Dragon Ball Xenoverse Primer and First Impressions

You got your download code to test out DBX, right?  NO?!  Well alright, I suppose I can tell you what you’re missing.

So apparently Dragon Ball Xenoverse is a persistent multiplayer action brawler, much like the many, many mosou games that flood this genre.  DBX sets itself apart, however, by providing an always-online multiplayer game, a la Phantasy Star Online.  Hub town, run missions, fight each other – all in the Dragon Ball universe.

The network test is an apparent stress test running this weekend to see how the servers react when 20,000 people all scream “IT’S OVER 9000” at the same time.  However, since voicechat has been disabled (or may not even appear, who knows at this point), you get to skip that part.

You also get to skip a lot of other audio, since this rough cut of the game is lacking it severely.  There are three background songs total, and they’re short – you’ll hear them all multiple times in a span of a few minutes.  Text errors abound as well, with lots of ;andP’s and various META tags naked for the world to see.  Some characters will speak, but their accompanying text will not appear; this happened with a green gentleman whose name I believe was Piccolo (I know nothing of Dragon Ball).  Oh, and there are absolutely no instructions.  So I’ve developed a helpful little graphic to teach you some moves!

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Feel free to reference that image.  So, now that we know how to hit things, how’s the game itself?  Here we are, in images, in the life of a little girl with a big football name.

So after a brief character creation setup, and selecting the name of the greatest XFL player of all time, we’re dropped into a small town.  Pressing R1 brings up an emote menu, which I took full advantage of.

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And then, so did everyone else.

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Jumping into a few battles pitted me and a couple denizens of the internet against series regulars Goku and green guy I mentioned earlier.  Though these are one-star (out of ten) difficulty battles, I wound up dying pretty frequently.

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After a few more rounds and figuring out the controls to a more satisfactory level, I began winning against computer enemies with teams of my helpers.  Obviously this made me extremely proud of myself, until I kept dying.

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Yup, seen here, quite dead.

Apparently word of my masterful skill got around, because all of the sudden people were challenging me to player-vs-player matches!  So of course I accepted!  Come on, who would, in their right mind, mess with pink-haired HE HATE ME?

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Ryu Hayabusa, AKA SkyDragonX19, was about to go down for the count.  Also, I chose the derpiest face I could, obviously.  HE HATE ME looks like a cross between Milton from Office Space and a japanimation duck.

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This happened frequently.  In the interest of science, I accepted every PVP invite – and lost every single one.  Badly.  In one case, under 40 seconds.

A few more battles with flying around, and then I quit.  Are you missing much if you didn’t get your invite?  Not really.  Good thing they’re testing this game out, since Quick Match barely works and searches take forever (and then make you start all over if you select a room that’s filled up).  After a few more bug passes and network optimizations, this might be a serviceable battle game for the DBZ hardcore.  But I’ll pass.

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Author: James View all posts by
Dangerously fat. Twitter: @hypersaline