PROS: Dragon Ball Xenoverse is a RPG arena fighter. As such, the controls are thankfully tight enough to not feel weighty in hectic combat. The story is an excuse to interfere in the Dragon Ball timeline with your custom character, fighting through key moments in the lore with the almost silent protagonist. The hub is stylized to a more futuristic Capsule Corp feel. The parallel quests are the real meat of the game, a series of small what if scenarios & themed battles to earn experience & loot. There's enough of them to keep someone busy for a long time clearing them out. Outside of that, the protagonist can learn any of the skills, techniques, & transformations of any other character available, & a slew of different outfits to mix & match. Lastly, the visuals all thankfully feel very accurate, though the soundtrack is very average minus a few stand out tracks.

CONS: This game is very grind heavy, weighing the majority of the experience down. This comes from the parallel quests. Though a good challenge, it's not even that alone that causes the problem. The issue stems from the ultimate finish & drop mechanics. Normally, completing the required tasks would guarantee the ultimate finish, but this is actually a random chance. On top of that, all items dropped at the end are also random chance. This means one needs to pass a series of random chances on chances just for an additional random chance for the moves or outfits one wants, making some victories feel hollow. This may not seem like much, but with how much of the game rests on the parallel quests, this weighs heavily on the entire experience.

ACHIEVEMENTS: This list unfortunately has too much luck centered weight unbalancing the flow of it as well. Most of the list will be cleared by just beating the story, parallel quests, & getting some people to help online. The worst are the grind ones centered around luck. Rainbows Form In Your Eyes requires max friendship will all masters in game, whom you have to meet in the hub area. Only one spawns at a time, & it's random who does. The duo that'll take the most time are Full Super Power! & Full Ultimate Power! These require the collection of all the super & ultimate attacks, the random drop prizes from getting ultimate finishes in parallel quests. The lists are fairly large, & the inconsistent completion of ultimate finishes means some will clear missions on their first try, & some will have to clear that same mission dozens of times for no reason.

FINAL: Dragon Ball Xenoverse is a fun arena fighter whose RPG elements enhance the game. However, the extended & inconsistent nonsense of getting abilities is easily something that could be considered too much hassle. If curious, grab this on a sale.

If you are looking for something close to the budokai tenkaichi games, this should scratch that itch. However prepare to be assaulted by the downright unfair AI, which always goes on the offensive, somehow predicts each and ever move and doges all your attacks, while taking precious little damage and moving much faster than you could react. The first half of the story was good, dare I say fun. The second half is an exercise in frustration.

had to play this on the steam before sparking comes out, very fun, young or old, if you love dragon ball, you will enjoy this game.