Introduction: Dragon Ball was a highly successful manga and TV series from the late 80s and early 90s, and became very famous around the world, with a lot of merchandising of different kinds, toys, stickers, and of course, videogames. Nearly 30 years after its origin, Dragon Ball keeps appearing in different console and arcade platforms from now and then, usually as fighting games, but there have been RPGs, beat’em ups, adventure, and, as in this case, card battle games.

Dragon Ball Heroes was born for arcade machines in 2010, featuring real cards that must be placed on the table board to “insert” them into the virtual world and fighting enemies or other people online to complete missions. It was a high success in Japan, soon following a 3DS game called “Dragon Ball Heroes Ultimate Mission”, and now its sequel, Ultimate Mission 2.

The game: The first thing you do when you start DBH Ultimate Mission 2, is to set your avatar. It’s a special personalized card, not very powerful at the start, but that can be leveled and upgraded through the game. You can choose to be a male or female Saiyan, Majin, Namekian, Android , or select to be from the Cell or Freezer race. You can select also to be normal (balanced attack/ki), berserker (attack and resistance based avatar), or elite (ki attacks based avatar).

After that, you are sent to the main menu with only one mode available, the Ultimate Universe. In this mode you enter a detailed Dragon Ball world map in 3D, and you must fly through it to find time capsules by using a radar that tells you their location. Some time capsules only tell you story, and others are battles related to that story. To complete every chapter, you must find every story capsule and beat every fight capsule. This is linear (you go to one time capsule, watch the story, fight the battle, and then you must search for the next time capsule), so you can’t miss any time capsule by accident.

There are some random elements in the map, such as random battlers, characters from the series that give items and advice to you… There is even a Dragon Roulette and a minigame to earn Genki points, which are added to Goku’s genkidama that can be used in tough battles to beat them easier if you wish. The other modes are unlocked by playing this mode.

– Arcade Mode: You will play card battles in different story arcs, without the story. Not all story arcs are available from the beginning.

– Burst Limit Mission: You play against harder special enemies. Every time you beat a mission, the next one is unlocked.

– Friend Battle: You select this option to do local multiplayer against a friend with another copy of the game. There is also a cooperative mode in which you and your friends fight together against tough giant enemies, unlocked by the scouter.

– Scouter: This is a tool to take pictures of yourself or your friends and see what is your power level. If your combat power matches the combat power of one of the characters of the game you will receive gifts, and even unlock giant enemies to battle with your friends. Sadly, there is no option to export the resulting image to the SD card.

Gameplay: Card Battles use a grid in which you must place your cards (to a maximum of 5, including the character or characters you are helping out which you can’t substitute). There are 4 different zones in your grid. The bottom one, in blue, is the support zone. Cards placed in this zone won’t attack or defend that turn, but will increase their power meter for the next turn (they usually earn 2 power/turn, the max is 4). The other three are attacking zones: Yellow one, near support zone, will only use 1 power but your card will do a weak attack. Orange zone uses 2 power and higher attack, and red zone uses 3 power and the highest attack. You have 20 seconds to move your cards wherever you want, and then the turn starts.

When the turn starts, the first thing that triggers is card ability, in case a card has one. After that, it needs to be set up is who attacks first. This is decided by a score that depends on the attack of the cards, where are they placed (those on the support zone are not counted) and if they have enough power.

When there is an attack, 2 moving meters will appear on screen, one is your meter and the other is the foe’s. You must press A to stop the meter, and if you win (your meter is higher that your rival’s), you will deal more damage or stop some of the damage from the rival. If there is a draw, there will be another chance for both. There are special attacks too, that depends on card abilities.

There are only 5 turns in every battle. Whoever depletes foe’s HP within those 5 turns, wins the battle. At the end of the battle, even if you lose, you will earn a card and a piece of equipment and some experience for your avatar and the cards that were used in battle.

These are the basics, but there is more: you can equip items, use capsules that increase power and HP, use robot abilities… You can even transform into a Super Saiyan in the middle of a battle! There are many ways to influence on it. Sounds complex (and it is) but there is a good tutorial about it at the start.

Graphics: They use cell shading to show every character in the game. They are significantly better than the first game, but I have the impression that could be better. However, every character has an animation of their signature attacks, and there are a lot of characters in this game, so that’s impressive.

Evaluation: There are 2 words to describe this game: grinding and addicting. Gameplay is easy to understand (despite my long explanation), and every battle won’t take you more than 10 minutes. Watching your favorite characters using their signature attack and defeat an enemy with it is rewarding. However, after every battle you are rewarded with a lonely card, which can be one that you already have. And there are more than 2000 cards to collect. I’ve played this game for 6 hours and I’ve collected only 30 different cards, so be prepared to spend a lot of your time with this game if you are a completionist.

Moreover, card battles are nice and addicting, but they get repetitive when you advance in the story. It’s high recommended to play this game in short bursts. Multiplayer surely alleviates this, but it’s only local, so unless you are in Japan or you know anyone with a Japanese 3DS AND another copy of this game, it’s not an option.

Important final point: There is a lot of Japanese text in this game, and it’s essential to have some Japanese knowledge to understand, for example, card abilities. On the other hand, all kanji have furigana on top of them, so knowing only hiragana and katakana and a dictionary can be enough.

Final note: 7/10. It’s addicting and has solid gameplay, but it can get repetitive and it’s very grindy. Plus it’s not import friendly.

Review by Gabikun. For more information on Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission 2 go to http://www.bandaigames.channel.or.jp/list/toriko/3ds/