Dragon Ball is one of the few media franchises whose iconic villains remain embedded in modern-day cultural consciousness, and games like Dragon Ball Xenoverse have fully capitalized on that lasting appeal to just run wild with the franchise's lore. In fact, if you're a fan of those games in particular, then the opening hour of Dragon Ball: The Breakers should put a smile on your face as this game seems to be canonically connected. Various Dragon Ball villains known as Raiders are hunting you and a bunch of other players down, but the problem is you're just an average person who is severely underpowered compared to the Raiders, so it's less a matter of beating the bad guy and more a matter of surviving by any means necessary.

There's no real story here, just a backdrop for the online matches that make up the majority of the game, but Dragon Ball: The Breakers also doesn't really try to be anything more than that—for better and for worse. There's a unique combat mechanic that allows you to tap into the power of other Dragon Ball characters by levelling up, but this is limited, and the Raiders also have the ability to level up during the match. While defeating the Raider and making the area safe would technically be one of the fastest ways to win, it is far from the most optimal, and in the dozens of online matches that I played, I think I only came across maybe two instances where we were able to survive via that method. If there's one thing Dragon Ball: The Breakers is good at, it's making you feel completely helpless. It incentivizes you to get creative with what you have and work with others as a team. This includes reviving comrades when they go down or guarding them while they do timed tasks that leave you vulnerable for a few seconds. It feels legitimately tense when you're operating a necessary item or saving a hostage, because if the Raider finds you and you can't use a Transphere, then you're probably going to die.

However, this is only commendable when that feeling of tension and anxiety is created organically through game mechanics, rather than unclear systems and janky controls, and unfortunately Dragon Ball: The Breakers leans more towards the latter. The game opens up with a skippable tutorial that introduces the basics of movement and the overall premise. You learn how to climb surfaces, activate your Transpheres, and even fire a gun that solely exists to break boxes. Then the tutorial ends, you're brought to the central hub, hop into your first match and then realize that there are dozens of items and abilities you still need to learn about, which made early matches feel rough. Some items are intuitive enough, like hoverbikes to traverse through the land faster (cause your default walking speed at low levels is terrible), but there are also passive items like senzu beans that activate automatically when certain requirements are met. Bazookas and sodas can be used to augment your own abilities, but it can be difficult to activate them consciously or really make note of any benefits they are supposed to provide during matches. While there is an area accessed through the hub world that lets you experiment and get a feel for all the items, it still felt like a little too much was left to the player to figure out. And by the time you do so, you'll find that the overall control scheme doesn't always mesh well with the franticness of the setup, which can make it difficult to utilize items to their full potential. Finally, there's also no in-game way to communicate with your other teammates, and even locating each other on the map can be difficult.

Dragon Ball: The Breakers combat system also feels less satisfying than it should be. There were plenty of times where it felt like my hits weren't connecting when I was engaged with the Raider, and even when I did land direct hits with my heavy moves, there was no visual indication that it even did anything. While I can understand for story reasons why one Survivor shouldn't be able to take on a Raider head-on, there also shouldn't be a complete lack of positive feedback for pulling off certain moves. Add in a lock-on feature that only works selectively, and a camera that can't make up its mind how it wants to frame the player, and what you're left with is a needlessly frustrating experience when playing as a Survivor, especially since it's almost impossible to go a round without engaging the Raider at some point due to how aggressive they can be. Things feel a bit better when you're given the very rare opportunity to play as a Raider—you get full access to abilities that are only temporary to Survivors such as constant flight, increased speed, and the ability to better affect the destructible environments—but the advantages you get don't absolve the control issues, it just makes them less unbearable.

As for the presentation, it is honestly OK at best. While character models look nice and carry over Toriyama's signature style well, they don't always feel well integrated with the environment. Characters move as if they're gliding on the floor rather than actually stepping on it, and when combined with the very floaty default jump, it genuinely feels like these characters have no weight behind them. For how simple the graphics and textures look, I experienced frequent pop-ins during both online and offline play even on the PlayStation 5, not to mention the frame rate dips during online matches. I will say I found the soundtrack enjoyable. During the wait for matches and the few story cutscenes that we get, it is very pleasant and evokes a sort of laid-back fun kind of feeling, and if the tracks can sound a little bit like elevator music, at least they're catchy.

Finally, Dragon Ball: The Breakers boasts three different types of currency, two of which are awarded to players for fulfilling daily challenges or accomplishing certain goals during matches. These can be used to buy different skills, cosmetic effects, or pull from the Spirit Siphon—the game's gacha mechanic to get random Transpheres that are all ranked. You can do all of this with the game's third type of currency, TP Tokens, but that's the currency you need to pay real money for to skip the grind. I managed to buy a couple of Transpheres via the free currencies after investing a few hours into the game, but I didn't notice that much of a significant advantage in gameplay due to those aforementioned frustrations with the controls and camera.

Overall, Dragon Ball: The Breakers boasts a simple framework that can lead to genuinely tense and exciting moments of play, and it's good for a few private matches with friends where you can coordinate with each other in the absence of in-game comms. That said, it also plays and feels like a disposable side mode in a Xenoverse game, as if it's just here to hold people over until the next mainline entry. After seeing everything that this game has to offer, I think I'll personally just play a different Dragon Ball game while I wait.