With all of the adaptations that the manga/anime has seen over the years, Dragon Ball: The Breakers takes a different approach. You control one of seven ordinary Survivors transported to a bizarre dimension along with a Raider (namely Frieza, Buu, or Cell). They must find various keys and activate the Super Time Machine to escape.

The Raider is player-controlled and will do everything possible to stop the Survivors. As they level up, they’ll unlock new abilities and can destroy parts of the map. Survivors can use Dragon Change to temporarily assume the form of Goku, Piccolo and other heroes, but it’s a temporary measure. Stealth, items, and teamwork will be your best bet for success.

Interestingly, the trailer teases the addition of Oozaru Vegeta in Season 2, potentially as a new Raider. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

Majin Buu will a raider, whose goal is to destroy all of the survivors. Going by the trailer, Majin Buu seems to have several of his abilites from the manga and anime, including the ability to change forms to get a different set of powers. The farmer will be one of the playable survivors.

Alongside the trailer, Bandai Namco has also announced that it will be kicking off the open beta for Dragon Ball: The Breakers on September 21. The beta is set to kick off at 6:00pm PDT, and will end on September 25 at 1:00am PDT.

During the beta, the raiders available to players will be Frieza and Cell. The only survivor skins available during the beta will be Oolong and Bulma.

The Dragon Ball: The Breakers open beta will be available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. Participating in the open beta will get you an Oolong keychain accessory in the full game, which is set to launch on October 14.

Story

The “story” of Dragon Ball: The Breakers sees seven ordinary people affected by an unexpected (not unknown – just unexpected) temporal phenomenon. This traps them in a Temporal Seam against a powerful enemy known as a Raider from a different timeline. With very few means to fight back, the survivors must do everything possible to survive and escape the Temporal Seam before being eliminated.

Asymmetrical Multiplayer

Like Dead by Daylight, Friday the 13th: The Game and so on, Dragon Ball: The Breakers is an asymmetrical multiplayer title. Up to seven players must cooperate to escape the Temporal Rift (or, somehow, defeat the Raider). Meanwhile, one player controls the Raider, whose job is to take down the Survivors, and destroy the time machine before they can escape (or delay them until time runs out).

Survival of the fittest, as they say. Along with Online Match, there are also Episodes for playing through the prologue as a Survivor and a Practice Mode for learning the ropes.

Survivors

The Survivors consist of two familiar faces – Bulma and Oolong – accompanied by an Earthling male and female, which aren’t the most distinct characters but that’s the point. Each Survivor lacks powers like Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo and so on. Instead, they must rely on items, skills (which we’ll get into more in a bit), stealth (including hiding behind walls, Solid Snake-style) and their general cunning to defeat the Raider.

Raiders

There are three Raiders in Breakers – Cell, Buu, and Frieza. Each starts at level 1 and can evolve through various actions. For example, Cell starts in larva form at level 1 and must evolve by absorbing Survivors and NPCs. Leveling up and evolving grants different forms with more abilities, health, and damage. A Raider’s level caps at level 4, which is when they become a nigh unstoppable threat.

The Map

The map should be familiar for most Dragon Ball fans. It’s a mash-up for residential areas, rocky plateaus, cities, and so on. Each area contains its share of items, but don’t dwindle for too long. Every time a Raider evolves, they can destroy an area on the map. If you’re caught in the blast, this can mean a very quick death.

Power Keys and Startup System

For the Survivors, escape requires activating the Super Time Machine, which is anything but easy. First, you need to find Power Keys – each area on the map has one. Next, they must venture to the Startup System and activate it with a Power Key. After the system starts up, the Survivors must defend it from the Raider for a period of time.

More keys will reduce the time needed and if successful, the Temporal Seam is fixed and the Survivors win. As the Raider, you must destroy the Startup System before it reaches that point. Destroying areas on the map is also encouraged since this reduces the number of Power Keys that can be gathered.

Beacons

So what happens if the Startup System is destroyed? Fortunately, there’s still an option for victory. After the Super Time Machine’s destruction, various Beacons appear on the map. These can be used to call an emergency Time Machine to escape alone or with other Survivors. However, there’s a catch to this as well. Only one can be called at a time and if the Raider destroys it, then you can’t call any more.

Skills

In terms of Skills, the Survivors have different active and passive skills. Active skills consist of a Grappling Device for quick traversal and Smoke Screen, which briefly prevents the Raider from locking onto allies in a certain range. They can also use a Saiyan Pod Remote, which calls down a Saiyan Pod for quickly flying up and repositioning to a different part of the map. Survivors can also Change into random objects to hide (though you may get an object that sticks out all the more so caution is advised).

The Raiders also have active and passive skills which increase in number as they level up. One such skill is Ki Detection for detecting a Survivor’s aura, making it easier to find them. The number of available Special Attacks also increases and they also gain a powerful Ultimate Special Attack. Perfect Cell can throw out a Kamehameha in a straight line, for instance, dealing immense damage.

Dragon Change

Did we say no powers like Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo and Gohan? Well, good news – the Survivors can get their powers after all. Sort of. If a Survivor collects enough Change Power on the field, they can activate Dragon Change. This allows for taking on the form of a certain Z Fighter, complete with Super Attacks like the Kamehameha, Special Beam Cannon, Galick Gun and so on. Up to three Transpheres with different forms can be equipped and changed to in battle.

However, just because you can become Goku doesn’t mean the battle is won. Each Transphere has a level – the higher the level, the more Change Power needed. If the Raider’s level is high, you’ll need an equivalent level Form to stand a chance. Then again, a Form can also be used to fly away and escape or serve as a diversion, so there are benefits to lower level Forms.

Items and Vehicles

Items available on the map include gloves for firing a beam of Ki, a Jet-Bike for moving around more quickly, and a Dragon Radar to help locate Power Keys. You can also find a rocket launcher for tickling the Raider and a dinosaur mount, among other weapons and vehicles.

Summoning Shenron

It wouldn’t be a Dragon Ball game without Dragon Balls. Somehow, someway, you can collect all seven Dragon Balls and summon Shenron to make a wish. You can wish for increasing the Dragon Change level of all allies by one, or gain Ultimate Dragon Change for yourself (which provides a level 4 Form). The latter is the strongest Form for a Survivor and matches up against a Raider very well. The Raider can also make a wish, either to increase their evolution level by one or restore HP so beware.

Signal Feature

Though trolling your teammates can be funny, the path to victory lies in cooperation. If a teammate is downed and calling for aid, it’s generally a good idea to revive them. There’s also Signal Feature, which functions like pinging. It can be used to ping certain points of interest (like items), ask teammates to assemble, warn them of the Raider’s location, and whatnot.

Standard and Special Edition

The Standard Edition of Dragon Ball: The Breakers retails for $20. Pre-ordering nets a Transphere for Android 18 along with the Wall Kick skill and Full Power Energy Blast Volley Super Attack. You can also equip a Blue Scouter as an accessory. The Special Edition retails for $30 and includes the base game, four cosmetic items, a Victory Pose and a “Dragon (Yellow)” Vehicle skin.

Shop and Microtransactions

Of course, other cosmetics can be purchased in-game with Zeni or TP (the latter being premium currency). There are Stamps, Keychains, T-Shirts, Pants, Hoodies, Boots, Bracelets, and even Oolong’s ears and nose. You can even purchase custom voices for the Raider’s different Forms. Past network tests also had a Recommended tab in the store with rotating items.

Hilariously enough, Transpheres are acquired through gacha. Seriously. By spending tickets, Zeni or TP, you can roll for characters like 5-star Goku who has Kaioken Rush as an ability. No word on the drop rates but you can expect the more powerful forms to be rarer.

System Requirements

As with most contemporary Dragon Ball games on PC, the system requirements for Breakers aren’t too heavy. At minimum, you’ll need an Intel Core i5-7600 or AMD Ryzen 3 3100 GPU, 8 GB RAM, and a GeForce GTX 770 or Radeon RX 470. The recommended requirements include a Core i7-8700 or Ryzen 5 3600, 8 GB of RAM RAM and a GTX 780 or Radeon RX 570. In both cases, you’ll need 10 GB of installation space, though this could increase over time if more characters and maps are added.

Famitsu has released its latest weekly charts for video game software and hardware sales in Japan for the week ending April 7. Bandai Namco’s newly released tactical card game, Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission, has taken the top spot in the sales charts in its debut week, selling over 70,000 copies. 

Yoshi’s Crafted World, last week’s top selling game, drops down to second place, still managing to sell a respectable 28,000 copies. Meanwhile, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is still going strong in third place, with over 18,000 copies sold. 

The rest of the top 10 is almost entirely dominated by Nintendo releases exclusively for the Switch. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe have consistently been charting high since their releases, and they have done so yet again, occupying the fourth and fifth spots with sales of over 14,000 and over 12,000 respectively. Minecraft sits in between the two- not a Nintendo game, but still the Switch version. 

The rest of the top 10 is occupied by other Switch evergreens- the usual suspects, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Super Mario Party.

On the hardware front, sales for the Switch are steady once again. Nintendo’s hybrid sees a minor drop of 3,000 units, moving over 46,000 units in total this week. The PS4, meanwhile, has seen a significant drop in sales. While last week, it sold a collective 24,000 units (which in turn was down from over 35,000 the week before that), this week, the base model and the PS4 Pro have in total managed to move only over 13,000 units. 

You can check out the full software and hardware charts below.

Software charts (followed by lifetime sales)

1. [NSW] Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission – 70,990 / NEW
2. [NSW] Yoshi’s Crafted World – 28,468 / 78,745
3. [PS4] Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – 18,101 / 212,961
4. [NSW] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 14,775 / 3,000,151
5. [NSW] Minecraft – 12,278 / 719,845
6. [NSW] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 12,111 / 560,098
7. [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 9,551 / 2,246,416
8. [NSW] Splatoon 2 – 8,161 / 3,028,994
9. [NSW] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 6,309 / 1,281,348
10. [NSW] Super Mario Party – 6,305 / 991,550

Hardware charts (followed by last week’s sales)

Switch – 46,850 (49,852)
PS4 – 8,347 (17,286)
PS4 Pro – 5,507 (6,577)
New 2DS LL – 3,469 (4,291)
New 3DS LL – 919 (765)
PS Vita – 482 (717)
Xbox One X – 60 (64)
Xbox One S – 33 (28)