Get ready for a New Challenge Dragon Ball is back with a new 2D fighter

By Luiggi Cavanna

A few weeks ago, we found out that Bandai Namco is developing a new Dragon Ball game, but this time it’s a 2D fighting game. There was a mistake and two screenshots were released ahead of time, letting the world know what was coming. Also, we found out that Bandai Namco is working with Arc System Works, the people behind the Guilty Gear games.

I saw this image and I lost it!

Fast Forward to the week of E3 and we get an announcement trailer, in the Microsoft conference of all places.

The best part was that they had a playable demo at E3 so we got a lot of information about the mechanics of the game. The gameplay is fast pace, something I really love in anime fighters, with destructible backgrounds. The battles are 3 on 3, meaning you gotta pick three characters to face your opponent. You can use your other characters as simple assists or tag them in to let your first character recover a bit, make moves safe, or to simply continue combos. This is very similar to the Marvel vs Capcom series, and the fighting game community has taken notice to this.

The memes won't stop!!

The FGC had a field day! Thanks to the less than desirable looks of some of the characters in Marvel vs Capcom Infinite - COUGH! Chun Li COUGH! - the bland character roster, (Where’s the X-men bro?) and changes to some of the core mechanics of the game, the community has happily jumped on the Dragon Ball bandwagon. 

Ok, I love this one, with the horrible grammar and everything.

Memes aside, the games will be different. Matter of fact, Dragon Ball Fighter-Z might be closer to other games that Arc System Works developed before, just like the Guilty Gear and Blazblue series.

Another group of fans that are excited for this game, of course, is the Dragon Ball community.

YouTube exploded with live reactions to the trailer and most of the reactions were from Dragon Ball Youtubers. How can they not be excited, the game is so faithful to the source material, not only with supers and special moves, but with character intros and even normal attacks. Great attention to detail has been put into this game.

I mean, look at THIS!!

The game will be release early 2018 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, with a closed beta coming at the end of this summer for PS4 and Xbox One. If you want to get ready for this game I could recommend for you to play some of the previous Arc System Works games, you know, Guilty Gear and Blazblue. If you can’t wait for a Dragon Ball 2D fighter though, I might have something for you.

Dragon Ball Z Extreme Butoden!!

Bandai Namco and Arc System Works already worked on a 2D fighter Dragon Ball game, the catch is that it was for the 3DS. To be fair, Dragon Ball Z Extreme Butoden is a very functional 2D Fighter, and we don’t have many of those on the 3DS. In the game, you can have up to three characters or you can use assists only characters instead. Assists characters take less space than playable characters so you can have one Playable character with four assists. This changes the dynamic of the game quite a bit! You can have a match where one player has two playable fighters with two assists vs someone with three fighters and no assists. This is a game where the complexity comes from how you use your assists, and this game has some powerful assists.

And it doesn’t look half bad.

Are you excited for Dragon Ball Fighter-Z? I know I am! Let us know. Now I return to the deepest darkest corners of my dwelling. Goodbye, for now, my friends.

So HYPE!!!