Dragon Ball: Xenoverse 2 has been out since 2016, and it has been re-released on nearly everything since. Dimps developed the game; Bandai Namco Entertainment published it. It arrived on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 25, 2016, on Windows two days later, on Nintendo Switch in Japan on September 7, 2017, and worldwide on September 22, 2017, on Stadia on December 17, 2019, and on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on May 24, 2024.
Ten million copies sold worldwide as of May 2023. A sequel, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3, is in development.
The question for anyone looking at the 2024 versions is simple. Does the game underneath still hold up?
Mostly, yes. It scores 7.3/10 from an IGDB critic aggregate of 22 outlets.
Conton City and the Supreme Kai of Time
The setup is the series at its most flexible. Two years after the events of Dragon Ball Xenoverse, the player joins the Time Patrol. The Supreme Kai of Time and her bird Tokitoki watch over Conton City, the hub the developers say is seven times larger than Toki-Toki City from the first game.
Elder Kai hands out the missions. Someone is meddling with the past, and that someone is Towa and her creation Mira, who recruit powerful allies across timelines and draw dark power from the altered history they create.
It is a premise built to send you through every famous fight in the franchise without worrying about canon. The patroller is a custom warrior, and the game lets you pick from five races:
- Humans
- Saiyans
- Majins
- Namekians
- Frieza’s race
Each has different strengths and weaknesses. Each gets race-specific quests, minigames and transformations. In the first game, transformations were available only to Saiyans, through the Super Saiyan forms. Xenoverse 2 adds race-specific transformations, though the source does not say every race gets one.
That change matters more than it sounds. It is the difference between a game where one character type is the real protagonist and a game where the choice at the start actually shapes how you play.
Future Gohan and the Androids
The campaign is a tour of Dragon Ball history with the outcomes under threat. The patroller helps Goku against Raditz, who has been strengthened by demon realm magic. During the Saiyan Saga, the patroller teams with Goku to stop Turles from sabotaging the fight against Nappa and Vegeta, and beats both Saiyans in their Great Ape forms.
On Namek, the patroller aids Gohan and Krillin, foils Captain Ginyu’s body-swapping, and helps Goku defeat Frieza and his older brother Cooler, who arrive together. In Future Trunks’ timeline, the patroller saves Future Gohan from a reprogrammed Android 16 and repels Mira.
Trunks is forbidden to interfere. He joins Future Gohan’s fight against the Androids anyway, briefly, before Gohan convinces him to accept his fate and safeguard their future.
That is the best material in the game. It is a small story about grief and restraint tucked inside a time-travel plot, and it lands because the game trusts the original scene enough to bend it rather than replace it.
The tour continues. The patroller aids Trunks’ younger self after the Cell Games, defeating Future Cell and the Androids with his help. In the Majin Buu era, the patroller stops Broly’s interference during Vegeta’s sacrifice and helps Goku and Vegeta beat Kid Buu. In Hell, they face Janemba, which enables Vegeta’s return to Earth and the fusion into Vegito.
Five Races, One Arena
The fighting is close to the first game, with upgrades. Battles happen in 3D arenas modeled on locations from the series. Conton City is the central hub, and players can traverse it freely and fly once that ability is unlocked. Other locations include the Namekian Village and Frieza’s ship.
Skills are learned through masters and other non-player characters. Some of those masters are found only in the additional areas, which gives you a reason to leave the hub beyond sightseeing.
Multiplayer servers hold up to 3,000 players at once. There is a training mode with access to the character roster. Ki blasts come in five types: Power, Homing, Rush, Paralyze and Bomb. Which type you get depends on your race or your Super Soul.
Save data from Dragon Ball Xenoverse transfers over. Your custom character from the first game appears as Toki Toki City’s “Hero” in the middle of the square. Premade avatars are also available if you would rather skip creation.
Ki Blasts and Server Limits
Xenoverse 2 is a 2016 game. The enhanced graphics the original pitch promised were enhanced relative to 2015, and nothing in the record of the 2024 releases says they rebuild the thing.
The structure is also repetitive by design. You fly to a distortion, you fight the fight you already know, you fix the outcome, you return. The variation comes from who is standing in front of you and which of your five race options you brought. That is enough for a long time. It is not enough forever.
Conton City is seven times larger than Toki-Toki City. The source gives the size and nothing else about how it plays.
The 2024 Ports and What They Add
The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions arrived on May 24, 2024. Stadia got the game on December 17, 2019, and that platform is gone, which tells you something about how long this game has been in circulation. The Switch version landed in Japan on September 7, 2017, and worldwide on September 22, 2017.
The platforms now:
- PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S — May 24, 2024
- Stadia — December 17, 2019
- Nintendo Switch — September 2017
- PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows — October 2016
Ten million copies is the number that explains all of this. A game that keeps selling gets kept alive. Xenoverse 2 has been kept alive longer than most fighting games get to be, and the 2024 releases are the latest proof.
What Ten Million Copies Buys
Here is what matters. Xenoverse 2 is not a great fighting game, and it is not a great role-playing game either. The ki blast system, with its five types tied to race or Super Soul, is a layer on top of combat that was already close to the first game’s.
What it is, and what it has been since 2016, is a Dragon Ball sandbox with unusual reach. Five races with different strengths and weaknesses, a character creator that carries your old save forward, and a campaign that treats the franchise’s history as a set of scenes worth revisiting rather than a timeline to protect.
The Future Gohan sequence is the proof. The game could have let Trunks fix everything. It does not. It lets Gohan make his choice and makes Trunks live with it. That is a more interesting game than the one the marketing promised.
The weaknesses are real. Repetition sets in. The 2024 releases are access, not renovation. If you have played it before, the new versions give you a reason to return and not much else.
The Bar for Xenoverse 3
If you have not played it, the case is stronger. The game sold over ten million copies by May 2023. The something those buyers found is a game that lets you be anyone from five races and walk through the fights you grew up on, with the outcomes genuinely in doubt. That is worth 7.3/10.
Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3 is in development. The bar it has to clear is not the combat. It is the freedom.
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