Another era of intense fighting closes in as Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 slowly launches across various platforms this week. While the PC version releases this Thursday, many gamers have already spent an ample amount of time with the console version due to early copies floating around retail stores since last week. Personally I’m a huge Dragon Ball fan and grew up playing the Budokai games in my younger days. Since then, Dragon Ball fighting games have drastically evolved for the better with more open-ended combat.
If you missed out on the Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 PS4 Beta Test and have little to no experience with the first Xenoverse title, then you may find yourself struggling during Parallel Quests and Online Battles within Xenoverse 2. Figuring out which skills to equip and what race to pick can be an extremely stressful decision. A multitude of newcomers will have a difficult time adjusting to the learning curve and we don’t blame them. We’re determined to provide useful tips that will help beginners advance through the early stages of the game, as well as provide insight to the PC version.
Initiating Character Transfers and Picking The Right Race
For those of you that played the original Xenoverse game which released early last year, you will be greeted to a screen that details Character Transfers upon booting up Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 for the first time. Assuming your save data is still in place, you’ll be given the option to pick one character that is eligible for transfer. Any equipment your Xenoverse character is wearing will be transferred to your Xenoverse 2 character, while extra clothing in your character’s bag will be converted to a chunk of Zeni and TP Medals. The same applies to your equipped skill set, although certain skills will be forbidden from transfer such as Super Saiyan, Super Vegeta, Kaioken and Rebellion Spear.
Also Read: Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 Review
Once you’ve completed the transfer process, the next step is to pick a race that suits your play style. There are a total of 5 races in Xenoverse 2—Earthling, Saiyan, Frieza, Namekian and Majin. While no new races were introduced, the existing ones have been refined. If you like to play with balanced stats on your character, then I suggest going with the Earthling race. If you’re looking to unleash a barrage of melee punches and kicks, then the Saiyan race is best for you. The Frieza race has the fastest attack speed but low damage output, while Namekians have fast health and stamina recovery.
As Majin, there’s a subtle difference between the two genders. Male Majins have more health but slower movement speed and Female Majins are the complete opposite. The Majin race includes some of the best stats for playing defensive, but comes at the cost of low stamina regeneration. One thing to keep in mind is that you’re able to gain attribute points after completing missions, which are then used to upgrade specific stats on your character. This way you can build a character of any race with high stamina or melee power, without worrying about the race you initially picked. My preferred race of choice is a Saiyan Warrior because I enjoy close-up combat.
Farming Dragon Balls and Unlocking Characters
In Xenoverse 2, the RNG for item drops has been dramatically improved and thus makes it easier to obtain special items such as Dragon Balls. Obtaining all seven Dragon Balls can usually prolong the period of time you spend on a single mission, but there is a trick to gather them quickly. To start off, you must unlock Parallel Quest #4 labeled “Prepare for the Attack of Saiyans!”. In the first part of this mission, you fight Krillin, Yamcha and Tien. Before going into the next area, you need to land on the ground and look for three Time Patroller NPC’s standing outside the temple. Approaching them will ensue some dialog that eventually leads to a fight.
Defeating each Time Patroller will give you either a Material item, Equip item or a Dragon Ball. Since these enemies can be quite challenging, my suggestion is to fight them once your character is between level 20 and 30. You must land the finishing blow or they will not drop any Dragon Balls. Repeat the quest until you obtain all seven Dragon Balls, making you one step closer to fulfilling your wish. In order to unlock a new character, you must use the Dragon Balls to summon Shenron and then select “I want more usable characters!” from the list of wishes. Each time you gather all seven Dragon Balls and make that particular wish, a different character will unlock.
Elder Kai Advanced Training Is Broken
There are over 13 Challenge Quests given by the Elder Kai in Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 and the majority are very difficult to complete. In my opinion, it seems as if the devs did not fully playtest the Elder Kai quests because they’re practically broken and I think players should avoid them for the time being. For example, one of the advanced training challenges require you to press Y+B and then LS(UP)+X to do a combo, along with numerous other buttons, but the player input doesn’t register properly. You will often notice that your moves are not being counted on the menu, even though you’re landing them properly and hitting your target. This is because the game is coded to only register those inputs within a single frame and anything outside of that frame will not be accounted for. We’re not the only ones having this problem and hope to see a patch that will address this complaint.
Remarkable PC Performance
I’m delighted to let everyone know the PC version has exceptional benchmarks akin to the first Xenoverse game when maxing out the settings. We tested this on a single GTX 1080 with a resolution of 5120×2160(5k) via 4x Nvidia DSR and still managed to achieve a stable 60 frames per second. The game looks more gorgeous than ever once the horrendous aliasing vanishes from objects. Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 also comes with a variety of tweakable settings, including HDR Filter, Shadow Quality, Motion Blur, Glare Level, DoF, Grass Quality, Particles Quality, Light Shafts, Distance Scaling and more. While we didn’t notice much of an improvement over the visual quality in comparison to Xenoverse, there are definitely some noticeable changes to character shading which makes the hair and clothing appear glossy.
One of the downsides to the PC version of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 is the lack of proper 21:9 ultrawide support. With widescreen resolutions becoming increasingly popular year after year, it’s a little absurd to see a modern game lacking support. Instead of taking up all the screen space, there are black bars on both sides of the image. The first Xenoverse title had the same issue and a modder ended up releasing a patch that provided compatibility with ultra-wide and triple-screen monitors. Despite this specific issue, the PC version maintains a somewhat high caliber and Dimps did a wonderful job at optimizing towards performance.
