Gamescom is always a good excuse to step into a publisher booth and see what is waiting behind the screens and demo stations. This year, I visited Bandai Namco with enough time to do more than listen to presentations: I also got to play three of its upcoming games. DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE 3 was the first, and before getting into the demo itself, there is one important detail to establish.
I have a backlog of anime I keep promising myself I will eventually watch, and classic Dragon Ball has been sitting on that list for far too long. I know the cultural landmarks, the screaming, the transformations and enough characters to recognize memes form that universe, but I am not going to pretend I can explain several decades of Dragon Ball lore. Perhaps Xenoverse 3 will finally be the catalyst that pushes the series toward the top of that backlog.
That outsider perspective made the game particularly interesting to play. Beneath the spectacular attacks and familiar characters is an action RPG focused on letting you create your own fighter and gradually borrow pieces of Dragon Ball history to shape how that character looks, moves and fights. Before the hands-on session, Bandai Namco walked us through those systems, from the new AGE 1000 setting to mentor Souls, Fighting Styles and transformations. Then they handed me a controller, which, as anyone familiar with my gaming habits might expect, immediately became my first enemy.
Table of Contents
A New Dragon Ball Future
Xenoverse 3 moves the story into AGE 1000, a far-future Dragon Ball setting featuring original characters created by Akira Toriyama. At its center is West City, which serves both as part of the story and as the game’s main online hub. Bandai describes it as a populated city rather than simply a multiplayer lobby, with cafés, shops, apartments, a university, NPCs and other players occupying the same space. Your protagonist becomes a student at West City University and a member of the Great Saiya Squad.
The Gamescom demo offered only a brief look around before sending me into combat, matching Bandai’s description of the press demo build. Exploration was limited, followed by a mission in the Glacier area with regular enemies and a boss. The full game should give West City considerably more purpose, with NPCs offering quests and collectibles scattered around the environment. These include currency, boosts, music and more unusual discoveries called MistyPix.
MistyPix are particularly important because they connect the future setting to Dragon Ball characters from the past. Bring one to the Fortuneteller Gal, and AGE 1000 technology allows that character to appear in the city as your mentor. Complete their missions, raise your Bond level and gradually unlock their Skill Tree, gaining access to attacks and other customization options.
Building Your Own Dragon Ball Fighter
Xenoverse 3’s systems started making considerably more sense to me despite my limited Dragon Ball education. The objective is not simply to copy one famous character, but to collect pieces from different fighters and combine them into something personal. Here are few things to help you customize:
Soul Assist lets you briefly call another Dragon Ball character into battle. Depending on the selected Soul, they may attack directly, extend a combo, provide a buff or help you escape trouble. Once I stopped wrestling with the controller quite so much, calling in support while moving between enemies became surprisingly natural.
Then there is Soul Switch, which takes the idea further. Instead of summoning a character for a moment, your avatar temporarily takes on the equipped Soul character and gains access to their abilities. The alternative is an Awoken Skill, where your own avatar transforms according to their race. Xenoverse 3 features six playable races: Earthling, Saiyan, Namekian, Frieza Race, Majin and, new to this game, Android. You choose between Soul Switch and an Awoken Skill rather than carrying both simultaneously.
Bandai is already changing how transformations work based on feedback from earlier hands-on sessions. The build presented to us still used a limited transformation duration, but the planned system removes that simple timer and instead ties Awoken forms to Ki. As long as you can maintain the resource, you can remain transformed; running out or entering Ki Break returns you to normal. Ki charging has consequently become more important as well.
Perhaps my favorite customization idea is Fighting Styles, which let your avatar inherit another character’s motions and combos, including details such as their idle stance, movement, guarding and flight. Captain Ginyu was used as an example during the presentation. Learning his style does not just give you attacks inspired by him; it changes the physical personality of your fighter. Some styles can even incorporate signature weapons where appropriate. During the demo, I even noticed my character wielding Whis’ staff while happily whacking away at a training dummy.
Abilities add another layer through Battle Gear, costumes, your equipped Soul and your avatar’s race. Some provide conventional bonuses, while others alter how attacks behave, such as increasing Ki blast output or changing effective range. With six races, transformations, equipment, Souls, assists and Fighting Styles interacting, the number of possible combinations becomes rather intimidating. Bandai currently describes 130 characters to learn from, making this feel more like a long-term playground than a character creator you visit once and forget about.
There is one potential catch: progression. During the presentation, I asked what happens if you spend hours developing one mentor only to discover that another better suits your play style. We were told that Souls can be switched freely and previous progress is not lost, but there was no known system for transferring that progression from one Soul to another. Boosting items exist, although the presenter could not confirm exactly how much they would ease the process. With this many possible mentors, the difference between “lots to discover” and “lots to grind” could become important.
Learning to Fight in Three Dimensions
Then came the controller.
I am primarily a mouse-and-keyboard player, so dropping me into a fast 3D fighting game with aerial movement, lock-ons, assists, dodges, transformations and enough glowing projectiles to illuminate Cologne was not the gentlest introduction.
The aerial combat was the biggest adjustment. Traditional fighting games already ask you to think about spacing and timing, but Xenoverse adds another axis. Enemies can move above or below you, attacks arrive from different angles and battles can shift rapidly across large areas. For the first few minutes, I was fighting the camera and controller nearly as much as the actual opponents. Fortunately, it clicked surprisingly quickly. After a few encounters, I was navigating the battlefield with some confidence, closing the distance with a fast aerial dash instead of keeping my boots on the ground, escaping incoming attacks, dodging the enormous flashy techniques being thrown in my direction and bringing Soul Assists into my own offense. I was not playing elegantly, and a dedicated Xenoverse veteran would probably have produced something considerably less embarrassing, but I stopped feeling lost. For a game built around three-dimensional aerial combat, the transition from “what on Earth am I pressing?” to actually reading the fight happened faster than expected.
Xenoverse 3 also knows how to show off. Combos are fast, attacks are colorful and exaggerated, characters fly across the battlefield, vanish from danger and answer with huge cinematic blasts. Even without decades of Dragon Ball knowledge behind me, the spectacle communicates itself effectively. You do not need a lore encyclopedia to understand that something extremely unhealthy is currently flying toward your face.
A Different Door Into Dragon Ball
For existing fans, much of Xenoverse 3’s appeal will come from recognition: finding favorite characters, earning their Souls, recreating techniques and building an avatar around decades of Dragon Ball history. I am approaching it from almost the opposite direction. The game may end up introducing me to a character before the anime does, and that could become part of its charm. It taps into that eternal debate of book first, movie later — versus the acolytes who insist that watching the adaptation first makes the original easier, or even more rewarding, to understand afterwards. In my case, Xenoverse 3 may end up becoming the “movie” that finally sends me back to the source material.
Xenoverse 3 connects Dragon Ball’s past to a completely new future, but you do not necessarily need to arrive knowing exactly whose stance you want, which transformation is sacred or why a particular technique sends the fanbase into orbit. You can discover those characters through mentors, experiment with their abilities and perhaps become curious about where they originally came from.
After Gamescom, that is where the game sits for me. The combat looked chaotic at first, and my eternal war with controllers did not help, but within a few minutes I was flying, dodging, assisting allies and surviving attacks that initially seemed impossible to read. Meanwhile, the systems behind that combat appear considerably deeper than the short demo could demonstrate.
DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE 3 is scheduled for 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. If you want to keep an eye on development — or simply add it to the growing pile of games you swear you will play eventually — you can find DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE 3 on Steam.
Otherwise, I am going to learn Dragon Ball completely backwards.
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