I have a scenario in my head. Turning to my friend I say, “I want to be an engineer like Bulma, that way I can just generally be useless and need to be rescued all the time. Then eventually I’ll somehow have a kid with a guy who seems totally clueless to anything besides standing around going, ‘HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA’.”

He laughs and says, “No, what we need to do is be namekians. You can be Flute, I’ll be Bassoon, and we can form the infamous ‘Woodwind Trio’ with someone else.”

Does this scenario confuse you? Do you feel like you’ve just stepped into a bad anime fanfiction site? What does this have to do with games? Well, I’ll tell you. Dragon Ball. Online. No, I’m not kidding. Just like Hello Kitty, game makers are looking to cash in on another big name anime.

To answer your first question, no you can’t play a Saiyan. QQ.

You can, however, play as a human (total fantasy immersion, right there), namekian, or majin. Sucks for all us girls playing, though, since we’d only have the gender option ‘female’ for humans. Unfortunate. I’ll still probably roll a a majin, though.

One of the interesting selling points of the game is the fact that you can start your character as a child and let it age as you progress. This has the potential to be really cool, or really creepy.

Also in the game is a system of lineage, since that was also a major part of the anime/manga series. Basically, you and someone else can have babies that, like Gohan and Goten, are stronger than your first character. Again, this has the potential to be very fun, or seriously disturbing. In the hands of sex-starved teenagers, well, hm. I’m hoping this is an option one can choose not to participate in.

The man himself: Akira Toriyama, helped work on the character designs which to me, shows a serious level of dedication. This man clearly loves his brainchild. More evidence of this is the fact that in the MMO, the events of GT did not happen. All I can say is, thank God.

Judging from the videos of the gameplay, it seems like a grindfest. But I mean, it’s Dragon Ball. Of course people just want to punch things. You can train, take part in tournaments, search for the dragon balls, or travel back in time with Trunks to major events in the series’ continuity. Yes, you get to learn the kamehameha. Yes, you get to learn how to fly. No, your power level will not be over nine thousaaaaaaand.

The design takes on the familiar cell shading technique of the Budokai games, which takes a little bit of getting used to if you haven’t played those games. The nice thing about it is that it provides a lot of fluid movement with no clipping or jagged edges. The world also looks exactly like the oh so familiar dragon ball universe.

The customization is also pretty impressive. The DB style is pretty distinct, and that’s exactly what they used for the game.

Honestly, I’m interested. I want to try it. The problem is, they aren’t sure when the international release will be. But I’m sure that once word spreads that there is, in fact, a Dragon Ball MMORPG, everyone’s familiar 14 year old self will peek in, fresh from watching Dragon Ball after school and ready to play this game. There’s a lot of potential here, due to the incredibly expansive possibilities of the Dragon Ball universe. Hopefully while we sit on it, this nest egg will grow.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Previews, MMORPGs, Character Design, New Releases, Fandom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.