DragonBall: Online.

As a gamer and long term MMO player having broken my teeth on the likes of EverQuest and to a lesser extent WoW I can honestly say that stepping from one world to another can always be both intimidating and intriguing, like leaping from a cliff and suddenly learning you can fly or as is more likely thinking you can fly before hitting the rocks below and embarrassingly making your way to the nearest vendor for repairs and repercussions.

DragonBall: Online went live in Korea back in 2010 to what could only be described as a lacklustre local launch before being jumped on by the DB obsessed worldwide fan community bypassing all local community limitation and stuffing early servers to near capacity in only a few short months. With worldwide popularity far outstripping local server limits it really was only a matter of time before the game was expanded out Taiwan in early 2011 under Wasabii as a fully free to play game. The Wasabii version proved to be considerably easier to access by the world community and many players seem to have chosen this version as a step into the game despite the vast majority of english speaking players remaining on the Hk server list.


The Game

I'm not exaggerating when i say DB:O is the single closest game based expansion to an existing universe i have ever had the pleasure to play. With a simplistic MMO action bar based combat system and a fantastically inventive in game transportation via the colourful capsule corps "aero Bus" the simple act of getting from A-B to quest that is usually a bane of MMO's is not only eliminated but utterly destroyed.

Combat is very simple, honestly at times it can be horrifying simple and despite having a veritable light show of lasers and explosive combat techniques you will find yourself quickly coming to the sad realization that this really is a grinder with a DragonBall makeover, dont get me wrong the makeover is exceptional and its far from ugly despite its minimal system requirements but a grind by any other name is still a grind. Now there are some excellent variations to game play that does break the monotony but sadly without a story to carry it game play can become more of a chore than a pleasure.

The story is based roughly 200 years after the events of DragonBall Z with the show's two primary characters Goku and Vegeta leaving the planet earth in order to train among the stars, years pass and the world is shocked to find there last known location had been devastated by a supernova. Believing his father dead Gohan sets out to write a book detailing how to use Ki energy and martial art based meditation in order to gain flight and use of other spectacular powers. The book proves incredibly popular and soon humanity begins a new age.
This new age is cut short by the machinations of the time travelling villain Miira who has also enlisted remnants of Frieza's long thought defeated world trade organization and the newly formed Red Pants Army of earth, his entire scheme as revealed thus far involves obtaining the now thought lost pure strain DNA of Goku.
Knowing what this means for earth Dende the namekian guardian of earth and creator of the DragonBalls seeks out the help of the time traveller and son of Vegeta, Trunks to put an end to the threat. Trunks then seeks out powerful individuals to assist him in his quest, as a player you are one of those he recruits to save the future of humanity.

Questing and content

Questing in the game is fairly simplistic and follows a basic grinder philosophy in the form of kill me a certain number of the following local fauna or enemy military, this can be a bit of a chore at times but honestly it can be quite rewarding in itself, with the combination of the usual over the top dragon ball style of combat and the chance for mobs to drop not only some very interesting looking gear in the form of blast caps but also cash and if you are very VERY lucky perhaps even a dragon ball!
Admittedly conventional questing does seem more than a little mundane but there is always more than one way to grab XP, in DB:O's case its the simple joy of stepping back in time...

...wait did i say simple? i may have misspoke, the time travel quests in the game are not what I for one expected, rather than simply going back in time to alter the future to your own benefit you are thrust right back to the Dragon Ball and DBZ episodes during key events such as Goku's arrival on earth and the destruction of fire mountain and the always popular world martial arts tournaments and more as you attempt to ensure that history unfolds as it should.

As with all games there has to be something more than grinding mobs into squishy stains on the landscape and in DB:O we have the arena aka the games equivalent to the infamous World Martial Arts Tournament.
The arena is the games only real PVP area and it allows players of almost all levels to flex and strain there digital muscles and focus there combative skill builds in a frankly brutal dual to the death. Depending on which localization you are playing the arena can come up with reasonable regularity and offers some fantastic prizes as well as the rare but awesome opportunity to see your name up in the UI for all to see server wide. After all whats the point of being the biggest and the best if nobody knows it?

But that's not all! the game offers a number of scheduled & unscheduled world events ranging from the ubiquitous Dragonball hunt where players can pound on mobs and each other in order to grab the orange orbs and make a wish or perhaps beating on giant flailing fish for fun and coin is more your speed? The vents are not only funny and interesting but they can prove profitable to newer players, in one case a forum community member on dbocom.com recently jumped started his new character from Lv1 to Lv10 after a disproportionately large fish attempted to dive-bomb him while he was questing.
A ten level jump notwithstanding the simple randomness of the current events is frankly amazing and the fact that all of these events drop event coins that can be turned in for prizes and unusual equipment means that there is a reason to play and take part regardless of your present level or experience and get involved in the community.

The Guild System

Speaking of the community at large we should take a very quick look at guilds and the guild system. There is almost no way at all to compete at end game or take part in the end game raids without a guild. As with all MMO's you will eventually hit level cap and after that there is only one thing left to do and that's upgrade your gear and beat on bigger and badder bosses with your friends.
Now the upgrade process can and will be down to your personal choices and play style but thanks to a vibrant community you will find yourself guided and to a lesser extent driven by them to power up and get involved.
End game content is always being tweaked and updated and you will find yourself at a bit of a loss as to what to involve yourself in without some level of guidance but as always there are helpful players out there willing to help you take on the ridiculousness of DB:O's end game content with smiles and gusto.
Guilds also offer exclusive content that non guild members simply will not ever be able to see in the form of the guild only areas where the best and brightest hang around when they aren't posing in town centres or hammering on vending machines for goodies.

Before we get any further i should point out one of the single best features i have ever seen as a levelling incentive and that is your childhood.
DB:O starts you off as a child of roughly ten years old, being around the same age Goku was during the DragonBall saga is not only a fantastic way to gain insight to the game but also helps with the incentive to level and justify the grindy kill quests you are forced to complete as a child player as a from of in game training.
This leads to your evolution and aging to an adult at Lv30 as part of a quest chain that also eventually leads you to you learning to fly under your own power and basically gain a fast travel ability. These story chain based quests start at Korin tower and can be changeling to those unable to read the local language but as with all things in the game english translators have mapped out the quest and story in order to make the game a little easier for us westerners.

At the end of the day the game feels so much like the Dragonball Z world that it is hard to believe such comparatively simplistic graphic rendering could engross and engage a player quite as much as it does, with a simple colour pallet, sounds lifted directly from the anime and a cartoony feel it fits the spirit of the DragonBall universe perfectly and to such a degree that you can find yourself pining for the one thing we are unfortunately unlikely to ever see...

...an english language version.


The language barrier

I wont lie to you the language barrier is a killer, if you are unwilling to join the various online english speaking community's and patch your game so at least "some" of the text is in english you will find yourself all but clueless as to not only what you are doing but quite possibly stuck in the tutorial island wondering exactly what the hell is going on.
The main game wont be much better for those unwilling to follow community advice and patch the client side of the program leading to frustrating unreadable quest chains and shockingly obscure grind filled kill questing while you attempt to find the exact type of mob you were tasked with slaughtering.

The English Patch and the DB Community

Every game has its community MMO's doubly so and when it comes to community support you would be hard pressed to find a more friendly and dedicated fan base of intelligent and dedicated players anywhere else in the world wide web.
Most people would have simply converted the bare minimum of the item and quest text and perhaps a limited guide as to how to gear up or use advanced ability's, not this community oh no sir, with a expansive forum of regular users and personalities offering advice the user base of vibrant and varied but thats not even the half of it.

The Dbocom.com community has reached a new height for community involvement in any game modification project i have seen to date. The forum based team of translators are attempting what many would deem impossible and are attempting a full client side translation from simple Chinese to english to be used by the gaming community at large and offering it worldwide for FREE!
The patch itself is already partially active currently translating roughly five percent of the overall text and allowing players to identify quest specific mobs by related quest codes making the game significantly more playable to those of us unable to read and understand the games native language.

Conclusion

At this time despite my own love of the game i do find it impossible to recommend it to a western audience in its native form, while unpatched the game is a blind grind through shocking familiar territory leaving you feeling like an alien in your own back yard unable to understand why some in game signs are in plain english while everyone else seems to be speaking gibberish.

With the Patch the story is similar but at least you can feel involved and with community support you can at least feel as though you are part of something bigger even if you feel that 90% of the time you are simply agreeing to decimate the local fauna with no clue as to why other than somebody asked you to do it.

With a 100% working english patch even one put through google translate without localization this game could command an easy three and a half stars, with a community based full translation we could up that to four to four and a half but without it i would have to give it a miss unless you are a real hardcore DragonBall fan.


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This review is a first draft and not yet ready for public distribution.

All thoughts, comments, considerations and expressed opinions in regards to the materials herein are the thoughts of Alan "Aries" Gamble hereafter known as the reviewer and not to be associated with any online community and are not to be redistributed without the reviewers express permission and are held under all pertaining laws in regards to intellectual property online

All IP's presently held by "worth 1000 pictures" and "AriesAntics.blogspot.com" since 2004
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sorry for the legal BS but people will steal anything unless you nail it down.

You need to include things in game for it to be a review . If I hadn't played dbo before and I read your review all I would know Is the story and this website, also that the combat sucks . Add more detail into flight , combat , pvp , pve. Quests . But I think a big review that includes everything will be good for new people wanting to start dbo

i have a working run on the quest chain to be put in after the story in the gameplay section but it needs tweeking and so i omitted it for now until i finish editing it a little more.

it coveres but isnt limited to

-Story based questing
-time travel quests
-Arena PVP
-World events
-giant fish falling from the sky
-hunting for dragon balls
-guilds and guild only areas
-the lv 30 adult changes
-the lv 30 flying quest

and a few other bits and bobs.

stay tuned for more info as i finish buggering about with it, lets just say its a lot of work to put in one forum post.

Yeah it sounds like a good idea to me :)

So far it looks really well put together! (at the end of the game paragraph you spelt trunks wrong)

Yes there are many things you must cover but,

You need to cover the Jocer Chapter......M

You misspelled dbocom.com as dbcom.com

85% indifferent LOL

I'm going to have to Copy Your legal Bs onto my Guide because i got Internet-Jacked

Lmao @ "giant fish falling from the sky", whats even more interesting is that yesterday it dropped while I was
Lvl 1 and I became lvl 10 straight away lmao