The news struck us all by surprise: BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment announced so completely out of nowhere, on November 16, DRAGON BALL: THE BREAKERS, a title asymmetrical multiplayer where, along the lines of titles like Dead By Daylight, a group of seven “normal” players must be able to escape from the clutches of a much stronger single player (the Raider) which instead must prevent the escape of the survivors at all costs. A few days later a closed beta, however only available on PC. The title will be released in 2022 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC and Nintendo Switch: however, we still do not know the exact date. We tried the closed beta of DRAGON BALL: THE BREAKERS on Steam, therefore, but we did not come out particularly enthusiastic: since the release date has not yet been announced, we hope that Dimps be able to quickly resolve at least some of the problems encountered in this network test.
The game first opens with the ability to create our very own Survivor through a editor, quite gaunt actually, or the playable character who can then be aesthetically modified at any time through a shop present in the main game hub, also by purchasing additional clothes and costumes through in-game credits after each match. This is because we are not going to immerse ourselves in the shoes of the historical characters of the franchise, but only in very normal people, the classic passers-by who are obliterated by the energy wave on duty in one of the many mass slaughters that i villain of Dragon Ball love to perpetrate: certainly not able to resist characters like Freezer, Cell or Majin Buu, and therefore the primary gameplay mechanism of this THE BREAKERS is explained.
Placed in the main hub after having created and renamed our character, it will be possible to explore a little bit the shops present, or jump right into the fray. These range from simple cosmetic shops, to shops in which to buy Transfer, that is the artifacts that will allow us to transform ourselves into the Warriors Z, and a certain component appears to be present as well gacha in Transfer and in Skill that we can get randomly. Unfortunately, the tutorials explaining the various game mechanics in the hub are only present in the form of a tedious drop-down menu, which it will explain through text and static images: certainly not the best of experiences and certainly one of the reasons that leads us to define the learning curves of the game still as really too confusing, even if the text is at least completely localized in Italian.
Entering an eight-person lobby, seven will become the survivors and only one will be the Reaper. In this Network Test, there is only one map, that is an area that includes the arena of the Cell Game, and some surrounding hills and valleys. So, the only Reaper available is Cell. The seven survivors are characters drawn in spite of themselves into a temporal rift, and their main purpose will be to find seven keys scattered around the map and activate the Super Time Machine, to escape an inevitable cruel fate.. These keys are scattered in various areas of a decidedly vast and labyrinthine map: the survivors must therefore work as a team to find them quickly, while further exploration will still lead us to obtain certain benefits, such as saving NPCs hidden in caves or in the cellars of buildings. for a bonus score, or some weapons to keep the Reaper at bay. Fighting with him openly is virtually impossible, even using one Trasfera to temporarily transform into Piccolo & mates, because the combat system has obvious limitations (of woodiness and usefulness) and it was therefore certainly intended as a last resort when escape is no longer possible.
It seems (as often happens in these games) that the player in the role of the Reaper has more fun playing THE BREAKERS: who in this case starts as Cell in the larval stage, who will have to focus first on the non-playable characters by devouring them, to then evolve to the first stage and start actively chasing players, with powers far beyond theirs. In this case, often not acting as a team means certain death, as I have seen in the matches I have tried, where everyone seemed at least as confused as I was about what actually had to be done to activate the Super Time Machine. The Reaper can also be effectively defeated by the Z-Fighters who came out of the Transfere, though this rarely happens, as it requires good team play that unfortunately we were unable to find in the matches we tried in this test. The tension builds as the Reaper’s powers grow, although the final stages of the game when it all revolves around activating the time machine seems to force the truly unequal fights between a raider now too powerful to stop a little too much. .
If the game design has only partially convinced us, the part that seems to require more extra work at the moment while waiting for the release is still the technical one: the polygonal models, animations and maps, practically recycled from Xenoverse 2, somehow look uglier to look at, with plasticky models, crazy aliasing, and the overall impression that the game was running at a scaled rendering resolution of less than 100%. It did not go better as regards the sound sector, with missing or very low quality audio effects, hardly any in-game music outside the hub and generally a very low-tense atmosphere, given that however (at least for the maps we tested) the action took place in broad daylight, with the enemy often clearly visible in the distance or even more often reported by the scouter of some survivor.
In short, at the moment this tie-in it looks like an experiment, a desire to innovate a franchise with a smaller-scale project, dedicated to entertaining a few games with friends but without very big ambitions; almost an additional mode of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2, elevated to title stand alone. There are some nice ideas, but the atmosphere of Dead by Daylight and also “minor” titles of the past like EVOLVE is almost totally lost on the street given the much, too much confusion on the screen. Let’s hope we’re wrong, and that BANDAI NAMCO and developer Dimps will be able to improve this product as much as possible ahead of launch.
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