Dragon Ball Fighterz Open Beta Review (PS4)

This is the beta version for Dragon Ball Fighterz, available on PlayStation Store for download. The beta duration is pretty short, so download it as soon as possible.

This game is developed by Arc System Works and published by Bandai Namco. The beta feels pretty good to play, with smooth animations, controls, and good variety of playable characters.

The beta only allows access to online matches, which can be either Ranked Matches or Casual Matches. You may also play the Tutorial Mode to learn the basics of the fighting controls.

Basically, this game plays a bit like Marvel vs. Capcom games, where you must choose a team of three chracters and fight against your opponent's team choice of three characters. The match will be decided if either one side has all of the fighters knocked out. You can tag your backup character when fighting, to conserve his/her health as well as to bring pressure on your enemies.

The fighting controls is simple, as you have four attack buttons dedicated to different attacks, such as Auto-combo button, medium attack, heavy attack, and Ki attack. Each character also has their own special attacks, such as Goku has access to Kamehameha. Other game controls include dashing to pursue your enemies when they are knocked into mid-air, as well as the Dragon Rush ability to hit an enemy with a powerful multi-hit combo. Special attacks also consume your Ki, which can be recharged manually or by attacking enemies.

The graphics is simply great. One of the best looking anime-styled fighting games I have ever seen so far. Animations are great too, and the character models look great like their anime counterparts. This beta also has both English and Japanese voice acting, which is neat. The soundtrack is also phenomenal.

The online matches ran well most of the time, and I have only one disconnection so far. Got good  share of wins and losses, and I enjoy fighting against the online players so far.

However, I find that the beta has issues, specifically the game balance. The auto-combo seems extremely overpowered, and there is no advancing guard feature to avoid your fighters being pushed back easily.

This is a 2D styled game worth trying out, and I suggest Dragon Ball fans to try out the beta as soon as possible before making the final purchase.

Possible day one buy, but with some reservations.

**Image is from official PlayStation game page.