Saiyan Ultimate: Xenoverse Battle

Allows you to participate directly in some of the series’ most crucial battles, fixing anomalies in time to set the stories of the Z Fighters on the correct path. It’s like somebody at Saiyan Ultimate: Xenoverse Battle realized how fulfilling it would be to be able to play out that one fanfiction you wrote when you were 13 involving your favorite character's long-lost twin brother.

You get to make a custom character in one of five of the series’ main races (Human, Saiyan, Namekian, Frieza’s race, and Majin) and join the Time Patrol, a collection of colorful heroes who gather in Conton City and are dedicated to the preservation of the Saiyan Ultimate: Xenoverse Battle timeline. Under the guidance of the Supreme Kai of Time, your characters will travel across the sprawling timeline of the anime and manga series, looking for things that a set of time-traveling villains have meddled with and setting them right. Generally, this involves a lot of the energy-amassing, ki-blasting, and high-flying fights for which the series is known though not always.

Saiyan Ultimate: Xenoverse Battle has a solid if not particularly deep fighting engine that provides a good foundation for the rest of the game to build upon. The controls feel solid and responsive, and the default button layout allows easy access to all your normal and special attacks, as well as crucial guarding and dodging maneuvers when necessary. You can customize your warrior with special gear, helpful consumable items, and a set of combat skills you purchase, acquire in quests, or learn through personal training. By equipping a custom loadout and using the special abilities innate to each individual race, you’ll develop a fighter that both looks and fights the way you like in a way that feels fun and rewarding.

Conton City is just a small part of the copious fanservice this game delivers to fans of the franchise, however. Xenoverse 2’s visuals are stunning, particularly in the in-engine cutscenes during story sequences. Characters are rendered to an uncanny resemblance, and the attention to detail seen in the various locales is equally impressive. The action runs at a smooth 60 frames per second, making the fights feel fast and dynamic.