Dragon Ball FighterZ - I feel like the "Z" ought to be separate, but the case for the disc insists otherwise - is definitely the best looking DBZ game I've ever played. Damning with faint praise; it's the most recent DBZ game I've played by probably a decade, but it seemed like a good place to start.
It's bright, colorful. The signature attacks are made to look big and dramatic and flashy. The animation and movement is crisp. The fighting looks good, once you get the controls down. I would imagine I'm a middling player at best, and a lot of times I'm just moving the thumbstick in a general direction and hitting a button to see what results, but the game's responsive.
It's a 3 vs. 3 fighting game, ala the Marvel vs. Capcom series. Not my favorite style of fighting game, but it works OK. There are certain super-move combo attacks that get their own animation because you're using two particular characters, which I imagine is designed to make you try a lot of different combinations.
There's a story mode, with a vague plot about another Red Ribbon Army scientist unleashing a bunch of clones of different fighters, while at the same time a machine is suppressing everyone's powers. I feel like that was to eliminate power level differences between the characters, probably to prevent people ditching about their Super Saiyan Blue Vegeta losing to Yamcha.
It didn't work, of course. Nothing short of death will silence those people.
No one can fight unless they merge with a soul. So really, you're the soul, and the other characters acknowledge you and will sometimes speak to you in brief cut scenes where you can pick between a couple of dialogue options. I don't think which option you choose really changes anything. It's not that kind of game. But it can be fun to annoy Frieza by telling him that, no, you're not interested in killing people.
Each level is a map of locations, connected by lines. You have to follow the lines to get from place-to-place, and win the boss fight within a certain number of moves. You can take the most direct route, or meander through, making sure to fight every other battle available if you want. Since the fights provide experience to level up fighters, it pays to use those other fights to grind a bit.
That said, it boils down to round after round of just fighting palette-shifted versions of your characters. There's usually some vague goal to it - finding and rescuing your other allies, depriving the ultimate threat of a source of power - but it definitely feels like you're on a hamster wheel.
There are sometimes custom scenes before the fight, depending on which characters you're using, or which you're fighting. Cell might be annoyed to see another version of himself, or he might goad the Gohan he's fighting alongside. Or Tien gets annoyed at the Ginyu Force and their stupid poses. Or Goku acknowledges that Krillin's too busy to spar because he's got a wife and child of his own.
Ummm, that's one way of putting it.
There's actually three versions of the story. Listed in terms of escalating difficulty, one with Goku and his friends as the focus, another where it's Frieza and the other villains, and one focused on the Androids. That last one is where the repetitive nature really drags because for a long time, you only have Androids 18 and 16 to use. Not only are you almost always outnumbered 3-to-2, but you can't even mix and match to find a team that suits your play style. (Big, slow characters like Android 16 or Majin Buu don't tend to work well for me.)
That said, there are actually a lot of nice moments for Krillin and Android 18 throughout the story mode. Each of them being protective of the other. Krillin being angry that Cell's hurt 18, or 18 having to beat Krillin up to protect him from Android 21. Then Krillin later reveals he knew 18 must have had some sort of a plan because he could tell she wasn't really trying to hurt him. Some of the conversations each character has with you involve them praising the other, or talking about how lucky they are to have them.
It's all very sweet, and I enjoyed it as a fan of that pairing. Especially given how much undeserved crap the pairing (mostly Krillin) takes among the brainless fuckwits that make up a big chunk of the DBZ fandom.
There are a few other game modes. Online play is of no interest to me. There's a training mode, but that seems to quickly turn into trying to string together 8-10 distinct commands and I either couldn't get the timing right, or I wasn't positioning my character properly. But I beat all the story modes, so I don't think that stuff is critical.
There's also an Arcade mode, which is the thing where your team fights a succession of several other trios, from 3 to 7 depending on which course you pick. Thankfully, it's not the type where your characters' health doesn't return after each round. One nice touch, your specific course will vary depending on how well your performance is graded. So if you win your first fight with an A or S grade, you'll fight one trio for your second match. B or C grades send you down a different path, and D or F still another. But if you get a D on the first fight, then an A on the second, you could still jump to a higher path. In that sense, there's at least some potential variety, even though you're probably trying to get the best scores all the time.
Like I said, the game looks very nice. The fighting's very smooth, though probably pushing the limits of what I can be any good at. The cut scenes are often funny or clever. I do prefer the more individualized story mode of Budokai 3, where the playable characters could each have their own story to a certain extent, and you could fly around the world in more of a free-roaming mode. But those were usually just alternate takes on preexisting stories (the Frieza Saga, the Cell Saga), while FighterZ is trying to build on those past stories to create a newer one. Making a unique story for all the playable characters would probably be a lot.
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