Whatever you do, DO NOT PLAY THE PS3 VERSION OF THIS GAME!!!! I got that one when it first released and holy crap is it a 0.5/5 experience. Runs at like 2 frames per second if there's anything more than 2 characters on screen and has massive input delay. Like it's actually unplayable. If you managed to finish the campaign on it, you are a true Super Saiyan God.
With that said, this is my second time (I think) playing through this game. I previously did so on PS4 and enjoyed it a lot, even if it had room for improvement. Then Xenoverse 2 released and kind of rendered this game pointless outside of playing it to get a decent partner for some story segments in Xenoverse 2 and being able to transfer more annoying skills over at the start of the game. I am reviewing it based on how it'd be to play today instead of when it first released, although I'll try to only bring up how Xenoverse 2 improved things if it's important.
The gameplay is your pretty standard anime arena fighter. You're given a small area to fight 1 or multiple opponents in and can use special skills that can range from fancy punches and kicks to colorful lasers and massive balls of destruction. The thing that sets this game apart is the amount of customization with your character. Dragon Ball games have had different forms of customization in the past. The Budokai series allowed you to create custom movesets based on what skills you wanted to use. The Tenkaichi games had some light RPG mechanics (along with games like the Legacy of Goku series). Ultimate Tenkaichi even let you create a custom character to go through the story. However, Xenoverse takes it to another level. The amount of customization when it comes to your moveset is kind of crazy. You can equip 4 special moves, 3 ultimate moves (which can also be a transformation since those take up the same slot), and a dodge move. There's also an insane amount of clothing options that all affect your stats in different ways and things called Z-Souls that give you special abilities when certain criteria are met like boosting a certain stat when a partner dies, powering up specific special and ultimate moves, reviving you on death, etc. The problem with this game, though, is keeping all of this balanced. This is more a problem with fighting the CPU than actual human players, but like once you unlock Super Saiyan and get Death Ball, the game is over. Super Saiyan makes it so your ki doesn't deplete when using skills, but the gauge is constantly draining. Just keep charging it when you start getting low and you're good. Death Ball does a pretty good job of tracking the target so just keep spamming it and not much will get you.
This does bring up another problem, though. Despite the game allowing you to play as one of 5 races that somewhat have different things they specialize in (although not enough to really be noticable), it HEAVILY favors Saiyans. Nearly all of the powerups can only be used by Saiyans and the others don't really get much to work with in comparison. This is a thing Xenoverse 2 addressed when it first released, but then just made the problem worse with later updates. I get it, Saiyans are the main race in the anime so of course they'd get the most tools, but it also makes it seem silly to play as anything else, at least on your first run through the game.
What did make me enjoy the game, though, was the story. Yes you're going through the anime's story for the 200th time, but this one tries to mix things up a bit. You're basically doing a bunch of "What if..." scenarios and they're kind of interesting to see play out. Although I will say by the time you get to Cell, the game kind of runs out of ideas and just starts rushing towards the end at a breakneck pace. There's definitely more that could be done with the concept and it does get expanded on in 2 a bit.
As for any final things I wanted to mention, mentors are really bad in this one. You can only learn skills from them as your friendship level increases which just goes up in the background as you keep them as your master. It goes up really slowly, like I had Pan as my master from near the start of the game and by the time I finished she still had 1 more skill I couldn't learn. The game also has just too much RNG when it comes to unlocking skills. Like take the mission that gives you Super Saiyan as an example. It's a mission where you help Frieza take out Goku and friends. In order to get Super Saiyan, you have to trigger Goku into transforming. To do that, you have to make sure you kill Krillen before going after Goku. This all sounds easy, and it is, but the problem is none of this is guaranteed to happen. You could do everything right, but because the RNG said no, Goku won't transform. Even if he does transform, the RNG can still say "No" and you won't get Super Saiyan. It took me around 10 or so attempts at this mission before I finally got it.
I think that's all I wanted to say. Dragon Ball Xenoverse was a fun game when it first released, but if you played 2 then it just feels like a massive downgrade. There's not enough different between the two to justify this one being worth going back to outside of transferring data to 2.
With that said, this is my second time (I think) playing through this game. I previously did so on PS4 and enjoyed it a lot, even if it had room for improvement. Then Xenoverse 2 released and kind of rendered this game pointless outside of playing it to get a decent partner for some story segments in Xenoverse 2 and being able to transfer more annoying skills over at the start of the game. I am reviewing it based on how it'd be to play today instead of when it first released, although I'll try to only bring up how Xenoverse 2 improved things if it's important.
The gameplay is your pretty standard anime arena fighter. You're given a small area to fight 1 or multiple opponents in and can use special skills that can range from fancy punches and kicks to colorful lasers and massive balls of destruction. The thing that sets this game apart is the amount of customization with your character. Dragon Ball games have had different forms of customization in the past. The Budokai series allowed you to create custom movesets based on what skills you wanted to use. The Tenkaichi games had some light RPG mechanics (along with games like the Legacy of Goku series). Ultimate Tenkaichi even let you create a custom character to go through the story. However, Xenoverse takes it to another level. The amount of customization when it comes to your moveset is kind of crazy. You can equip 4 special moves, 3 ultimate moves (which can also be a transformation since those take up the same slot), and a dodge move. There's also an insane amount of clothing options that all affect your stats in different ways and things called Z-Souls that give you special abilities when certain criteria are met like boosting a certain stat when a partner dies, powering up specific special and ultimate moves, reviving you on death, etc. The problem with this game, though, is keeping all of this balanced. This is more a problem with fighting the CPU than actual human players, but like once you unlock Super Saiyan and get Death Ball, the game is over. Super Saiyan makes it so your ki doesn't deplete when using skills, but the gauge is constantly draining. Just keep charging it when you start getting low and you're good. Death Ball does a pretty good job of tracking the target so just keep spamming it and not much will get you.
This does bring up another problem, though. Despite the game allowing you to play as one of 5 races that somewhat have different things they specialize in (although not enough to really be noticable), it HEAVILY favors Saiyans. Nearly all of the powerups can only be used by Saiyans and the others don't really get much to work with in comparison. This is a thing Xenoverse 2 addressed when it first released, but then just made the problem worse with later updates. I get it, Saiyans are the main race in the anime so of course they'd get the most tools, but it also makes it seem silly to play as anything else, at least on your first run through the game.
What did make me enjoy the game, though, was the story. Yes you're going through the anime's story for the 200th time, but this one tries to mix things up a bit. You're basically doing a bunch of "What if..." scenarios and they're kind of interesting to see play out. Although I will say by the time you get to Cell, the game kind of runs out of ideas and just starts rushing towards the end at a breakneck pace. There's definitely more that could be done with the concept and it does get expanded on in 2 a bit.
As for any final things I wanted to mention, mentors are really bad in this one. You can only learn skills from them as your friendship level increases which just goes up in the background as you keep them as your master. It goes up really slowly, like I had Pan as my master from near the start of the game and by the time I finished she still had 1 more skill I couldn't learn. The game also has just too much RNG when it comes to unlocking skills. Like take the mission that gives you Super Saiyan as an example. It's a mission where you help Frieza take out Goku and friends. In order to get Super Saiyan, you have to trigger Goku into transforming. To do that, you have to make sure you kill Krillen before going after Goku. This all sounds easy, and it is, but the problem is none of this is guaranteed to happen. You could do everything right, but because the RNG said no, Goku won't transform. Even if he does transform, the RNG can still say "No" and you won't get Super Saiyan. It took me around 10 or so attempts at this mission before I finally got it.
I think that's all I wanted to say. Dragon Ball Xenoverse was a fun game when it first released, but if you played 2 then it just feels like a massive downgrade. There's not enough different between the two to justify this one being worth going back to outside of transferring data to 2.