Dragon Ball FighterZ vs Dragon Ball: Budokai 3

Fans of Dragon Ball Z are on tenterhooks ever since the first Dragon Ball Z FighterZ trailer was presented in June 2017. The game is going to appear on the market in January 2018, yet players already consider it as the best Dragon Ball Z game up to date. Let’s check if this statement is true by comparing it to the real king, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3.

Dragon Ball FighterZ vs Dragon Ball Budokai 3: First Round – Character Roster

Budokai 3 has a roster of 42 playable characters. Furthermore, many characters have different transformations (SSJ, SS2, Frieza’s forms etc.). Moreover, a few of them can provide you with fusions. An ability thanks to which two characters can connect with each other in order to form a new hero. For example, Goku + Vegeta = Vegetto. The most interesting though is the fact how you can unlock them. While most fighters will be unlocked with a story progression, there are a few characters that need specific requirements to be fulfilled in order to unlock them.

The competition in form of Dragon Ball FighterZ pales in comparison. The Dragon Ball FighterZ game provides you with 20 most popular characters known from the show. You can choose one of the heroes like: Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo, Kuririn, Tien or Yamcha as well as iconic villains – Frieza, Cell, Buu or Ginyu. However, there are two important things to notice. First of all, many of characters have various transformations or appear in the group, for example Ginyu comes to battlefield with the rest of the Ginyu Force. The second thing is the fact, that the game is not yet released. The last of Dragon Ball FighterZ news provided players with information about a new character, Gohan (Adult). Who knows, how many more characters, producers are going to add before the release?

Score: A point for Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3. The game does have much more characters than Dragon Ball FighterZ and the fusion ability puts it in the lead. Though, the score might chance soon. It depends on how the roster of the Dragon Ball FighterZ is going to grow with each update.

Dragon Ball FighterZ vs Dragon Ball Budokai 3: Second Round – Plot/Story

Dragon Ball fighting games are interesting in comparison to other titles from the genre. Due to the fact, that Dragon Ball was such popular anime, producers of games based on the show always put a lot of effort into creation of the plot.

Dragon Ball Universe, which is a story mode for Budokai 3, provides a player with a set of events taken straight from the show. This mode consists of 11 playable characters traveling around Earth or Namek during the four main sagas of Dragon Ball Z: Saiyan Saga, Frieza Saga, Cell Saga, and Majin Buu Saga while collecting items such as money, capsules, Dragon Balls or unlocking other characters to use in the other game modes. The main strength of Dragon Ball Universe is variety of choices that might change many of the events known from the original story. Unfortunately, usually they are only marginal, changing only a few enemies or the battle patterns.

Developers of Dragon Ball FighterZ decided to make rather an unusual move. The story presented in the game is completely new. It takes place after events known from Dragon Ball Z. Android 16 was suddenly revived and Z-Senshi are picked one by one by a mysterious android who looks just like fighters themselves. Humanity is in peril once again and you have to do something to save it.

Score: While the data is mainly taken from Dragon Ball FighterZ trailers and the beta version of the game or interviews, the amount of information about the story is enough to give a verdict. In this factor, Dragon Ball FigherZ is simply better. After all, how many times we can repeat the same story, even in such perfect game like Budokai 3?

Dragon Ball FighterZ vs Dragon Ball Budokai 3: Third Round – Fighting Mechanics

The fighting game cannot exist without proper fighting mechanics. Starting from Budokai 3, it was one of the most advanced fighting games up to date. A classic 2D model of battle was updated with many interesting features. The most important being beam struggle, when two players launched KI attack at the same time, they clashed with each other and players had to rotate control sticks in order to push the two beams to one character or the other, or Hyper Mode. The Hyper Mode constantly decreased the KI of a player and the character lost ability to block. However, in Hyper Mode, a character was immune to most weak melee attacks. If Hyper Mode was allowed to run out, the character became fatigued and he lost any applicable transformations. Hyper Mode was necessary to start Dragon Rushes (very long combos) and Ultimate Attacks. In general, it was fast-paced.

Dragon Ball FighterZ beta already had shown how advanced are the mechanics of this game. Players select three characters to form a team. One character is controlled and can be switched with one of the other two characters at any time. Players can also summon one of their other fighters to perform an “Assist” move, allowing simultaneous attacks and combos with the entire team. The game takes a lot from the Guilty Gear, another series of fighting games created by Arc System Works. The universal “Vanish” and “Sparking Blast” moves resemble the Roman Cancel system commonly found in Arc System Works games and the Guilty Gear series’ Dust attacks respectively. Furthermore, each character can raise their KI in order to unleash super attacks (different for each character). The fighting is fast-paced and relatively easy to learn. Moreover, thanks to a mix of graphics and general pacing, the game feels like a real anime episode.

Score: It was a hard decision, but we have to go with Dragon Ball FighterZ. While Budokai 3 was innovative, Dragon Ball FighterZ seems like a huge leap forward in comparison to other fighting games based on Dragon Ball.

Conclusion

The main aim of this Dragon Ball FighterZ preview was to show how it compares to the best (at least according to many players) Dragon Ball game. As it can be seen, there is no surprise that people are waiting for the release of the game. Dragon Ball FighterZ launches on 26 January 2018. If everything is going to work as planned, then we are going to start a new year with an amazing fighting game.