Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3 Spices Up Anime Fighters With the Soul Switching Mechanic | IGN Preview

Key Preview Takeaways:

• Xenoverse 3 leans into the near-fact that most players want to play as their favorite character.
• Raid gameplay combats the monotony and predictability in many other arena fighters.
• Soul Switching kicks ass.

I think fans of series like Dragon Ball are probably tired of the same old anime fighter – I know I am. If you’ve booted one up, you’ve probably experienced their repetitive formula that hasn’t meaningfully changed in well over a decade. As fun as it is to remember an iconic standoff, I think I’d rather just rewatch it (or a fan edit) instead of hammering away at the same button for a few minutes. And from a distance, I’d forgive anime fans for thinking that Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3 is just another mashy arena fighter caked in glitzy fan service.

Instead, a beefy demo hosted at Bandai Namco headquarters in Tokyo reminded me that developer Dimps is among the best at making these. The demo session focused exclusively on co-op multiplayer, with no mention of the arena fighter mode. Focused on fun and fan service, this game’s seemingly sprawling lobbies and chill, raid-style co-op levels indicate a ton of potential as a digital third space. Some of the more repetitive aspects you’ll find in a lot of anime brawlers are still there, it’s true, but Xenoverse 3 handles them better than most, twisting and expanding them around raids. And to fight that staleness even more, Dimps brings a dizzying amount of customization to the toy chest that they’re stocking with anything a fan could ask for.

Set in Age 1000, many of the series’ most iconic heroes and villains are long gone, leaving room for you to forge your own story in Xenoverse 3’s seemingly deep RPG-like progression. They’ll still show up in their own way – after all, what’s a Dragon Ball game without Goku and Vegeta – but this isn’t the era most fans will know. Brought to life using leftover documents from late Dragon Ball artist and creator Akira Toriyama, Xenoverse 3 is a pillar of the brand’s push into this new era. That will show in its story, which Bandai Namco claims is the longest in the series’ history, but also in the art.

This setting lightens Xenoverse 3’s load in following up 2, which stands in rarified air. Thanks to years of support and a dedicated player base, this setting removes 3 from needing to directly follow up 2, which is still surprisingly current considering its age. That’s also given its strong player community a good reason to keep it alive for nearly 10 years. Age 1000 feels like a convenient tonal and artistic zag, letting the longtime DBX team help establish this new era in the wake of Akira Toriyama’s passing. That said, my demo and subsequent group interview mostly focused on multiplayer. If you’d like to hear more about Age 1000, Xenoverse 3’s solo content, and the protagonist’s messy room, we went hands-on back in June and had an extended interview with the team.

Like that last demo, mine started with a choice between four races: Human, Saiyan, Namekian, and Frieza – two more than last time. I opted for the Namekian on my first run through a raid; an homage to The Dad Who Stepped Up, Piccolo. After picking my character and loading into the infamous messy room from our last article (didn’t seem that bad to me), representatives from Bandai Namco shuttled us into the main multiplayer lobby. They were pretty careful about getting us to where we needed to go, so I didn’t get a good look at everything going on behind the scenes of the multiplayer. But what little I saw seemed pretty big for a simple lobby.

This makes sense; Xenoverse 2 was ahead of the curve with its online suite. If you’ve played a fighting game in the last few years, you’ve certainly seen its influence. Turning a multiplayer menu into a navigable hub world changed how people played fighting games online. From VR Chat to Fortnite, these digital third spaces have become even more important to and celebrated by online communities since that big swing 10 years ago. It’s a clever bet on the Xenoverse player community that’s sure to pay off in spades if it’s taken.

Once everyone from my group session had assembled in the notably smaller pregame lobby area, I stopped flying around the room and got ready for the first battle. Before hitting that ready-up button, I snooped around the customization menus, choosing a pre-baked costume to ensure an all-around, special-heavy play style, powering up my ranged attacks and special moves without skimping on the other important stuff. The session was relatively short, so I didn’t have enough time to play dress-up, but it seems like you’ll be able to chase function and form in equal measure in the final game. From there, we jumped into the first fight: 50-Foe Fracas.

As advertised, this punch-em-all-till-they’re-dead, 50-enemy fight was pretty straightforward. That horde-style battle fits Xenoverse’s somewhat simple combat system like a glove. Just like the last few games, this execution of the Dragon Ball power fantasy brings the right balance of oomph and speed to each punch, dash, and beam. Xenoverse 3 seems like it’s leaning even more into that power fantasy than ever before with the Soul Switch system.

Whaling on bad guys fills up a special meter, which lets you channel the souls of legendary characters from across the Dragon Ball multiverse. Before I knew it, I was no longer a pre-baked Namekian. Instead, I assumed the form of the master martial artist, Tien, for 40 seconds. My new form came with his moveset and animations, helping me make light work of the Ginyu Force. In my notes, all I wrote was, “Soul Switch kicks ass.”

That Soul Switch mechanic comes with a handful of RPG-like elements, too, emphasizing the bond between your player character and the equipped soul. Dimps is working from the savvy assumption that players will probably always choose their favorite characters in a game like this. So rather than incentivizing swapping around for a specific matchup, it seems like you’ll be rewarded with new branches on a skill tree and some new voice lines for putting your eggs in one basket.

During a group Q&A after the demo, Series Producer Masayuki Hirano also pointed out that this is one of the ways he and his team are addressing the bloat that sometimes plagues these kinds of games, telling us, “There might be a lot of Gokus, but they’ll have different battle styles and movesets, which I think will give the player lots of options to play with” before adding that movesets and skill trees will also come with their own voice lines. He continued, promising, “There is something satisfying about creating that mentorship bond with different versions of characters.”

Before my second mission, I had a little more time to customize my character. This time, I changed into a glass cannon build, and changed my Mentor to Jiren. You can even customize your character’s fighting animations and fighting style, so I swapped mine to Jiren’s. These changes don’t have a meaningful impact on any mechanical difference for your created character or their stats, but it sure is cool!

The next battle saw my squad defending a pair of communication arrays in Communication is Key. This title was ironic, considering the potential issues it brought up. Coming from a more traditional multiplayer mindset, putting defensive objectives in a game that encourages an aggressive playstyle and almost requires everyone to act the hero gave me pause. No matter the genre, from Rematch to Overwatch to League of Legends, nothing kills the vibe like a teammate who won’t play the objective. I didn’t notice anything resembling a ping system (not that it would matter against a hardcore heroballer), which makes me even more concerned.

But again Hirano and co showed me just how well they know their players and the genre, telling me, “We believe Dragon Ball fans all want to charge in there and punch guys, so we want[ed] to make sure that the game was balanced and tuned to be able to do that.” He later added that groups of friends can still design their team around efficiently tackling a specific mission, but reiterated their commitment to letting players “charge in headfirst and punch guys.”

The first two missions I played definitely fit that bill; the intergalactic jobbers we squared off against were no match for my squad, especially thanks to my good pals Tien and Jiren, but the third mission we played was no walk in the park. By far the biggest chunk of the demo, this section resembled a mini dungeon (still a simple one), inside an underground lab. This time, a series of smaller, connecting areas gated by doors that only open once the room is cleared revealed new enemies. It also housed some kind of boss-lite characters that really put up a fight compared to the other two excursions. Ultimately, changing my race to a Frieza didn’t get me where I needed to go. Not even Soul Switching to Majin Buu saved us (though I am pleased to say that I was the last one standing in my group).

I didn’t have time to get another crack at that last lever, but I still got a good feel for the multiplayer side of Xenoverse 3. This bigger focus on multiplayer PvE seems like the right direction for Xenoverse. Not just because it would be tough to top Xenoverse 2 as one of the shining examples of the Anime Fighter genre and live service games in general, but as a potential tone-setter for the genre going forward.

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