Hands-on with Dragon Ball FighterZ during its open beta period

January 2018 is already a stacked month for fighting games as two of them are coming out. We already wrote about Dissidia Final Fantasy NT's beta yesterday, but now it's Dragon Ball FighterZ's turn.

Unlike previous Dragon Ball Z video games, Dragon Ball FighterZ is quite different mainly because it's a 2D fighting game much like old-school Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat video games. It's not the 3D style that gamers have been used to in the recent Xenoverse series.

The game is developed by Arc System Works and these are the talented folks responsible for making the excellent Blazblue and Guilty Gear fighting game franchises. The change to 2D style graphics has done wonders to the visuals of Dragon Ball FighterZ.

I've only seen gameplay videos of Dragon Ball FighterZ and I was impressed by it. Now that I had the chance to play the game for myself, I must say the game has the single best looking 2D graphics I have ever seen in my life. I am not even exaggerating when I say this.

I would even go as far as saying the graphics in this game are more impressive than in the actual Dragon Ball Super anime that is currently airing online. Everything from the character models to their special attacks bright luminously on your TV screen and it looks very awesome.  It's probably worth mentioning that even though this is an open beta available to everyone, it's actually been hard trying to play the beta because the servers have been inconsistent. However, I did manage to play enough of the game to get a good impression out of it.

The first thing you want to do is go to the training mode of the beta to get up to speed with the game's controls and fighting mechanics. If you are a casual gamer, you don't have to worry because this game's controls are not very hard and are easy to remember.

Sometimes fighting games can be overly complicated when it comes to executing fighter's combos, special abilities and/or super attacks. Thankfully, Dragon Ball FighterZ offers an accessible control scheme that most people should be comfortable with.

For example, you can string multi-hit combos by just spamming the Square (X on Xbox One) and Triangle (Y on One) buttons. Ki blasts on the other hand can be used by just pressing X (A on Xbox One). Signature moves such as the Kamehameha Wave and the Destruto Disc are also very easy to do. As long as your super meter is full, you just need to rotate a quarter circle on the left stick and press R1 (Right Bumper on Xbox One) and you can unleash a lot of pain.  Thanks to the variety of fighters in the game's roster, there's lots of moves you can execute and all of them are kind of easy to pull off. You don't have to do the hard stick rotations like in the Street Fighter games in my opinion.

That's not to say Dragon Ball FighterZ is an easy game though. Thanks to its 3 vs 3 tag team format system, fights are very fast and hectic much like the older Marvel vs Capcom video games. I played several matches online when the beta was working and I surprisingly managed to win my first two matches.

However, you will encounter several experts so don't expect this game to be a walk in the park. It's a game that is able to both please noobs and veterans judging from my time playing the beta thus far.

Anyway, I now have a more positive outlook on the full game when it releases for the PC, PS4 and Xbox One on January 26th, 2018. I'll try my best to try and deliver a review for you guys when the full game arrives.