DRAGON BALL FighterZ

I'll be upfront: I came into this one skeptical that a licensed anime fighter could hold its own against Arc System Works' own Guilty Gear pedigree. It can. DRAGON BALL FighterZ is a 3v3 tag-team fighter where you pick three characters, swap between them mid-fight using assists, extend combos through coordinated supers, and gradually wear down your opponent's entire squad one fighter at a time. The format has obvious Marvel vs. Capcom DNA, but the controls are deliberately streamlined. Light, medium, and heavy attacks chain into auto-combos, special moves top out around "Hadouken" difficulty, and a dedicated fireball button means you're expressing yourself in seconds rather than grinding trial mode for hours. That accessibility ceiling is real and intentional, and it works. The visual presentation is where FighterZ genuinely earns the spotlight. The cel-shaded 3D-as-2D trick that Arc System Works refined in Guilty Gear Xrd reaches something close to perfection here. Super move animations pull the HUD away entirely and deliver cinematic hits that look pulled frame-by-frame from the source anime. Goku, Vegeta, Frieza, Cell, Android 21 (an original character designed by Akira Toriyama specifically for this game), Beerus, and a full cast of franchise icons each carry their own personality through stance, voice, and attack animation. The roster expanded over multiple DLC passes and eventually reached 45 playable characters total, which means there is plenty of variety for players willing to explore. The single-player content is the weakest corner of the package. Story mode runs through three arcs covering the same clone-invasion plot from different team perspectives. It works as a tutorial wrapper and introduces the systems at a sensible pace, but the structure grows repetitive: fight clones, reach the boss icon, repeat. Arcade mode and a solid Training mode pick up the slack for solo players who want to grind, and a ranking system tracks progress both in Arcade and online ranked play. For competitive depth, Season 3 added selectable Assist types before matches and adjusted the Sparking Blast mechanic, though later balance patches have been divisive in the community, with some veteran players feeling the competitive ruleset drifted from the game's original identity. On the online front: a long-requested rollback netcode update arrived in early 2024, so the connection quality is meaningfully better than the delay-based netcode the game launched with. That said, the active player base on PC has thinned compared to the launch-era peak that once set a Steam concurrent-user record for a fighting game. New players will find matches, but the skill gap against seasoned opponents is steep. Anyone jumping in purely for ranked online should temper expectations and budget real lab time. Local play and split-screen versus remain strong options and are where the game shines for groups. FighterZ rewards players who engage with its systems honestly: team composition, assist timing, when to burn Sparking Blast, how to manage the health carry-over dynamic when tagging. None of that complexity is visible at first glance, which is exactly the point. It is one of the rare fighting games that can entertain a total newcomer in the first session and still have something to teach a seasoned player in the fiftieth.

Alex · Scout Team

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