After a small look into the A-symmetrical survival game set in the Dragon Ball universe, the closed beta left a good aftertaste with a few lingering questions. Flash forward to this past weekend, and Dragon Ball: The Breakers saw its first open Beta with an extended opportunity for the community to get in involved ahead of the upcoming October release. For a breakdown of how the game plays, head over here to the first preview that I wrote that covers the finer gameplay mechanics.

Thanks to the larger audience that had access to the game, the lengthy wait times between games were significantly reduced, save for a few hiccups along the way. I first began to queue up as a solo player out of the available party of 8 and was able to find multiple games, back-to-back with very little downtime. The match connection was also in a healthy place, especially for a Beta designed to stress test the servers throughout the entire weekend, and even though I was queuing up from Australia, I didn’t face a single disconnect, rubber banding issues, or hit detection problems once we were in the game.

The only issues we faced were when we were queuing up with 4-5 players and it could take a significantly longer time with one failed lobby. Speaking with other streamers, however, it seemed to be an issue our group faced and wasn’t a common problem for them, so I’m not sure if that was related to the game trying to find other groups of the same size trying to search at the same time. I do feel that if the game offered crossplay with other platforms, it could reduce the wait times. There are no plans for crossplay as it stands, so I do hope they have a change of heart once the game is fully released.

During the games themselves, a light touch of balancing has been swayed in favour of the Breakers early on. When playing as the Raiders, finding and consuming the NPC survivors is a quick way to level up into your next form. In the closed Beta, they seemed to be clustered together, and it was very easy to level up too quickly and take out the Breakers before the match had even gotten halfway through.

The spawn density has been tweaked and while it’s still possible to find the NPCs as the Raider, it has helped the pacing of the match, generally making the games last longer and giving more of an opportunity to reach the end game more often.

New powerful versions of existing items such as the super rocket launcher that fires faster and what seems to be a longer stun animation when it hits have been added to the game as well. The ‘Gotcha’ system, which allows you to spend currency to get summons for your super transformation as a survivor, is also tied to in-game skills. For example, pulling Krillin has a chance to come with the “Krillin’s Shoe” skill that stuns the Raider for a moment.

These skills can be added to your loadout and are with you from the start as opposed to having to find them in an item box during the game. Further utilities can be purchased for Zeni at the Capsule Store which gives you an emergency bounce pad, smoke screens, and grapple hooks as well.

This brings me to the only concerning portion of the game; the rewards after the match have been completed. In my first preview, I mentioned it was too early to see how the currency system would affect the flow of the game, but with one summon costing 150tp for a random character chance, and the end game reward only giving me between 3-5tp at most, I can see a huge problem. There will be cosmetic options that can be bought with Zeni as well, which have a random chance of dropping per game. The difference is that the look of the character can be dismissed, but the summon pulls for the Z fighters that come with skills have a big influence on how versatile the survivors are.

I can only hope that enough currency is offered when the full game is released as it has been advertised at a very generous price tag of AUD 29.95 for the full game. There are also hints of a Dragon Pass, which I could only assume is going to be a battle pass system that offers other avenues to earn enough without having to dip into the pay-to-win mentality. With an expansive collection of characters and villains to pick from, the potential to drip-feed content and keep the game fresh is enticing, to say the least. I wouldn’t want to see the player base falter if they were too hard to obtain simply by playing the game.

Dragon Ball: The Breakers continues to offer a bright and happy-go-lucky experience that is immensely fun, especially with a group. The slight tweaks to item and NPC spawns have set the pace of the game to a very balanced experience on both sides of the playing field, and the climatic finishes happen more often than the one-sided affair that would happen during the closed Beta.

Written by: Shane Fletcher