Dragon Ball: Xenoverse Bundle Edition

I came at this one with low expectations and got burned by how much time I sank into it anyway. Dragon Ball Xenoverse is a third-person action RPG where you roll your own custom fighter - Saiyan, Namekian, Earthling, Majin, or Frieza's race, each with distinct stat curves and racial perks - then drop them into a time-travelling retelling of the classic Dragon Ball Z story arcs. The hook is that you are never playing as Goku. You are the new recruit, training under series legends like Vegeta or Piccolo, learning their signature moves through a mentor system, and intervening in corrupted versions of canonical fights from Raditz all the way through the Beerus saga. The fantasy of inserting your created character into scenes you know by heart lands harder than it has any right to. But let's be clear about what this is not: it is not a serious fighting game. The combat is 3D arena brawling with light and heavy attack strings, ki-based super moves mapped to trigger-plus-button shortcuts, and cinematic ultimate finishers that look great the first ten times. Time-to-kill stretches out uncomfortably on tougher fights, some bosses hit with wild damage spikes, and the companion AI is genuinely useless - allies float around like they are waiting for a bus while you eat combos alone. The lock-on when fighting multiple enemies is inconsistent enough to annoy anyone who cares about moment-to-moment precision. Control players: a pad is basically mandatory here, keyboard works but feels like you are fighting the interface as much as the enemies. Where the game earns its Very Positive Steam rating is in the progression loop. Parallel Quests - repeatable co-op missions that reward randomised loot - create a gear-hunt that keeps pulling you back. Assigning attribute points to ki, stamina, basic attacks, or strikes lets you shape a genuinely distinct build over time, even if the stat system is blunter than it first appears. The Master system gives that build flavour: train under Goku and you unlock his moveset, train under Frieza and you get a very different toolkit. Online co-op works for running Parallel Quests together, and the Toki Toki City hub has a low-key MMO feel with other players visible and matchmaking accessible from the same space. The Bundle Edition includes GT Pack 1, GT Pack 2 (adding Towa and Mira as playables), and the Resurrection F content - extra Parallel Quests, additional masters Tien and Yamcha, a stack of new skills, and roster additions that give the endgame grind more variety. If you are buying this game, the Bundle is the right call. Xenoverse 2 is the mechanically tighter follow-up and is still being updated, so playing the original in 2025 is partly a history lesson. What it does well - the custom character fantasy, the co-op quest structure, the sheer density of Dragon Ball content - still holds up as a good time if your expectations are calibrated correctly. Push past the combat repetitiveness ceiling and this collapses, but before that ceiling it is a surprisingly easy game to lose an evening to.

Fred · Scout Team

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