Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission review – A well thought-out card battle game

Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission was launched a little while ago by BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment and so far, the turn-based strategy card battle game has been received positively by fans of the genre. An added bonus if you are a huge Dragon Ball fan, to be frank.

In case you didn’t know, Super Dragon Ball Heroes is an extremely popular Japanese arcade trading card game in the form of physical cards and arcade machines. So, good job to BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment for bringing it to Nintendo Switch and Steam to provide a whole new experience for the fans. I may be a big fan of the anime series but when it comes to Dragon Ball games, I’m honestly not a big fan nor I’ve played any games of this genre before. Nevertheless, let’s get right into this short review.

Story

To keep it simple, Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission takes place in Hero Town where the Dragon Ball Heroes card game is the most popular form of entertainment. Then you are supposed to go on a journey, not just to become the champion but also to restore peace in the world as you battle both fellow competitors and antagonists from the virtual game world.

The storyline of Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission is not boring but definitely not one that will keep you engrossed for long either. It’s a pretty good game to kill off some time when you’re bored but to play it continuously for hours? Nope, I’m not having any of it and I would say it’s mainly because of the battles (which I’ll get into shortly).

I like how they implemented the idea of villains making their way out of the game by taking advantage of the anomalies to infiltrate Hero Town. The Hero Switch idea is pretty interesting too, allowing the characters in Hero Town to enter the game as powerful avatars to take on villains themselves in order to stop the anomalies. From a fragile kid (the main character) to a never-seen-before Dragon Ball character, that’s honestly pretty cool. Overall, it’s an interesting way to put together a realistic world and the Dragon Ball universe.

Graphics

The graphics are definitely not top-notch but they are not unimpressive either so for me, I’d gladly play the game without any complaints. The characters are somewhat quite well-designed and the smooth-flowing animation is more than enough for me to enjoy the game. Overall, the game does pretty well in the graphics aspect.

Though, I feel like they could’ve done much better with the main character’s in-game avatar. The option to customize our avatars should have been made available because no matter which warrior race players are going to choose, it’s still going to look exactly the same as some other characters in the game. I chose the Saiyan female warrior race and the avatar looks exactly the same as Note (one of the earliest characters players will meet), even the clothing! It’s like they are clones but they are actually completely different characters. Absurd if you ask me.

Gameplay

How is the game played, you ask? To keep it simple, it’s a strategy game that requires you to build the best 7-men deck out of an astonishing 1,000 cards featuring over 350 characters from the Dragon Ball franchise. There are three main battle types, namely Hero, Berserker and Elite, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Other basics include bringing cards into the support area to restore stamina, nicely-timed Touch Ability Actions which are activated by timely touching or swiping the screen (for Nintendo Switch), earning gacha tickets to be used in the shop and much more.

The battles in Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission felt exciting at first and I was really eager to learn all there is to learn in the game. However, it slowly got boring as I tried to play it in one go because every battle is literally carried out in the same way. The ways characters attack, the ways special skills activate along with most other actions displayed during battles, almost all of them are duplicates.

Thanks to Great Saiyaman 3, I had an easy time getting through the early stages. To be frank, I was struggling to understand the combat system in the game so without him, I’d have been extremely lost. Luckily, guides and tutorials are extremely helpful in this game to help players understand the game better.

Besides having an endless list of characters who have featured in every Dragon Ball series so far, the best thing about the game for me is definitely its unpredictability. It’s not just parts of the story that are unpredictable because I can say the same for the characters as well.

It’s kind of complicated to explain so I guess a simple example would do. Imagine one of your cards being Mr Satan and he defeats Golden Frieza. Also, imagine Vegeta during the Namek saga turning into Super Saiyan Blue. Yes, things of such unimaginable scale could very well happen in the game and you’ll never see it coming at all. Of course, it wouldn’t make sense if these crazy occurrences were to happen in the anime but this is the part of the game where I actually find it most enjoyable.

Verdict

I may not be a big fan of card strategy games but I still found the game to be quite fun and mind you, I’m actually quite early in terms of progression and who knows, it might even be more fun once I’ve tried the gacha out. So, if you are a card game enthusiast who likes Dragon Ball, you should really, really give Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission a try. Lastly, I hope they bring this game to mobile platforms because it’s going to do great there, in my opinion.

For more on Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission, you can visit the official website.

Watch our gameplay here:

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