DRAGON BALL: THE BREAKERS

I went in genuinely curious about this one. An asymmetrical 7-vs-1 multiplayer game where ordinary civilians run from Cell or Frieza - that is a legitimately interesting premise that no other Dragon Ball title had tried. The core structure borrows heavily from the Dead by Daylight playbook: seven Survivors scatter across a map collecting power keys to activate a Super Time Machine and escape, while one Raider - playing as an iconic villain - hunts them down and evolves into an increasingly unstoppable force. On paper, the fantasy is obvious. In practice, the gap between concept and execution is wide enough to fly a Kamehameha through. Survivor gameplay has its moments. Collecting Dragon Balls to summon Shenron, using tools like Solar Flare and Instant Transmission, or temporarily borrowing the power of a Super Warrior to fight back against the Raider all create occasional flashes of genuine tension. When the Raider gets close, a heartbeat cue kicks in and your character starts scrambling - it works. The problem is that the controls fight you the whole time. Movement feels floaty and low-traction, the camera has a baffling tendency to stay fixed rather than tracking your character, and the grappling hook tool lacks the audio feedback to tell you whether it even connected. Raider play is more immediately satisfying - blowing up buildings, absorbing or finishing off Survivors, and watching the villain evolve through multiple power stages is exactly the power fantasy the game promises. But even there, combat is shallow, relying mostly on ki blast spam and an unreliable lock-on system. The monetization is where the game really loses goodwill. For a premium-priced title, The Breakers stacks microtransactions, a battle pass, and gacha mechanics on top of each other simultaneously. The Transphere system - which governs access to transformation abilities and skills - is the most contentious piece, because it blurs the line between cosmetic spending and actual gameplay advantage. Character customization is mostly locked behind premium currency, earned at a grind pace through play or purchased outright. Reused visual assets from Xenoverse 2 do not help the impression that budget and ambition were mismatched from day one. Then there is the player count problem, and it is a serious one for a game whose entire design depends on filling a lobby with eight people. Current concurrent players on Steam sit in the low hundreds, a significant drop from the all-time peak. Matchmaking variability was a complaint at launch, and with the population this thin today, queue times are a real friction point that directly damages the experience. If you cannot reliably find a full lobby, the whole premise collapses. Who should still consider it? Die-hard Dragon Ball fans who want something genuinely different from the franchise's endless fighting game output, and players who can bring their own group to fill survivor slots. Played with friends, the chaos and the IP's absurd energy can make it click in ways that solo queuing simply does not deliver. For anyone else, the rough controls, predatory monetization, and low population make it a tough recommendation at anything above a deep discount.

Alex · Scout Team

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