A quick note before I begin: I am a born-again DBZ fan. After around a decade of not caring, my fandom restarted with DBZ: Abridged, was fostered through Kai, and I've absolutely loved the previous 2 movies (though I've heard Super is...perhaps not worthwhile), and knowing that: this game is much, much better than the last one, but it's STILL hard to recommend without an abiding love for the source material already present. Also: play the last game, at least a little. You get a nice reward for it. I'm also going to TRY to make this as new-user friendly as I can, but I'm also going to talk about certain things as though SOME familiarity is present. That's out of the way, let's get into it!

I had a day off yesterday and decided to do little more than play this game. I've put in ~8 hours, and the short version is: this is Dragon Ball: Xenoverse 2 in the most literal sense of what a sequel is: it is the previous game done bigger with a few glaring holes closed up. One of the first? NO MORE RNG!!...I'll wait while fans of the previous game rejoice. In the first game, if you fulfilled all the requirements to unlock the "Ultimate Finish" to certain missions, there was STILL a dice roll to see if it would trigger. You could do EVERYthing right, and still get NOTHING...that is GONE. Meet requirements? GET THE EVENT! The character customization is also far more vast with the ability to make truly stand-out characters rather than a vanilla-WoW's worth of minor variations. Oh, and all 5 races now have transformations, so unlike the series: Saiyans are no longer the go-to OP character class.

The other major thing is that the hub world is now enormous with a TON of side-content and that's a BIT of a mixed bag. It's not TERRIBLY compelling stuff, but it's very, very easy to fall down the rabbit-hole of "just one more of these side-stories." Five of these take the forms of recurring quests (we'll call them "shards") take into account your race and grant additional content based around that. Parallel quests (non-storyline side missions) make their return, but I've barely engaged with them since, despite being a more massive world, everything opens up faster. You no longer have to grind trainer "friendship" meters to open more quests, if you complete a quest for them, the next one opens.

The storyline integrates characters from the movies, and while that CAN be a mixed bag depending on how you feel about those characters, it's kind of weird and delightful from a fan-service perspective to see non-canon characters integrated into this game. The story is...what it is, which is why I recommend some previous investment into the franchise. Much like my write-up here, they don't pause and take a breath, if you don't know the whys and wherefores of certain events, you're not going to appreciate or even understand a LOT of plot-points. The gameplay is also much improved over the previous game's "Bang out the same combo over and over. Repeat. Win" with actual strategy coming into play (or just over-level and trounce everyone, there's some fun to be had there too) if you want to succeed.

What Dragonball Xenoverse 2 seems to have done, first and foremost, is make everything bigger and better, but the second thing it did that I truly appreciate, at least so far, was eliminate grinding, either to fill an arbitrary meter or to get that one item that you need. There's so much more to do this time around that this is an easy recommend if you played the last game (make sure you kept that save file!) and if you're a newcomer to Xenoverse, this is definitely superior, but the last game STILL might be worth at least a run through.

I've actually just rekindled my love for DBZ very recently after playing LOG2 and Buu's Fury while stumbling on DBZ Abridged at the exact same time. I'm looking forward to the english dub of super.

But I won't play these games because I just don't like how they play, I'm without a doubt on the Budokai > Budokai Tenkaichi camp, and these games are an extension of that.

You definitely don't get into these for the gameplay, it's very much that Tenkaichi-mobility-over-cinematic stuff. I do miss beam duels and cinematic attacks, but I'm also a sucker for things like what-ifs and weird crossover stuff.

It's also AMAZING to me how much DBZ:A got people back into it to the point that Chris Sabat actually credited them in an interview with it.

Cool that it seems like a better game. Dragon Ball Super has gotten a lot better though so maybe give it a chance. The first 30 episodes or so mostly just recap the last two movies so you can skip over that to get to the actual new and good stuff.

@undeadpool: DBZ:A is just written so well, and their comedic timing is incredible, you even see glimpses of it in their first few episodes. I honestly think they're better than the real thing, and would rather just see their dub of super lol

I think we can both agree on the latter part. Yeah, it's WEIRD going back to their early, early stuff and seeing how...off it is, but also where the seed of genius is. They're also proof-positive that the BEST parody comes from a place of love and why all those dumbass ______ MOVIE non-comedies were such a failure. As well as so many "parody" internet videos. Their adoration for the source material comes through EVERY episode when they make weird, obscure references and point out plot stuff that even the series didn't (one of my favorite being "Hey Piccolo...you wanna drive cars?" "HELLS YEAH!").

Have it on PS4 and love it. Didn't play the original other than a few one on one fights with a friend, but really enjoy it so far.

You had me at "No more RNG."

Can someone tell me if this one is less grindy than the last one? Asked this on the QL but didn't get a response. Liked the first game in general but fell off cause I felt like I needed to grind to progress in the story.