itself stands out from the earlier titles and keeps you interested as you progress through the game. The only desire is music, which is however not a major concern since the vocal performances both in English and Japanese are great enough. The game has a huge potential and Is a must-play if you’re familiar with Dragon Ball universe.