Dragon Ball: Xenoverse 2

I came into Xenoverse 2 as someone who respects a tight multiplayer loop, and the honest answer is this: the game delivers exactly half of what it promises on that front. The single-player and co-op side is genuinely solid for what it is. You build a custom character from one of five races, Saiyan, Human, Namekian, Majin, or Frieza race, and each brings different stat weights and transformations. Saiyans push damage harder at low health, Majins trade stamina recovery for defense, and the distinctions, while not massive, are real enough to matter for your skill loadout. You earn XP from missions, spend attribute points across HP, ki, stamina, striking supers, and ki supers, then go train under iconic characters to unlock their signature moves. The idea of running Kamehameha builds versus Kienzan setups and testing them in Parallel Quests is legitimately fun for dozens of hours. The Time Patrol story mode sends you back through Dragon Ball Z history to correct timeline anomalies, and it works as a fan-service delivery vehicle. The problem is that mission structure barely evolves: go here, beat these enemies, repeat. After the first few arcs the loop is clear, and without a difficulty slider, skill-level variance is handled entirely by your build rather than any design sophistication. Combat itself is fast, 360-degree, aerial brawling with lock-on mechanics and a stamina-break system that keeps engagements punchy. However, enemies stunlock easily and so do you, which means some fights boil down to whoever lands the opener. It rarely feels unfair in PvE, but it does feel shallow once the novelty of the franchise moments wears off. Now here is where I have to be straight with the competitive-minded crowd: the PvP is a mess. The game runs peer-to-peer connections for versus and raid content, with no dedicated servers once you leave the Conton City hub. Lag causes teleport glitches, phantom hits, and stamina breaks that register on your screen but not the opponent's. Four-bar connections can still produce slideshow matches depending on geographic distance. Raids and co-op Parallel Quests are the better online modes, the pressure of coordinating against a superpowered boss like Great Ape Vegeta with a party is actually where the game's design holds up. But ranked PvP players looking for clean reads, honest time-to-kill, and consistent hit registration will find this game chronically frustrating. There is no rollback. The community has been raising the netcode issue since launch and it has not been resolved in any meaningful way. Post-launch support has been extensive, with years of DLC packs adding new characters and Parallel Quests, so a veteran returning today will find substantially more content than at release. That cuts both ways though: newcomers face a steep catch-up curve, and a lot of the best additions are behind paywalls. The base game's content is already large, but the progression can feel stretched artificially to service that DLC cadence. For PC specifically, the port runs cleanly on modern hardware at 60fps, which at least makes the aerial combat feel as sharp as it should visually. If you are a Dragon Ball fan who wants a character-building power fantasy with a friend in co-op, Xenoverse 2 earns its Very Positive rating and then some. If you are here for competitive PvP with netcode you can actually trust, look elsewhere and save yourself the tilt.

Fred · Scout Team

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