Dragonball Fusions Review

FUUUuuuuuSION - HUH!?

Dragonball: Fusions is a one of a kind unique experience to come to the Dragon Ball fan service, an ultimate pizza pie for fans in a good sort of way - you have a game that presents classic characters in a not so normal setting, which opens up to the premise of the game: FUSIONS GALORE!

Story:

If you’re new to the series, or just getting acquainted, DB:Fusions is a good place to go. The game doesn’t really introduce the characters with any background but rather has fun with itself, opening a new world where you make your own character and enter this alternate realm that is some sort of mash up with time, featuring the world tournament. The game isn’t afraid to joke on some of it’s old tropes, as well as make cat calls toward the new series which is heavily influenced in here (as seen currently on Toonami as Dragon Ball Super) The story premise is at best, average and should not be the reason to buy the game.

Gameplay:

DB:Fusions is a mediocre riot. While you can have a blast in the first few hours recruiting characters and finding out the key to a bunch of fusions, you’ll soon get burnt out on combat which is played like stale chess. You get a triangular tree of which fighter type beats what - Speed, Technique, or Strength. It hardly comes to any importance later on as you are slaughtering enemies with your fused Tien/Chiaotzu or Kid Goku and Krillin, as you quest on to unlock newer characters in story and eventually RNG methods of opening time holes.

The game does not explain enough however, and how you need required energy to fuse some characters as well as completing alternate objectives, so sometimes you are shooting in the dark or going to gamefaqs forums to figure out what the hell is going on. Battle system is in a ring like setting with 6 fighters on each side dolling out moves in any particular fashion. CPU is kind of broken and will frequently just target one of your characters at a time.  As you fill your ultimate gauge you will unlock the “Zenkai attack” which is used to impress and recruit other characters, or you can chose to do your full team fusion which opens a small combat segment and makes you an overpowered pile of crap for 1 minute in this fighting sequence. You'll later have to collect energy by recruiting random opponents which gets old - just to pursue to next stage.

Graphics:

If DB:Fusions is one thing, it’s beautiful. For the chibi aesthetic they used, it fits the game's sense of style very well adding a nice layer of playfulness to the game that lets you really take the game for what it’s offering. Flying around in the games sub-world is really neat as you see the wind blowing against you, or blowing through the water. For a 3DS game it does get some impressive moments down.

Sound:

Sound sucks. The voices are not translated and even the Japanese ones feature a lot of the same voice actors for the random characters just screaming, or the subtitle text just being complimented with “Nyaaahhh!” or “Eeeeeeeeeeaaayyeeeh~” something about it doesn’t sit right with me. Soundtrack is garbage and sub-par, only two or three battle tracks that are EXCESSIVELY used, the open world flight is about the only pleasing 3 minute loop I can enjoy. For sound department, this is one of the worse I’ve seen.

Controls:

Not much to say here, you got your standard selection of moves like any RPG but nothing really live-time except “Zenkai attacks” where you kinda go ham on your opponent by bashing b or y to shoot some beams, but it’s only for a few seconds and really cannot contribute too much to the game.

My Experience:

This is one of the oddest games for me to review. As a die-hard fan of the entire series DB: Fusions served me very well and kept me easily entertained for OVER 60 HOURS. I would play this game everywhere! For some odd reason, I just loved it despite how painfully average it is, the game is great if you are a fan and wanting to unlock all 1000+ random characters and main characters with fusions and just endless endless choices. However, beating the game was a pinnacle for me as I haven’t felt the urgency to play the game again, as well as finding myself bored in “key moments” just because I wanted to recruit more main characters and try to unlock whacky fusions. If you are buying this game for an experience, you’re going to get something more of a collect-a-thon for the Dragon Ball fans, which again worked for me.

FINAL SCORE: 6/10

Dragon Ball fusions is just an average game with a lot of cool ideas. If it wasn’t for low key effort on delivering this new concept, it would definitely of done better. I do see this game as a sleeper and I definitely think more people should pick it up for it’s price but again, be careful what you are getting into as it is not a game for everyone.