Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle is the official smartphone game from BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc. that fans have been waiting to play for years.
Combining the fun of a bubble shooter with the strategy of a collectible card game, Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle taps into the expansive lore of the Dragon Ball universe to create a free-to-play experience that fans and newcomers alike will enjoy. The presentation is really polished, even down to the fast-paced fighting scenes reminiscent of the battles I used to rush home from school to watch on Toonami. And since Akira Toriyama has returned after 18 years to write the new Dragon Ball Super series, there’s a whole new generation of fans searching for all things Dragon Ball to consume.
The crux of Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle involves moving around a game board, collecting power-ups, and engaging in fights with enemies. Fights are flashy but simple, as all you have to do is tap the multicolored bubbles between your character and the opponent to deal damage. Like a Pokémon battle, selecting the right character type and bubble colors can make the difference between super effective attacks or not being very effective at all. The bubble placement and colors are random, but you do get to pick which characters get to fight alongside you. Well, kind of.
To recreate the best battles in Dragon Ball Z history, the ones that you and your friends still argue about to this day, you’ll need to collect Dragon Stones to summon Super Rare characters and add them to your collection. Earning these Dragon Stones is as easy as winning a boss battle at the end of each quest in the progressive (albeit convoluted) story, or you can just buy them for a few dollars. It’s certainly not needed to progress at a steady rate, but if you have an extra $44.99 lying around for 90 Dragon Stones, then it will certainly speed Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle up a bit.
The best and worst part of Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle is how much time you can sink into it without realizing you’ve done so. While each encounter could theoretically be over in minutes, it’s strategically important to take the time to line up your fighters to earn bonus stat boosts and select which enemies to knock out first. There are daily and weekly events to collect items to train your team and new Super Rare characters, and three levels of difficulty for each map in the extensive story mode. You’ll also never have enough stamina (literally, figuratively, or in-game) to do everything you’d like to do in a session. In fact, chances are the battery in your smartphone will run out of power before you’re done playing for the day.
Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle is fan service at its best and simplistic at its worst. The pacing of the fights is slowed down by the vast amount of dialogue, but then again, that’s been an issue in the Dragon Ball universe since Goku was a child with a monkey tail flying around on the Nimbus cloud. The game is free after all, so give it a shot. What’s the worst that can happen on a quest to save the world with a time traveling teen from the future?
Dragon Ball Z: Dokkan Battle is now available in the App Store and Google Play.