Dragonball kakarot is the latest Title under the Dragon ball name. It was developed by none other than CyberConnect2(CC2) The studio that is famous for
it's previous work on various games such as Naruto, Ninja Storm series, Jojo Bizzare Adventure Games and Asura's Wrath . . Needles to say having a studio with famous anime games
on its list of creations made this upcomming title very promising . The original trailer though left a bitter taste to the fans, because the previous title for dragonball was FighterZ
which blew up expectations and broke records for a dragon ball game. However the more the trailers showed, the more the excitment rose for the game. CyberConnect2 also made sure to specify
in most of their interviews that this game has nothing to do with past 2 titles (fighterZ, Xenoverse2). This game is a story teller first and a fighter second. the game was directed
for the new fans who only knew Dragonball because of its recenlty show that was Dragon ball super.However the fact that the show has 300 plus episodes, it may be scary and discouraging for any newcomer.
So Kakarot was made with this idea in mind, Make a Game that will tell the story of dragon ball z in a refreshing way .They also promised that the older fans who got borded of replaying the z story
will find new elements within the game , this included Story pieces that Akira Toriyama himself Scratched off from the original manga Or ideas he wanted to implement but he didnt. This included a new
character named Bonyu, a former member of the Ginyu Force who quit the team because of their Childish and Annoying Behaviour . Kakarot was released end of January 2020, and it had 3 different versions
Standard
Includes the game alone
Deluxe
Includes the game and the season pass for upcomming DLC
Ultimate
Includes the game, season pass, Dragon Palace Bowl DLC, Music Compilation Pack, and Tao Pai Pai Pillar
Collector's edition
Includes the game, season pass, DragonBall Diorama, Steelbook case, Artbook and map
Story of the Game
The game as mentioned above follows the story of the Manga written by Akira Toriyama and the anime produced by Toei Animation Dragon ball Z. The story of the game begins similar to the anime
You start at the forest near Goku's house as Goku who is mentally training. This gives the player the chance to learn the buttons and also gives the fans a better answer as to where was Goku in the beggining
of the series and how he lost track of Gohan. You then find Gohan and after you spent some quaity time with him, you proceed to go to master Roshi's house. While this is happening Raditz arrives to the planet
We re given Piccolo as our hero, and fight Raditz. Once the fight is over Raditz finds Goku and Kidnaps Gohan. Goku and Piccolo team up againts Raditz and the story goes As you probably know BUT in case you dont
without causing spoilers :
Sayian Saga
Frieza Saga
Android Saga
Cell Saga
Buu Saga
Although this game is basically the animation it manages to bring new content exclusively for the game. Whether or not the fanbase will consider them Canon or not do not affect the original story.
for example doing the side quest after the Cell Saga, Trunks was invited to Roshis House to celebrate their victory, leading the Z warriors invited to explain Trunks that Vegeta was originally a bad guy
Or other quest were the Z warriors throw a party in celebration of Gokus arrival after the Frieza arc. There're plenty of other small lore pieces here and there that i wont be covering in order to let the
players expirience them for their own.
If you were a fan of Android 21 the original character made for FighterZ , you will be pleased to hear that she is a presence walking around the map in game. She is seem to be working alongside
Dr Briefs for her scholarship. You can Talked to her in Capsule Corp for training purposes but outside in the map she is seen to be collecting data from the areas where important fights took place, such as
Cell's arena, Bobidis exploded ship, near Raditz spaceship and Dr Jeros Lab. She is always talking about interesting pieces of data can be found here. It is an interesting concept and a fantastick idea to combine
Kakarot with the events of the main story of Fighter Z. On the other hand If you re a fan of the Dragon Ball Xenoverse 1 & 2 Kakarot also has you covered.
NOTE: The following paragraph contains spoilers for the ending of Xenoverse (2015) and beggining of Xenoverse 2(2016). Proceed with cautious!
In Xenoverse(2015),an evil duo known as Mira and Towa is going around messing with the timeline of dragonball and its up to the Time patrollers to fix the timeline and save the world. Near the end (Majin Buu Saga) Mira
decides to go all out againts your custom hero. The fight ends resulting to your Victory and Towa's escape. The Story continues with a different villain who was set free during the events of the entire game.
Your character alongside friends you ve made in your Quest go into a final war with that villain and upon taking him down the game shows how everything is going but to normal, however Towa is seen to the battlefield
where you defeated Mira and she seems to be holding up Miras brain stating that he was her creation and that she is gonna be back once she restores Mira back to normal and even making him stronger, She then opens a time rift
and escapes. In the events of Xenoverse 2 Mira and Towa are back as promised, stronger than ever and ready for revenge. Kakarot(2020) Show the chance to explain what happened in the inbetween and it grapped it. While flying
around you ll probably come across high leveled Indivuals with High Energy reading. King Kai will also make sure to notify you to be aware of them and will also mark them on your map. These Enemies are normal mobs in the begging
but the more you beat the more familiar faces will appear with the strange aura. If you re not familiar with the Xenoverse titles, this red and purple coloured aura is Towa's magic and the reason behind the aggressivness of the enemies
In fact when you beat every single one and clear the map from the red Marks, you wont only be rewarded with three different trophies BUT you will also unlock the secret ending and final piece of lore. You will travel to the planet of the
Lords where Towa will appear, she will make you fight her last two evilised warriors and then she will mentioned how her job is complete. With an evil smile on her face she will present the brain of Mira, dark energy will appear and then
Boom Mira is back for the last battle and probably the last Achievement. Upon fighting Mira , Towa will say Mira to stay calm ,as he is not used to his new body and power and she will open a timerift to go to a new timeline
where you guessed it, Xenoverse 2 Begins.
Side Quests
Dragon ball Kakarot is an Action role playing game, this means that you ll have to power up your character, either by grinding random enemies or by doing side activities. Side quests are popular with any time of role playing games
so Kakarot implemented them in as well. Side quest apprear in a cyan speach bubble with blue exclamation mark. All the sidequest are additional, meanning skipping them will not result to anything fatal, you can do 10 to get the
trophy and then call it a day. Its important to know some quest are available for specific heroes at specific time . for example if you skip a quest as Trunks during Cell saga you wont be able to do it later, cause Trunks
is no longer available in the Buu storyline. You can actually complete it when you finish Buu and Trunks is back available BUT in other case such as kid, and teen Gohan once they re grown its over. CyberConnect2 did confirm on
making a time machine in Capsule Corp that will allow players to go back in time and be able to complete the Quest they left. Most of them are used for fan service to show the classic fans how character from the original series
such as Nam, Arale, Eighter Launch and others,spent their time around the world ever since they stop appearing in the show.Side quest reward you with plenty of exp and not only. Most of the side quest have extra unlockables, for example
above i mentioned a party that Bulma threw to celebrate Goku's return. This quest not only allow the player to have a small yet fun character interaction, but they also allow the player to complete a mini game race and upon succeding and placing
first on the leaderboard you unlock a robot walker. A vechicle that allow you to use to ride around the city.Other side quest reward you with cooking recipes and ingredients that you can use in order to buff your status before a fight.
The most Important though reward though, its the soul emblems that i will be explaining further below. Sure there is plenty of fun to be found during those quest's interaction but the actual quests may not be as interesting.
They 're comonly repeated and unispired to give the player motivation to do them. The side quest come in different forms
these are :
Fight related
Go to a specified location and fight the enemies within that area
Material
A common quest given to you that require you to go to a location, search for specific material and bring it back to the person.
Search
Very similar to Materials, this quest will aski you to go somewhere and search for items, you ll either have to fight mobs or just collect it.
Follow
Very similar to all of the above, go to an area, find the person you need, follow it around and fight when enemies ambush the person
Open World And Activities
One of the most unique implementations in Kakarot is the Map. It marks the first semi Open world game since forever. Most Dragonball games
are investing on their fighting gameplay than the world. The only games that allowed the players to fully walk and interact with the world
are Dragonball MMO (2010) for PCs and the Legacy of Goku (2002,2003,2004) for the Game boy Advance.The game is not fully Open world however,
it has different major sandboxes. Every area looks unique and feels amazing. You can move around it in different ways. You can walk/run, use
4 types of vechicles that are Car, Motor Robot, thrown pillars and flying Nimbus. The last way is by flying, and ki flying. There are plenty of
things to do in the maps.Collecting cooking materials is one of them. While being in an area, depending on the wild life you ll find different animals
that you can hunt such as gazzeles, wolves , fruits and shrimps. You can also play a very small fishing game to get high level fish meat or move to an area
with dinosaurs and try to blast the away with your ki blasts, killing dinosaurs will reward you with dinsoaur meat. Obviously being an RPG it means you ll
have to lvl up other than the story exp and Kakarot gots you cover. IN every map they re different enemies that will alaways be there no matter how many times
they re defeated, these enemies are Saibaimen, Red Ribbon Robots, Cell Jrs, Frieza's soldiers and Babidi's minions. Winning a fight will not refill your life nor your ki bar so
it is recomended that you will head towards a camp fire to rest and regain your strength. Other than cooking materials ,the player will need crafting materials for his
vechicles. These items can be found around big cities,in hidden caves, in abadoned vechicles and last but not least in towers and spaceships left behind by the red ribbon amry
and from Frieza's invetion. Kakarot rewards the players will to explore the area by hiding secret items in various locations,mainly major story locations of the original dragonball
Visiting locations like Karin's tower , the player will come across a card with an imange from the original anime and a description of the events that occur. These cards are taken
directly from the Original dragonball card game. These cards can be found in your dragongball wikipedeia in the start menu. Every sand box in the world are fully interactive with
the player, meaning that if the player power fly around the world he can destroy the mountains and trees. flying above the water and ground will make the water and earth shake
and create wavy effects. All of these effects give a fantastic sense of realism to the game. Last but not least the world is surrounded with various of coloured orbs that the player
can use in order to power up his skill tree.
DragonBalls and Minigames
Being a Dragonball Game eventually you ll have to collect the Dragon balls. To make it easy to follow for any newcomer to the frenchaise, there are 7 balls
coloured Orange,and each one of them has red stars (ranging from one to seven). The dragonballs are scattered around the world. You can track them down by
using the dragon radar, a machine used to showcase the map you re in. To begin with in the world map, areas with dragonball will have a small orange circle
in the bottom left, once you select the area to fast travel you then use the Radar. In the minimap within the radar, mark the dragon ball and fly to its location.
You can then use your ki sense and the dragonball will be mark with a blessing orange light reaching the sky. Head to it and there it will be, an orange ball with stars
waiting to be ccollected. Dragonballs are scattered everywhere and it fun to track, they re deep down the ocean, scattered within the forest and in various locations.
When the player collects all seven they can summon the Wish ranting Dragon Shenron. The dragon can grant you 4 types of wishes
Money (large amount of zenie)
Orbs (large ammount of every orb type)
Rare Item (cooking materials and dishes)
Re-live battles ( ressurrect fallen enemies and fight them again)
The first three are pretty self explanatory, re living battles will ressurect the fallen boss battles of the main game, enemies like Raditz, Napa, Frieza,Cell Bobidi etc
When you succesfully beat any of the ressurrected villains you re rewarded with their Soul Embles. NOTE: everyone who is brought back to life will be very close
to their original level when you first fought them. So the player should make sure to bring them back close to when they originally fought them, otherwise they will one
shot every single fighter. If you re not interested on the soul emblems, the trophies for the dragonballs are for one ,five and ten wishes.
Other minigame activities are, baseball and racing. The racing minigame is called Time Attack and it's unlocked during the cell saga, they will appear on the map in the form of
a cyan speech bubble with a racing flag.The gameplay is simple,talk to the person with the challenge, then the player will have to race across a given path. There will be plenty of
driving checkpoints that will reward the player with extra timer. You win by completing the race without the timer reaching zero. Time Attack also has an alternative game mode where
instead of using the car you use the Robot walker. Similary to the car you use the robot to go through checkpoints and climbing the mountains by jumping to closer areas. Time attack
rewards the players with plenty of zenie but also rare materials that you can use in Capsule Corp to speed up the vechicles and upgrade them. The baseball game is called Homerun and it
becomes available early in Buu saga. It takes the form of a cyan speechbubble with a baseball bat in the middle.The game is based hitting a homerun and creating records of how far the ball
went. The ball will be thrown in various ways from straight balls to curve balls. Once the pitcher throws, you will be pressing your O button and aim center of the red radar marker. If you hit
dead center, the ball will fly through the orbit and become a homerun. The rewards come in the form of D medals and fancy urns. Urns are materials you can sell for money or use to power up the
soul emblems.
Fighting And Training
The last thing about the game is the fighting. As i mentioned this game was set to be a storyteller first and a fighter second. The combat of the game is very fast and very interesting, first
for a dragonball game. If you re familiar with the Ninja storm series the buttons should be no stranger. You charge Ki by pressing triangle, X to get mobility(which is really fast and entertaining to use)
squere to fire your ki blasts and finnaly spamming cirlce will throw its punches and kicks. Additional combos can be used such as OOOSquere and OOOO Triangle.
You can access your special attacks by holding R1 and combo with either O squere triangle or X. L1 is used when you re in a party of atleast with 1 Ai and you can use it to make the AI
attack with a specific move that is equiped. L2 & R2 will open the transformation menu. Transformation are boosting your power but they slowly drain your Ki unless its kaioken which
will instead drain the health bar. L2 alone is used to guard and with the right ki and pressing X it will teleport behind the enemy and use a heavy hit to knock down the opponent. While fighting a main boss fight
they will throw cutscenes of ultimate techniques that flash red all over the ground and you will have a few seconds to move away from them before the blast is released. Beam struggles are there but they re so random
to actually triggered them. Simply throwing a beam onto another won't work. L1 & R1 when conditions with group Ai re met (that is used their supports until they glow orange) will activate a team special similar to
dragon ball legends rush. Last but not least the keypad will open the item menu where you store your Z capsules senzu beans and others.
Taining is essential for character progression. Earlier i mentioned how you can collect orbs by summoning the dragon or while flying around near orbs. You spent these orbs in the menu under skills.
this will open the skill tree menu where you can upgrade all of the skills until they max out. Once a skill is maxed you can fly to a training area that is represented as blue fire in the ground.
Completing a training battle will allow the player to unlock a stronger version of a specific skill. It is important to spent time doing them because having strong mellee and ki blast will result on
easily achieved victories. Always speak to Master Roshi after every single training session to be rewarded with extra items.
Soul Emblems and Z Encyclopedia
The Z encyclopedia acts as an actual Encyclopedia for the game. The more you proceed to the story and more you explore, you unlock extra entries for it.
By playing the main story you unlock items such as character profiles,their releations,terms, story description and videos. These videos are actually the ones from the game cutscenes.
On the other hand when you re spenting time exploring the areas you unlock entries for the world, the animal kingdom, the items and the Vehicles. As mentioned above all the cards
you collect are gathered and re available to check whenever alongside their descriptions. The lasything available in the Encyclopedia are the BGM which represent the Music tracks of the game.
Soul Emblems are an important part of the game, granting the player access to stat bonuses and other extras as you collect them. You get many of them by simply progressing through the story.
Other soul Emblems can be unlocked by completing a characters side quest . For example when you do all of Nams side quest he will reward you with his soul emblem. The last way to collect a
character's Soul emblem is to wish a character to be ressurected in order to fight him again and rewarded with his emblem once you beat him.
Soul emblems can be placed on community boards. It is important to know the connections of various characters in order for them to unlock deeper potential. for example placing characters like
Goku and Gohan together will reward you with an extra random bonus attribute for the Father and son connection. There are various of community boards with different rewards each so it is essential
to know where to place an emblem and what connections you will assosiate it with it. An Emblem can only be included in one board, so attetion must be given. The last thing the soul emblems is that
nby giving an emblem item, it can be powered up thus maling it by default or by collaboration way stronger.
Game Review
This is a video with my Honest review close to when i played the Game
Dragonball kakarot is the latest Title under the Dragon ball name. It was developed by none other than CyberConnect2(CC2) The studio that is famous for 
Other minigame activities are, baseball and racing. The racing minigame is called Time Attack and it's unlocked during the cell saga, they will appear on the map in the form of