Fans of the “Dragon Ball” series have had juicy amounts of content to look forward to with the teases of “Dragon Ball Sparking Zero” and the recent addition of rollback netcode to “Dragon Ball FighterZ.”
While these games may be the center of attention for a large portion of the “Dragon Ball” community, fans of “Dragon Ball: The Breakers” have not been forgotten.
Sporting a different style from its fighting-focused predecessors, “Dragon Ball: The Breakers” is a cat-and-mouse horror game with a team of seven “survivors” working together to defeat the enemy “raider.”
In order to defeat the raider and win the match, the survivors must find and place five “power keys” scattered around the map whilst trying not to get caught by the raider in the process.
Once that has been accomplished, the survivors must fully activate the “Super Time Machine” which spawns in the middle of the map in order to erase the raider from existence.
The survivors also have a second, and more challenging option of reducing the raider’s health to zero using their transformations and various tools in supply crates littered around the map.
In order to trigger these transformations, survivors must collect energy by rescuing civilians, using energy vending machines and destroying breakable objects.
Once they have enough, they can transform to level one and later advance to level two and level three.
The raider, on the other hand, has a much simpler task. In order to win the game, they must find and eliminate all of the survivors before they can activate the “Super Time Machine.”
The raider also has a second option of stalling until the match timer reaches zero, however, winning using this method is very unlikely.
Just like the survivors, the raider can also gain “energy,” but from each civilian or survivor kill they get. Once a raider has the necessary amount, they will advance to the next level and unlock more powerful abilities.
While matches between the survivors and the raider are usually balanced depending on each side’s experience level with the game, the newest raider may be the toughest one in the game.
On Feb. 26, Bandai Namco Entertainment premiered a surprise livestream and trailer centered around showcasing the “Dragon Ball: The Breakers” new season five update and the addition of crossplay.
This update introduced new, long-awaited raider characters Goku Black and Zamasu as well as added three new survivor skins of characters from the show and a new map.
Goku Black and Zamasu are a new type of raider called a “Double Raider,” two villain characters that serve as one main boss.
Once the player reaches level two they can control the main raider, Goku Black, while the assist raider, Zamasu, patrols the map and aggressively attacks the survivors if he spots them.
To make matters worse, Goku Black can teleport over to Zamasu using one of his skills, making it even harder for survivors to escape the both of them.
In levels three and four, the raider’s attacks become even more powerful with a larger area of effect, making it harder for survivors to evade.
On top of that, if the raider is at level four and their health is below half, the player will gain access to the “corrupted form.”
In this form, the raider’s attacks are changed and specialize in fighting against two to three players at a time. The raider also deals more damage and is able to move far faster than before.
The raider isn’t the most important aspect of this update, however. Crossplay was also added for Playstation 4, Playstation 5, PC, Nintendo Switch and Xbox.
A major issue with the game was that due to the low player count on each platform, the queue times for matches would often take a long time.
With crossplay, players have more people they can connect with regardless of their preferred method of playing, thus reducing the time needed to find other players to connect with.
“The Breakers” has had a rough start and still has some parts that can be improved upon, but with this new update and potential future ones, it could be a great game you don’t have to be a Dragon Ball fan to play.
