So my initial impression when discovering Dragon Ball FighterZ is that it is a hybird between Guilty Gear Xrd and Marvel vs Capcom 2. It's a 3-3 fighter in the same way as Marvel vs Capcom series and the 3D graphical style is like Guilty Gear Xrd but superseding. It has some elements similar to other famous Arc System Works fighting games and especially that the Super and Instant Kill moves take the 3D animated scenes to the next level. Even the match's intro and outro are superseding at best like the fighters clash in 3D animated scene while the announcer is saying out the match quotes for instance. In Guilty Gear Xrd starting with Revelator, when the round is being announced by the announcer, the camera moves down from top to bottom before the round starts.
For Story Mode, it is sort of like Guilty Gear Xrd's Story Mode where everything is 3D animated but even better as Guilty Gear Xrd's Story Mode has some minor flaws like the separate windows of characters talking to each other like it's a different and unusual way to advance the visual novel gaming to the next level. It's kind of like two different screens of characters in different scenes talking on the phone or something. Also, there will be battles in the Story Mode in Dragon Ball FighterZ although the flaw is that you'll end up fighting clones or some sort. For Street Fighter V and Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, there are battles where you end up fighting enemy guards, enemy soldiers or even brainwashed dolls for SFV in addition to the standard battles. Why put in enemy soldiers or guards as fighting game opponents? A scene of characters tackling those enemies should be enough or perhaps, a modern 2D beat-em-up game where the camera switches to 3D mode for conversation and 2D mode for gameplay.
Graphics-wise, the game uses Unreal Engine 4 and it has superseded Guilty Gear Xrd in various ways. If there were problems in 3D character models for Guilty Gear Xrd, then the workaround the developers came up with was the swapping of parts of the models or something. Another challenge is that the characters may end up clipping through each other when they get too close during the fight. Through similar graphical techniques, the cell-shaded graphics match the modern Dragon Ball cartoon shows quite well although I might have seen portions of the classic Dragon Ball cartoons back then in my childhood. One thing I can recall is the scene where Goku's body was swapped by some opponent. Another thing I can recall is the Ginyu Force whose introduction is ridiculous.
It's a massive improvement over the previous Dragon Ball games developed by Arc System Works on 3DS. This one's a big effort from them and as of this writing, it seems that they need more time on creating assets for other characters for Blazblue Cross Tag Battle which is half-finished by the time of its release in terms of character roster. Not to mention that the game's release on PS4, Xbox One and Steam with Unreal Engine 4 has proven the amount of graphical potential done to it while retaining the similar techniques as Guilty Gear Xrd. Why can't Blazblue Cross Tag Battle go next-gen like it's beyond me? I mean the assets are one-era behind for Blazblue Cross Tag Battle although I don't know if the sprites will have much higher resolution or some kind.
Dragon Ball FighterZ is a must buy for fans of fighting games and Dragon Ball franchise. It may have finished off Marvel vs Capcom Infinite through its badass concepts and is said to be one of the best modern Dragon Ball fighting games for years to come.
