I was perusing the DBZ subreddit last week and saw several posts about a mobile game called Dokkan Battle. As an avid Dragon Ball fan, I immediately flipped over to my app store and downloaded the free (WOOT!) game and gave it a spin.
Just about every free minute of my time since then has been spent in-game.
The mechanics are simple yet gameplay does require a fair bit of strategy and the highest difficulty level (Z-Hard) is nearly impossible until you Awaken a few of your team’s cards (more on this later) and is still tough when you do manage such.
[divider] Dragon Ball Dokkan Battle: Gameplay [/divider]I won’t say much about the narrative of the campaign…Basically there is some sort of time stream disturbance and Trunks escorts you from stage to stage. It matters little, as the narrative cutscenes are completely skippable and I don’t need a grounded reason to manage a fight between some of my favorite characters of all time!
You assemble your team of Z-Warriors and/or nefarious baddies from across the universe to do battle against numerous familiar faces from the franchise. Each level has you move along a board-game-like path – navigating tricks (like additional fights and HP hits) and treats (including items and ki boosts) alike – until arriving at the boss towards the end.
In each skirmish, your team collects ki to boost their attack power. Collect enough ki and you can unleash a super move, and manage that with a full Dokkan bar and you trigger a sort of quicktime event that deals even more damage. Every attack is well animated, but after an hour or so of gameplay you’ll be glad there is a little 2x button on the righthand side of your screen that doubles the speed at which they progress because they do stale quickly. Defeat the baddies, level up, and prepare for the next encounter.
[divider] Dragon Ball Dokkan Battle: Final Verdict [/divider]I stinking love this game and can’t put it down. Dragon Stones are my new crack cocaine and my Stamina can’t recharge fast enough to suit my cravings. All of the animation is true and beautiful, too! I give it a 9 out of 10, and mostly because I wish there was a way to tell what color each level’s boss was going to be before selecting my 7th character. I’m actually working on compiling a “cheat sheet” for this site, so keep an eye out for that!
I also have a gripe about the Summon system. There seems to be no advantage to summoning 10 characters at once with the Multi-Summon…Either make it advantageous to save for so long, or allow users to summon 2-9 instead of 1 or 10. This is particularly annoying with the Friends Point summons as they happen more frequently.
The Awaken system should have a cue mechanic that lets you know when you have all the medals necessary to Awaken a character. As it stands, you have to tap on each character to see where you stand. Tedious. And as of yet, you see no transformations outside of SSJ1 for good guys or bad guys. Hopefully that is coming down the pipe! Playing as SSJ3 Goku or against one of Frieza’s many forms would be satisfying, for sure.
My ID number 1,387,903,343 if you want to join forces with my increasingly-mighty team.
Click through to the next page for gameplay Tips and Strategy during combat, training, summoning Shenron, and more!
Tabletop Takeaways: Tips for Dungeon Masters with a Narrative Spin