Dragon Ball: The Breakers attempts to bring colour to an otherwise grim horror genre. This asymmetrical 7V1 survival multiplayer steps on the toes of Dead by Daylight and Friday the 13th. However, can something as loud and in your face as Dragon Ball excel in this niche arena?
Developed by Dimps and published by Bandai Namco, this is a multiplayer experience. What’s more, it brilliantly incorporates the Dragon Ball lore, has some incredibly unusual ideas, and is thoroughly enjoyable with the right audience. Yet, sadly, its player base is fading and trying to connect to an online match is arduous, tedious, and definitely lacking in fun. Consequently, no matter how much you love this game, its connectivity issues hold it back.
Dragon Ball: The Breakers gets off to a bad start.
Learning the fundamentals is nobody’s idea of fun. But somehow Dragon Ball: The Breakers makes it a little more horrendous. With tricky controls, mental ideas, and a linear approach, it is extremely tiresome. Thankfully, though, once you break through the learning curve, the action improves vastly.
The game can be played solo or online with up to 7 others. Each endeavour comprises 7 human survivors and a Dragon Ball villain as the raider. The aim of each round never changes as a mashup of resource gathering and combative moments culminates in a fight to the death or an ingenious escape.
The 7 survivors are sucked into a temporal rift where they must face off against some grandiose Dragon Ball characters. By utilising the massive environment, scavenging for supplies, and working together, each hero must stop Frieza, Cell, and more villains from destroying the world.
Simple concept.
Though each arena is a great sandbox world, the concept is relatively simple. The raider must skulk around the place while hunting its next victim. Whereas the survivors must collect power keys to start a time machine or fill energy cells to annihilate the raider. Alongside this, there are supplies to harvest, and some interesting combat mechanics to use.
Effectively, Dragon Ball: The Breakers is a game of cat and mouse. Each of the survivors must search marked-out zones to find key items. All the while, the raider will try to pick you off one by one. The idea isn’t new to the genre, but the crazy nature of the theme pushes it into a surreal realm.
Alongside this, transpheres can be unlocked to empower every survivor with the spirit of a fallen warrior. As such, the combination of this idea and the ability to work as a team gives the survivors some interesting tactical ideas and an advantage over the overpowered raider.
Dragon Ball: The Breakers looks dated.
Dragon Ball has such a fine pedigree that I expected Dragon Ball: The Breakers to blow me away. However: the textures aren’t great, the landscapes lack detail, and it is visually lacklustre. What’s more, minimal arenas and raiders make it unfortunately repetitive. Alongside this, it didn’t perform as smoothly as I’d have liked and this taints things further still.
I expected the audio to be loud, in your face, and distinct. Luckily, I wasn’t disappointed or let down. The cliched approach added to the theme while enhancing the drama and madness. Additionally, the loud sound effects and unique noises for each action were interesting and enjoyable to hear.
Confusing controls.
I don’t mind a tough learning curve, but Dragon Ball: The Breakers took the biscuit! With manic combat, large levels, and an all-powerful raider, shit hits the fan all the time. Consequently, I expected the layout to be more intuitive and better considered. Alongside this, the tutorial is as dull as dishwater. Subsequently, this doesn’t help matters.
Because of its rapidly fading player base, this lacks replay value and longevity. However, if you can find a lobby, you’ll enjoy the challenging and insane action as well as the opportunity to level up. On top of this, you can customise your hero while selecting unique features from the key characters of the franchise. Disappointingly, a lack of content and dead servers hold this back, though.
Dragon Ball: The Breakers is an interesting concept that has failed to take off.
I applaud the developers for their efforts, but the asymmetrical survival genre is best suited to horror. Now, I enjoyed the mashup of ideas and the Dragon Ball theme. Yet, confusing mechanics, poor visuals, and a lack of content prevent it from excelling. Accordingly, I don’t recommend that you buy it. However, more information can be found here! Will you survive, or will the overpowered raider take all the glory?
