4/5 ★ – Hanzo_Hasashi's review of Dragon Ball FighterZ.

My favorite fighting game (and one of my favorite games) of all time. Before I first played this in 2018 I wasn’t even a fan of Dragon Ball or anime even. But when I tried it out I instantly fell in love with the flashy moves, the art style, the character designs, the music, and the in-depth mechanics. The game made such a big impression on me back then that I decided to start watching the show. I watched all 291 episodes of Dragon Ball Z and all 153 episodes of Dragon Ball in a little over 4 months. DBZ was the first anime series I ever watched and it became a gateway for me into plenty of other great anime shows. So even if you don’t know a single thing about Dragon Ball, you can still have great time playing this game. There is a bit of a learning curve, but I’d still say this is more accessible to beginners than most fighting games since there are auto combos and most moves are just a quarter circle forward/back motion. And if you do take the time to actually learn the game and get familiar with the mechanics it’s super rewarding to see what crazy combos you can do with each character. I’ve spent hours just in training mode alone experimenting with each character and I’ve had a ton of fun doing so. The only thing I don’t like about the game is the story mode. It gets pretty repetitive really fast since almost every fight is just against clones. It’s also way too easy so none of the fights are engaging, and there are a TON of fights to get through. This is my only real flaw with the game though, and it’s easy to look past since there are plenty of other game modes such as Local Battle, Arcade, Arena Match, World Match, Ring Match, Boot Camp Mode, etc. You can tell the people who worked on this game really care about and love the franchise. Almost every move and character animation is pulled from the anime or a specific manga panel. There are also these interactions called Dramatic Finishes, where if you get 2 specific characters on a certain stage and if you defeat one of them with a heavy attack you’ll get a cutscene that references the series (Ex: Defeating Frieza with Super Saiyan Goku on Destroyed Planet Namek stage). It’s stuff like this that shows you all the passion that went into this game. So wether your a fan of Dragon Ball, fighting games, or just well made video games I highly recommend everyone to try it out. The game often goes on sale for $9.99 U.S. dollars on the PlayStation Store and is free on the Xbox game pass.