"DBZ: Battle of Z" (360/PS3/Vita) On-Going Discussion Thread

[mysticboy]

After playing a bit of the demo, I can honestly say that this is funner than Raging Blast. And I fucking love Raging Blast.

[GogetaSSJ2]

So it doesn't look this game has any vs cpu in the battle modes and that BoZ is strictly an online game....in fact this game was made specifically for online. Idk in a normal fighting game there should be the option if you want to relax and play against the cpu, you can, but this game forces you to play online its almost impossible not to. I'm not really a big online player but I can see the kind of demographic this game is trying to cater to...and really with games like COD and Battlefield of course they'll try to gear the game in the way that will help NB profit from it (if they can...) in the long run but eh I don't think this game was made for me.

I might buy the vita version still, but I think that'll be enough for me. I don't like whats being offered to me at $60 for a console game release.

[TheGmGoken]

Glitches(so far):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCaQbY04s1o - Piccolo Broken
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW4tQXuZES8 - Combat glitch

[TheDevilsCorpse]

Piccolo being "broken" isn't a glitch, it's just a poor development choice to let him spam like that.

[TheGmGoken]

Piccolo being "broken" isn't a glitch, it's just a poor development choice to let him spam like that.

For me if I do this he'll just finish the attack. For example I press L2 and he'll make like 6 and then if I still hold them he'll destroy them.

chaospunishment15 hours ago

if my energy was being healed it would have gone on forever which is why it needs to be patched. I've sent it to Namco and we'll see what happens

Guess he means it isn't a glitch but his character is like a cheat character(I know he's a Energy and Interfere type)

[TheDevilsCorpse]

Which is what I'm saying. Piccolo is definitely broken; every time I've ever used him, he'll fire as many as he can so long as he has energy. It's not an unintended glitch though. He seems to have been developed that way intentionally.

[TheGmGoken]

Which is what I'm saying. Piccolo is definitely broken; every time I've ever used him, he'll fire as many as he can so long as he has energy. It's not an unintended glitch though. He seems to have been developed that way intentionally.

Oh no. I was agreeing with you. Not debating.

[mysticboy]

Which is what I'm saying. Piccolo is definitely broken; every time I've ever used him, he'll fire as many as he can so long as he has energy. It's not an unintended glitch though. He seems to have been developed that way intentionally.

Yeah, he's pretty broken. Even though he's left wide open it's still an issue. They'll probably be able to patch it before the release day.

[Black_Liger]

I'm playing the demo right now, it's nice but I'd enjoy the vita version far more. but HOLY CRAP the main Title is freaking BEAUTIFUL! with the orchestral music and all players circling the world as they build a genkidama and the world energy meter grows!! I take it it's the number of players around the world translated into a power level. that blowed my mind!.

EDIT

Just finished the demo mission, so far, I'm enjoying it. I'm gonna try battle mode right now, I like that Kid Gohan serves as a support character with his special ablities, Picolo is beast. Story mode is not engaging enough though but I appreciate the little twists in the original story, I hate that some music is recycled, Bandai let the raging blast music die already!. but THe main title music is beautiful, combat needs just some little touches here and there but I think it can be better for sequels. I'm definitely buying this for Vita when I replaced my stolen one lol

btw I can't believe how fun online play is, it's frantic and freaking intense provided you internet is good.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

They've stated that the Raging Blast games have been too complex for the casual audience to just pick up and play, hence why recent games have been much simpler in nature. Honestly though, despite the simpler seeming nature of the game, I think they may have actually ended up creating something much more complex than they it intended it to be...

With Raging Blast, you had a lot of extra mechanics in the game that you could activate with button combos, but a lot of them were not essential to learn in order to play the game effectively. You could easily manage with just the basic, core mechanics of the individual buttons.

Battle of Z is a different story though. Despite the combat itself being much much simpler than the Raging Blast series, all the games mechanics, when combined together, make the game much more complex than what we've gotten previously. I mean, someone can just walk in and pick this game up and play it without much of a learning curve, sure. But if you want to win against anything more than an easy computer in the story, you actually have to put more effort into learning the game itself. You pretty much need to learn all the mechanics to play effectively. You need to set up a solid team that supports each other because we now have character types and significantly different play strategies for them. You need to toggle between locking onto your different opponents (and for some characters, your own teammates). You need to learn all the combat options because you can't just spam ki attacks since you can not charge back up on your own, you'll be dodged with ease if you just rush in offensively all the time, but you won't win if you are just forced to keep dodging. If you get double teamed, you're screwed. The list goes on an on, and looking at it all combined, it is a bit of a clusterfuck to play.

If this game gets a sequel, I think they need to add a few things back from the Raging blast games. A hybrid between the two is probably what would make me happiest right now. Anyway, here's my opinion on things via the demo (I don't see much changing between now and release).

---------------

Pros:
+Team battles
The team battles are fun, but just a little too chaotic. That's just the nature of the game though when you have that many players on the screen at once, so I don't think that can be fixed. It would at least be better if you could choose how to set up the teams though 1/2/3/4 vs. 1/2/3/4. In order to help keep balance, the team with less players should receive a minor stat buff to prevent the battles being too one-sided.

+Movement
Could still uses some tweaking. Full speed is still kinda slow and you occasionally still have trouble making it to your opponent while locked on. Still, this game may have the best flight mechanic yet. Also, RUNNING! Only thing missing would be jumping, which we had in Raging Blast and Zenkai. Might want to add that in too.

+Most Super Attacks, and especially Ultimates, are less spamable now.
Ultimates are going to be more difficult to use than they should be, and some characters like Piccolo are kinda broken. Most of the characters can't fire off attack after attack by repeatedly charging their ki back up manually. So, I kinda like the results, but not the system itself, which I think needs to be redesigned. Maybe return to something like the Blast Stocks of the Sparking games? Keep Supers linked solely to the ki bar, but restrict Ultimates to only be used once your Blast Stocks have charged up to level 3 or so? That way you can use multiple in a match (and not have it end after killing the entire other team), but can't just use them whenever.

+Story Mode
The changes so far, while not big, are still fairly fun. I'm a broken record here, but I'm so tired of the same plot over and over again. Ultimately, I would love DBZ games to start telling unique stories and introduce new characters, but since I probably won't get that, the best I can hope for is that future games will deviate more from the original plot path, enough to keep me interested.

Cons:
-Lack of melee depth
We have one combo, the Strike Impact and the resulting pinball chain. They need to at least go back to the basic Raging Blast combos, remove the Strike Impact and give us back our charged attacks. That way, we can mix things up just a little and send the opponent flying where we want them. The pinball thing resulting from Strike Impact can still be used for what happens after you Charge Smash them away.

-Lack of ki depth
This isn't too big of a deal, it would just be nice to fire more than one or two ki attacks at an opponent. Maybe max it at six, or vary it by character. The more a character has, the weaker each blast can be. Make it capture more of the look and feel of DBZ.

-Lack of defense depth
Right now, besides trying to just run away, you can either block or teleport a set distance away by holding guard and a movement direction. Both are fine options so long as you actually managed to guard the hits, but you have next to no options if you didn't. We should at least have something added to let us teleport out of a combo if you can press the guard button right before a blow is landed, or something.

-Revive Soul and Ki transfer
This one I'm a bit torn on, because while being able to revive your teammate or send them ki is kinda cool, it seems like nothing more than a distraction in such a chaotic game. Most of the time, after you switch your lock on to your team and cycle to the right character, you leave yourself defenseless to someone ready to ambush you. This results in you getting your ass kicked and failing to save your teammate. If they can't find a better way to handle this, I think it would be best to just remove the mechanic...

-Roster
I'm one of the people who usually always wants a large roster, but that doesn't need to always happen with the first game in a series. Still, a lot of the choices made here were questionable. While I like characters like Coola and Broli in my games, they should have tackled the essential ones first. Especially with a a game that centers on team combat, skipping out on fighters like Chaozu, Zarbon and Dodoria, or the missing forms for Vegeta, Teen Gohan, Armored Trunks, Evil Buu and Vegetto. Oh, and speaking of Vegetto, making his Super Saiyan form DLC is beyond dumb.

-Separate forms and lack of in-game transformations
I understand why they didn't initially include in-game transformations, but this is a mechanic that needs to be added in IMO. I honestly think characters should be handled like Dimps did with the Budokai games, where the transformations don't really change the way the character plays. This would mean that the only thing that would need to be loaded is the extra models, and if they were preloaded before the match, it wouldn't take that long at all and transformations during battle could be instant. Most importantly though, I don't care what game it is, but transformations need to stop being counted as separate characters. This game does not offer 70 characters, it offers around 45. Five Goku forms are not five characters, they are all Goku. Even if you can't transform in battle, they should all be included as one slot on the character screen and let you pick the form after you pick the character.

-Lack of an offline CPU Vs. Mode
This doesn't even need an explanation down here. As I've said before, a Vs. Mode for human players that involved split screen would have been way to hectic, especially after playing it, but they never should have removed the option to fight the computer in your own created matches without being online.

-Art direction
I do understand the visual limitation while having 8 players on the screen, but that's not what this is about. While not horrible, most of the models are not very accurate, even at this poly count. Most of the characters have horrible proportions for themselves; muscles are too big, heads are too small, feet are gigantic, etc. Then, when compared next to each other, the character's heights are very inconsistent with what we are traditionally shown in the series and given in the games. Also, the shading style doesn't even come close to that of the franchise. I'm not saying they need to try and perfectly match the anime like CC2 tries to do with the Naruto games, but they could at least take the graphics closer to the direction of the anime or Full Color manga.

[BobZ]

I'm waiting for the European demo to release so I can try it on both my PS3 and Vita, however, from what I have seen from the gameplay videos on YouTube and your comments here, I'm not very excited for this game.

Might still get the Vita version for its portability, but the lack of an offline CPU Vs. Mode as a whole is a real deal breaker for me.

Making my own battles and fighting on my terms against the CPU is one of my favourite ways of enjoying Dragon Ball games. That, or local multiplayer. Not a big fan of Online...

Oh well.

[Xeogran]

Damn. I wanted to get this game for my Vita, but there is no way it will work on it...

[EXBadguy]

Just played the demo and..it's ai'ght. I'm half so-so and half think it's fun. It's not $60 good, but it is fun to play, especially in online where shit gets real.

One thing I found out is that some characters have different ways of doing their melee. Goku for example, if you just press triangle once, he'll knock out the opponent with a turning kick. If you press triangle twice or a few times, Goku will knock the opponent out after the third punch. So yeah, that kinda adds variety to the combat system, along with step-cancelling out during the one combo(a good one just in case somebody gets behind you), and with combining the battle types with combos and super attacks. I guess if you compare it to the other DBZ games, than it's a dissappointment about low the depth have gotten, but games like Ultimate Ninja Storm are simple and they make good money. Another one is the story and that was a bit of fresh air because there were lines that characters didn't really say in the anime like Krillin bitching about how he wants to get married during the Raditz fight.

So yeah, like I said again, fun game, but it's worth $35-40 at best, not $60. If anything the Vita version would be the right choice. That's what I plan to do is just make this game one of my travel games.

Battle of Z is a different story though. Despite the combat itself being much much simpler than the Raging Blast series, all the games mechanics, when combined together, make the game much more complex than what we've gotten previously. I mean, someone can just walk in and pick this game up and play it without much of a learning curve, sure. But if you want to win against anything more than an easy computer in the story, you actually have to put more effort into learning the game itself. You pretty much need to learn all the mechanics to play effectively. You need to set up a solid team that supports each other because we now have character types and significantly different play strategies for them. You need to toggle between locking onto your different opponents (and for some characters, your own teammates). You need to learn all the combat options because you can't just spam ki attacks since you can not charge back up on your own, you'll be dodged with ease if you just rush in offensively all the time, but you won't win if you are just forced to keep dodging. If you get double teamed, you're screwed. The list goes on an on, and looking at it all combined, it is a bit of a clusterfuck to play.

If this game gets a sequel, I think they need to add a few things back from the Raging blast games. A hybrid between the two is probably what would make me happiest right now. Anyway, here's my opinion on things via the demo (I don't see much changing between now and release).

I honestly agree with this. Oh how I picture IGN bitching and moaning about how the game makes you take time to learn cuz you can't spell ignorant without IGN. Examples: http://youtu.be/YTaLNlbuLNk , http://youtu.be/uc62e2mn018 (posting this again to prove my point)

[dbboxkaifan]

From what I've played online. People buying this for online. Not the story or single player. Online is fun!

People usually buy games for the online mode but only because it's fun to play, that was made clear with games such as Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, Forza, Gran Turismo, Killer Instinct and many others however, Battle of Z lacks to be fun with its gameplay controls.

[GogetaSSJ2]

Making my own battles and fighting on my terms against the CPU is one of my favourite ways of enjoying Dragon Ball games.

Me too. But so far it doesn't look like we'll be able to create our own teams and battle against the cpu

[Jackal puFF]

I got bored real fast playing this game.. Not much to do even when there's all these characters flying around. I can't believe it's literally only 1 player... How does that make any sense? What if your internets down? How ya gonna play with buddies then?

I was already annoyed with the starting music and those little sound effects every time you press a button. The card stats thing is pretty bothersome too. I would drive myself insane if I played this from start to end. No buy for me.

[KentalSSJ6]

After watching a few of dbzanto playing this, I noticed its the same frigging music we got in Ultimate Tenkaichi and Budokai HD.

[GogetaSSJ2]

After watching a few of dbzanto playing this, I noticed its the same frigging music we got in Ultimate Tenkaichi and Budokai HD.

Well they are on a tight budget...and this game shows it...

[Sting]

The game already has an infinite and a gamebreaking glitch. The infinite also gives you Nappa like armour so you can't be touched. Even Supers fail.

I won't go into detail but if it's still in the full game there's going to be a lot of problems online if anybody figures it out.

Another glitch gives you the exact same effect as this except you can move.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9xD5Ssyzag


Nappa can also break out of Synchronized Rush and normal attacks.

[Jord]

Is there any way to charge your Ki in this game?