How Dragon Ball XenoVerse Made Me Go Over 9000

I have had my proverbial balls kicked – or for the lack of a better word, Yamcha'd – so many times by Dragon Ball video games that I wince whenever another one is brought to my attention. I remember Dragon Ball Z: Infinite World from 2008 that had a story campaign where you had to fly Goku through hexagonal hoops like in Superman 64. I remember Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi which pretty much tarnished everything that was great from Budokai. And then there was that Dragon Ball Kinect game which got tiring… literally.

So when I heard about Dragon Ball Xenoverse for the first time, as part of Bandai Namco's New Years Showcase at San Francisco a week ago, it didn't register a blip in my head (apart from being a pun on "Dragon Ball XV" as it is the fifteenth Dragon Ball fighting game by Dimps). That is, until I read one thing about the game that changed everything: custom characters. Sure, this isn't the first Dragon Ball game with customizable characters, but XenoVerse is based entirely around it, featuring a campaign that has your character time-travelling through the Dragon Ball Z universe. Some terrible, malevolent entity is altering and corrupting the DBZ and DBGT canon in favor of the villains, so as a member of the intergalactic Time Patrol, it's your job to repair the damage.

The character creation isn't restricted to male Saiyan warriors, either. The game offers a wide spread of races from the Dragon Ball universe, including humans, Namekian (like Piccolo and Nail), Saiyans, Majin, and an unclassified Frieza Race (it's never been officially named). With the exception of the asexual Nameks and Frieza-like species, you can choose either to be male or female, with males typically having stronger melee attacks and women having stronger ki attacks. Before starting the campaign, you can also alter your character's build, head, hair, voice, and clothing. Where voices can be modified using harmonizers, echoes, and pitch control, new clothing can be purchased in the shopping district of Toki-Toki City.

Serving as the game's central hub, Toki-Toki City is separated into four districts that will help you connect with other players in online missions and tournaments as well as offline single-player quests. Completing the objectives in each event will award general experience for levelling, which gives your character three attribute skills to distribute as you wish, and occasionally additional items like dispensable healing capsules and pieces of equipment that have varying stat boots attached. You'll have more than enough costume slots for equipment too to handle the large number of different equipment (up to 450 at this point). And if you're lucky, you can even earn or purchase one of 200 available skills, some of which will be race-specific (because you can't turn into a Super Saiyan without being a Saiyan, yes?).

Helping you to restore time will be Time Patrol Trunks, who as DBZ fans know, is no stranger to the tricky shenanigans of time-travel. He has summoned you through the power of the Immortal Dragon Shenron to prevent the villainous Towa and Mira from manipulating history. In short, those who have played Dragon Ball Online will certainly be in familiar territory here. Along the way, you can request your favorite Dragon Ball characters if you can become their student and learn their specific skill set. After rewatching every episode of DBZ Abridged (which you should do because it's hilarious), I can't wait to have the surly badass Vegeta be absolutely irritated with me. The only thing that could make it better is if there's a dialogue option about his pink shirt.

Otherwise, the fighting is exactly what you would expect from the last few Dragon Ball entries, with the camera going over the shoulder at times as it follows characters in the background and foreground. After locking onto one of the opponents, you can target them with combinations of light and heavy attacks, a string of consecutive ki blasts, or specials if you have enough energy generated from successful melee attacks. The most challenging and frustrating battles deal with fights against three or more opponents, so you need to make sure you've got enough health-recovery items or play defensively in case the battle extends itself.

Dragon Ball XenoVerse will release on February 24, 2015 for PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS3, and Xbox 360. Look for pre-order bonuses with special costumes and unlockable characters, in addition to three DLC packs featuring GT characters, additional quests, more items, and special attacks. Each pack will cost $9.99 and the season pass will be $24.99.