Few things are constant, but it seems that there will always be Dragon Ball fighting games. Dragon Ball FighterZ is the most recent entry in that genre, and fans are loving it for a lot of reasons. Not only are the visuals crisp, but the gameplay is some of the best to come out of the fighting game genre as a whole in a while. Recently, Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta was added as a new playable character, and while fans are loving his design and moveset, it does make one classic Dragon Ball fighting game problem clearer. Balance in fighting games is extremely important, but these characters are canonically anything but balanced.
It should be said that this issue in Dragon Ball FighterZ is nothing new. For a long time, players have had access to the likes of Broly, Super Saiyan Blue Goku and Vegeta, and even other fusion characters like Vegito and Kefla. All the while, players still have the option to pick human characters such as Krillin or Yamcha despite the obvious gap in their power levels. As more and more powerful DLC characters are added to the game, the issue simultaneously becomes more apparent but also starts to matter less and less.
In terms of raw power level, it can be difficult to enumerate just how strong these characters are. There’s no official guide to state whether or not Super Saiyan 4 is stronger than Super Saiyan Blue, and Dragon Ball FighterZ even pokes fun at that with Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta’s Dramatic Finish against his Super Saiyan Blue counterpart. Regardless, there are a few things that are clear in terms of power. The only character in Dragon Ball: GT that was ever able to stand up to Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta was Omega Shenron, and even this is being too generous.
That means that any character on the Dragon Ball FighterZ roster, from Dragon Ball Z or Dragon Ball: GT should be considered canonically weaker than Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta. Things get a bit more complicated when it comes to characters from Dragon Ball Super, however. These include Beerus, Golden Frieza, Super Saiyan Blue Goku and Vegeta, Goku Black, Fused Zamasu, Broly, Android 17, Hit, Jiren, Ultra Instinct Goku, Kefla, and Super Saiyan Blue Vegito and Gogeta. Among these powerful characters, it’s easy to say the only ones that might challenge Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta are Beerus, Fused Zamasu, Broly, Jiren, Ultra Instinct Goku, and the SSB fusion characters.
That’s only seven out of 43 currently playable characters that would be able to keep up with this powerhouse, so what about the other 36? How can Dragon Ball FighterZ justify any of these other characters like Nappa, Base Vegeta, Ginyu, or Videl fighting alongside or even against them? Although it is difficult to say, it’s likely that Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta could take on most of these members of the cast singlehandedly, but again this is nothing new. The same holds true for Beerus, an actual God of Destruction, yet he is consistently ranked towards the bottom of most Dragon Ball FighterZ tier lists.
The obvious answer is that balance supersedes canonical power levels in fighting games. If Dragon Ball FighterZ tried to represent how strong characters actually are, then no one would play as Krillin, Nappa, or any early Dragon Ball Z character. With that in mind, there’d be no point in including them in the first place. The game would be reduced to a Dragon Ball Super fighting game with a significantly smaller roster, and even then certain characters would dominate others. For this reason, power levels are thrown out the window from a development standpoint.
All that said, there is one way that FighterZ can keep all these characters together, and that’s by subscribing to Dragon Ball Super‘s take on power levels. During Dragon Ball Super, especially in the Tournament of Power arc, fans get to see that power level isn’t everything. In these battles, even those that are traditionally considered fairly weak get a chance to shine, using their experience, strategies, and wit to best opponents that are much stronger than they are. There’s even a scene where Krillin almost manages to ring out Super Saiyan Blue Goku, and in the manga, Master Roshi goes toe-to-toe with Jiren for a short while.
Back in Dragon Ball Z, this type of thing would never have worked. In the Namek Saga, Goku is able to handily defeat Recoome thanks to his immense speed and overpowering aura. This isn’t indicated to have anything to do with the two’s skill at fighting, as earlier Recoome managed to thrash Vegeta for the same reasons. Still, it does make for a more interesting show when fights aren’t predetermined by arbitrary power levels, and gives side characters without access to godly power ups a chance to show what they are made of.
This approach only goes so far, however, and there comes a point when the power level differences are just too vast. Other Dragon Ball games have taken a different approach to this in the past. Though there are plenty of fighting games that decide to put all the characters on an even playing field regardless of their power level, there are some that opt to remain true to their canonical levels of strength.
A great example of this in action is Dragon Ball Xenoverse. Although most players choose to use their custom characters, they do have the option of using stock characters from the Dragon Ball franchise. As more of an Action RPG than a fighting game, it becomes clear that certain characters are just outright better than others. Kid Gohan, for example, has much worse stats that Adult Gohan. This makes sense, but does trivialize the existence of Kid Gohan to a degree. Even still, thanks to a different moveset some players still choose him. This is a problem that likely won’t disappear any time soon, and fans have had an easy enough time suspending their disbelief so far.
Dragon Ball FighterZ is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
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