Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle Review

You may be wondering how Dragon Ball, an anime known for its fights, powering up, muscles and more fighting, can work on the handheld. Well, not by having massively involved fights, I’ll tell you that.

I’ve always been a fan of Dragon Ball games, and until now there hasn’t been one on mobile. There was a very good one on the SNES, called Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiya Densetsu, that I thought would have been great to remake and put on mobile, as it was an RPG with a card-based battle system. Heck, there were a few RPGs on the Game Boy Advance, too!

But rather than an RPG, they’ve created a free-to-play title that is part puzzle, part board game which is an interesting take on the franchise. The main driving force are the battles, but they really only include tapping on coloured balls to power-up before the damage is done by a short animation. I was expecting it to be full of quick-time-events and furiously tapping at my screen, but it’s definitely not that.

Tien, Yamcha and Captain Ginyu against a member of the Red Ribbon Army. Not lost? This game just might be for you

As with Dragon Ball Xenoverse, someone is screwing with the timestream and it’s up to Future Trunks and his new recruit -- you -- to put a stop to it. This is, of course, the best kind of storyline for a game like this, as it allows the developer to explore the mythos without undoing anything that is canon, whilst getting to use well-known characters and not having to create their own. It’s also my favourite type of Dragon Ball game story, as Dimps did it with the Dragon Ball Z Budokai trilogy.

You have to gather a team of characters from throughout the mythos, bought using premium or in-game currency or found during play. You can upgrade them and level them up in fights, but the important part is what type they are. Like Pokémon, different types are weak to some, strong against others and just get an ordinary amount of damage dealt with the rest.

The battles themselves take the form of powering up, then automatically carried out in front of you with a short animation. That’s terrible, as far as TL;DRs go, but just get a load of this...

Jeice, the best evil character ever

Your team of six each take a turn of powering up, done by tapping on one of the glowing coloured ki orbs on the screen. If there are more of a certain colour, it will do more damage, and if you select the same colour as the character, it gathers double energy. Simple enough. After powering up the first three characters, they go ahead and do damage to the enemy.

Then, you power up the next three and they do their attacks, which is the usual punching and kicking, to do damage equal to the amount of ki you built up, to whittle down their health bar. The enemies also fight back, so that’s where the types come into play. All of the characters are tied to your main health bar, which will deplete as you get attacked. You take less damage if you swap the fighting order, and have a character of an opposing type take the hit. It takes some getting used to, but the type wheel is always present on the screen, so you can tell which are most suitable.

The damage sessions are fun to watch, but only at first. The artwork is great to see in motion, but every level has at least a couple of fights in it… Luckily you can speed them up to double speed, though as it is upwards of six characters (depending on the amount of enemies and turns required), you get bored of watching very similar motions going on over and over again.

Once eight characters do this after six taps on the screen, it can get a little boring

The levels are set out like a board game, with a choice of three spaces you can move per turn, which then get replaced. You could have 1, 3, 6 and in a couple of turns have 1, 1, 1 for instance. It shows you where each choice will land you, but it does pay to work out ahead of time. On the board are capsules for items, ki charge points and enemies, as well as special spaces and ones that deal guaranteed damage. When you enter a level, you’re greeted by a little scene where characters chat about what’s going on, before you get to start moving along the board. The writing in those scenes isn’t going to win any awards, but it gets across the information it needs to.

As well as the story mode, there are events going on all of the time. These are exactly like the story mode, but much shorter and with a prize once it ends, depending on how well you do. They are fun little diversions, and will extend the gameplay.

There are a few downers about Dokkan, unfortunately. It takes quite a while to load, due to it requiring an internet connection. No connection, no playing. Also, it will be quite dense going for someone unfamiliar with the show or manga. One concept during battles, is that you can power up attacks by pairing people together. Say, members of the Ginyu Force, or those who trained under Master Roshi. If you’ve no idea who trained with whom, or which ones are Majin and which are Z-Fighters, you will be unable to do these pairings except by fluke.

Luckily this doesn't last three episodes each time...

However, the microtransactions aren’t very in-your-face, and there’s no need to join social networks to play with friends. The in-game currency is used for unlocking characters, but as you’re given some to unlock one for free, I never felt the need to unlock more. It helps that you are given premium currency just for playing or loading up everyday. Of course, I did and used them to train a couple of my other characters. Doing so will destroy them, so make sure you don’t do it to any of your Rare or Super Rare characters!

Though the interface may not be flashy, it is easy to use and navigate around. The graphics are true to the style of the series’ creator Akira Toriyama, the sounds and music are pitch-perfect and the game is easy to play. If you’re a fan, you should already be playing this -- if you’re not then you might not get much out of it.