Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 Review – More Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball Xenoverse released last year, and surprised a lot of Dragon Ball fans with how good it was. Is Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 as good? Or should the game have taken more time off? Check out our Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 Review to help you make your choice!

Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 Honest Review

The story of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 will be similar to anyone who played the last Xenoverse. You go through all the Dragon Ball Z sagas and a few of the Dragon Ball Super ones. Your job as a “Time Patroller” is to make sure there are no distortions throughout the Dragon Ball history. You soon realize there are these people recruiting Dragon Ball villains to mess with the timeline. For instance, Lord Slug and Turles go to the Namek timeline and try to steal the Dragon Balls. There is a mastermind behind all of this that I don’t want to ruin, but you are hunting them through the timelines. As you hunt them down, you will experience key battles from the Dragon Ball universe. You get to fight at Goku’s side as he goes Super Saiyan and at Gohan’s side as he faces Final Form Cell. Anyone who has watched Dragon Ball Z will know what to expect from a lot of this story, minus some small tweaks to the story.

Outside of the main story you will be able to do Parallel Quests, which are basically side missions. These take quite a few liberties with the series and the lore. There are some wild alliances in this part, but it is fun to fight some of the match ups. The best part about this section, it is 100% co-op. You can play online with 2 other players, or play offline with a couple of AI companions of your choice. You are also not forced to play as the character you create in this mode. Each mission has rewards such as new moves, new outfits or new Super Souls. The one down side to this, if you played the last game you are going to remember a lot of these. They reused quite a few of the old missions for Xenoverse 2.

The Parallel Quests were in the original Xenoverse, but you also have new side content to do in Conton City. Speaking on Conton, the hub area of Xenoverse 2 has been completely redesigned from the last game. It is now just one massive area, and you can even fly around when you reach a certain point. Trainers make a return in Xenoverse 2 and this time they are much easier to do. In Xenoverse, you had to grind to get new moves from Instructors, but in Xenoverse 2 you just have to do their missions to earn their moves. This is a welcome change, and makes learning new moves quicker. Conton is also home of Majin Buu’s house, Frieza’s Spaceship, Capsule Corporation, Guru’s house, and Hercule’s House. Each of those places has its own missions and events that happen as you progress through the game. Some are quicker than others, but all have value if you choose to complete them.

Let’s hop into the combat. Xenoverse 2 has made some major changes to the combat. Chaining combos together is much easier, but landing super Ki attacks is much harder. In the original Xenoverse, people would spam certain Ki attacks that were just over powered. That is rectified in this game with the new Stamina Break system. Basically, if you try to do a Super Ki Attack you are locked in an animation. Your opponent can quickly get behind you and break that attack and drain all your stamina. This makes massive changes to the PVP scene, which I don’t really take place in. Even in story or PQ missions it makes a change. If you try to spam Ki attacks you get canceled by higher level AI opponents all the time. In all honesty, this kind of ruined some of the fun for me. I didn’t feel as powerful as I did in the last Xenoverse and that was part of the appeal for me. I understand the balancing issues for PVP but it took a massive toll on the PVE.

One last new thing I want to hit on is the Expert missions. These are six player missions that have you facing of with a hard boss. Sometimes it is a Great Ape form of someone, other times it is Kid Buu or Cell. There are multiple expert missions you will unlock as you play. These are really challenging and they feel great to win. If you have six players and one person isn’t holding their own, you will likely lose on some of the harder missions. There will be three different effects that they use during a fight. They will launch a super Ki attack, mind control you and your allies or launch you into another dimensions. You have to push the Super Ki attacks back or else you take massive damage and wipe, mind control is pretty self-explanatory and going into another dimension means facing another enemy in another area. They can do these at any time, even in a stagger moment, and if you aren’t ready it will mess you up. These missions just add a new challenge to the game that most people will appreciate.

Now I have to get into some of the things I highly dislike in this game. Most of the levels are the same levels from the first, minus a few. Some of the issues I had with the first still persist in the game, such as certain buildings not being destructible. While there are new moves and outfits, you also have a lot of repeats that have different effects. Some of the Dragon Ball wishes are the exact same from the last game, I made a wish and had the move so it just deleted that wish and had me pick a new one. The trainers give a lot of the same moves, even if they do come quicker. The online has worked pretty consistently in the lobby but I’ve lost connection to multiple games, it’s really rough when you are on an expert mission. The game really feels like a 1.5 instead of a 2 in my eyes.

The game looks similar to the first, but it didn’t look bad to begin with and they have improved it some. The music is on point. When you first log in you hear this festival music that really got me ready to jump into the new Hub. When you log in it changes to this chipper tune that has the vibe of, “yeah we’re Time Patrollers having a good time”, like they don’t know bad things are happening outside of Conton. At the end of the game you can actually change your BGM to the other themes you encounter through the game as well, which is a nice addition.

Here’s the thing: if you like Dragon Ball Z, you are going to like this game. If you liked Dragon Ball Xenoverse, you are going to like Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2. The game can’t convert people who don’t like the Dragon Ball universe, but if you like it, this game is for you.