Asymmetrical multiplayer games abound these days, but few have even touched Behavior Interactive’s Dead by Daylight. Dead by Daylight’s formula of pitting original and licensed horror villains against helpless survivors is a successful one, so it’s no surprise others are taking notice. Other developers have tried making Dead by Daylight-style games with varying degrees of success, the latest being Dragon Ball: The Breakers from Dimps and Bandai Namco Entertainment.
Combining Dragon Ball and Dead by Daylight might seem like a ridiculous idea to many, but it works out much better than expected. Dragon Ball: The Breakers is a 1v7 match in which seven survivors face off against a villain, or “Breaker,” as the game calls it. Dragon Ball: The Breakers’ Villain List is a who’s who of famous DBZ villains, including Frieza, Cell, Majin Buu, and more. Dragon Ball: The Raiders in The Breakers are tasked with eliminating all survivors, who must work together to activate the “Super Time Machine” and escape.
Dragon Ball: Survivors in The Breakers must collect keys and activate super time machines by holding down buttons in specific areas of the map. It’s not unlike activating a generator in Dead by Daylight, and the resulting action feels very similar to Behaviour’s horror games. Still, the survivors in Dragon Ball: The Breakers are more capable of defending themselves than the DBD survivors.
Dragon Ball: The Breakers Survivor is equipped with a gun which, while not very useful against super enemies like Cell and Majin Buu, can be used to destroy objects to find items. They have various skills to avoid hunting, and they can also summon the power of various Dragon Ball heroes to enhance their combat effectiveness. Survivors can only transform into these characters for a short amount of time, so they must coordinate these abilities with other players to make the most of them and thwart the villains.
If the survivors manage to activate the super time machine, the villains can still destroy it. This is where survivors have to really work together because protecting it becomes a priority. If they fail, which seems to happen in almost every game where they don’t hang out with their friends, then they have to escape the map using special escape pods. The villain still wins the game, but some survivors can escape if they’re quick enough.
The basic concept of Dragon Ball: The Breakers is fun. Playing as a survivor is fine, but playing as a villain is where the game really shines. The game doesn’t weaken the villains in any real way, even giving them the ability to destroy entire sections of the map. Picking up Survivor as a very powerful Dragon Ball Z villain one by one is a real good time, but there are also some serious shortcomings that keep the game from reaching its full potential and may prevent it from reaching the same heights as other games school.
Dragon Ball : The biggest problem in The Breakers is the pairing, which is very inconsistent. Sometimes players can get into a game within a few minutes, but other times we have to wait in line for half an hour or more. Playing as a raider is also very rare, which is the most fun, and those who play solo get tired of having to play survivors with random people who either don’t know how to play or are bad at communicating.
When players actually play, Dragon Ball: The Breakers is mostly good, but has some major drawbacks. One, the game was limited to three maps at launch, which didn’t offer much variety, and two, navigating through these maps can sometimes be a headache. The main problem is the camera, which has players running from one side of the screen to the other before adjusting themselves. This can be disorienting, especially in the heat of the game.
Another big blow to Dragon Ball : The Breakers’ core gameplay is its combat. While it’s refreshing to finally have a new Dragon Ball game, it’s not another long line of DBZ fighting games, and it would be nice to have better fighting mechanics. Things are pretty unwieldy here, and it’s hard to tell which attacks are landing.
Players will get used to the clunkiness of Dragon Ball: The Breakers, but then need to consider the over monetization of the game. Dragon Ball: The Breakers is a hodgepodge of video game monetization, combining microtransactions, battle passes, and capsule mechanics all rolled into one. This would be easier to overlook if it was a free-to-play game rather than a paid product, but for some reason Dragon Ball: The Breakers is $20. It seems like a pointless barrier to entry when one thinks the goal is to get as many people as possible into the game in an attempt to sell microtransactions.
Many players will be turned off by the monetization of Dragon Ball: The Breakers, but the good news is that they can still get a lot of stuff in the game without paying a penny. Much of what players earn comes in the form of cosmetic items that they can use to customize their characters. Players will also have the opportunity to play as classic Dragon Ball characters Oolong and Bulma, if they choose.
Dragon Ball: The Breakers and more coming soon. In fact, word has already surfaced that Great Ape Vegeta may appear in the game’s second season. Dragon Ball: The Breakers is a game that was rough at launch but could be greatly improved with updates. Moving to an entirely free-to-play monetization model would do wonders for the game, and it seems likely that it could head in that direction, so Dragon Ball fans might want to wait and see.
Dragon Ball: The Breakers is available for PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One. Game Rant obtained the Xbox One code for this review.