As everyone that knows, I am a huge Dragon Ball fan. Whenever a new game gets announced, I get all giddy because I feel I’m being brought back to my childhood. In fact, one of my dreams is to be able to travel to Japan someday and bask in the glory of everything Dragon Ball related there including games. Among the tons of games Japan gets, there was one that caught my attention, and it was Super Dragon Ball Heroes. DB Heroes is really big in Japan and has around eight different games released in different platforms like Arcade IOS and 3DS (the 3ds versions being highly popular). DB Heroes is a card-based RPG that features a plethora of characters from the DB universe, some fan favorites, and new characters unique to the game, and for a DB fan like myself, this game is heaven.
The game’s story is about a young boy (or girl) who arrives at the city that breathes and lives for Dragon Ball. Here, the Super Dragon Ball Heroes game is the rage–with tournaments being made every day and with tons of stores that carry everything a DB lover could want. He/She has no experience in the game, but after a chance encounter with The Great Saiyaman 3, our hero gets involved in a strange series of events. These events see characters from the game coming to the real world to wreak havoc, and it is up to him (or her) to stop the villians threatening the world while fighting alongside great heroes like Goku and Vegeta. This is the story in a nutshell.
Now like I mentioned above, SDBH is a turn-based RPG in which you use cards portraying DB characters to defeat foes. It sounds simple, but this is a game that has a lot of depth and strategy that is tons of fun once you get the hang of it. However, an issue here is that the player input in this game is limited. It boils down to putting your seven character cards on the field, select which cards will attack, which cards will recover stamina, and when your preparations are done, then you just watch the cards act. Depending on what you choose, you can go all out and deal massive damage with super attacks or keep it safe. Keeping it safe will havee characters recover stamina during one turn so the next one you can wipe out your opponent.
I really like how the game explains everything to you in a series of tutorial battles (that is why I don’t mention anything about how to do things since the tutorial is well made), so you can get up to speed quickly. While the player input is limited, it doesn’t mean that you can ignore what is happening on the screen since some cards have special effects that activate after certain conditions are met. For example, the Goku Kaioken card has a special action that can trigger at any time and allows you to do an x20 Kamehameha. In order to do it though, you must do the Kamehameha motions on either touch screen( if you are playing in handheld mode) or with the stick. Each successful input increases the move’s power ending with a cool cinematic and tons of damage to the enemy. Other moves such as SS4 Xeno Vegeta God Meteor, will deal damage to stamina at the beginning of the enemy’s turn in addition to dealing a lot of damage from the move itself. These are just some examples of the many many cards and cool effects they possess.
Graphically the game looks interesting since the characters designs look a lot like the Budokai games. This is not a bad thing since this is a game within a game, although sometimes they look a little rough around the edges. The gameplay and the different Super attacks look so good, that after a while you come to love how the game looks (Note: as of the time of writing, an update was released that makes character models look better).
The music is good which is what I was expecting so I have no complaints there. I definitely love that the game has online and local multiplayer, since being able to play against someone online and see the strategies they come up with, and put yours against theirs is really fun. I also like to play the user submitted missions, and the ability to create your own cards as well is awesome. These elements give the game almost limitless replay value because if you beat the main story mode, you have the user missions to look forward. Some may be silly, but they are all still fun to play.
Bottom Line: Super Dragon Ball Heroes World Mission exceeded my expectations, and it is the best way to get into the world of DB Heroes. There are a ton of cards to collect, the gameplay is fun and addictive and the online battles are great. I cannot recommend it enough, and if you are a DB fan then you don’t need to look further this game has it all, and if not there is not a better time to become one.
A Review code was provided for this review.