Over the years, Dragon Ball fans have been blessed with a continuous string of unique game releases from Ultimate Tenkaichi to the Xenoverse series to FighterZ and most recently, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. While these games have all centered around giving players the opportunity to fight popular villains featured in the anime, every game is different than the last. With each new Dragon Ball game that’s announced, fans are always left speculating whether the game will be 2D (like Extreme Butoden and FighterZ) or 3D (like Xenoverse and Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot).
For some gamers, whether or not the game is 2D or 3D can even dictate whether or not they give the game a chance! While there are many good and bad Dragon Ball games that are both 2D and 3D, we’ve assembled a few reasons as to why Dragon Ball games should remain in a 2D format and why they should continue to be 3D if these games are to be as well-received as the anime and manga are.
10 2D: A Greater Focus On The Fighting
Because Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot makes use of three-dimensional spaces, players will quickly discover that fighting isn’t the main selling point of the game. Naturally, this means that the combat mechanics won’t be as fleshed out if fighting was the game’s only focus.
In two-dimensional Dragon Ball games like FighterZ, there really isn’t anything else to do besides fight, which gives developers an incentive to make sure that the combat system is refined, polished, and deep enough to keep players busy for more than a few weeks. FighterZ is often praised for its intricate combat system since there’s always something new for even veteran players to learn.
9 3D: Players Can Explore A More Flushed Out World
Since three-dimensional Dragon Ball games like Xenoverse and Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot enable players to actually take to the skies, land, and sea, developers are given more license to build a world that’s much more expansive, featuring countless iconic locations straight from the anime. Players of 3D Dragon Ball games are often encouraged to explore these detailed worlds from every possible angle.
8 2D: Better Environmental Destruction
Just like in the anime, gamers have expressed a desire to be able to destroy the ground with energy blasts and decimate entire mountains just by flying into them. With recent 3D Dragon Ball games, developers have ensured that stray energy blasts can tear up the ground, but the multiple camera angles ensure that players won’t be focused for too long on a single spot they’ve blasted with a Kamehameha, so this environmental damage repairs itself in seconds.
In a game like FighterZ, the environmental destruction not only remains on the map until the end of the fight, but despite the game being two-dimensional, deflected ki blasts can often decimate mountains in the background. Because the map is both smaller and the angle doesn’t change throughout the fight, it wouldn’t sit well with players if the cracks their attacks made on the ground were immediately repaired. Two-dimensional games have begun to make better use of permanent environmental destruction, making players truly feel the power in every move they make.
7 3D: Can Support Battles Featuring More Fighters
While Dragon Ball’s most famous fights were usually one-on-one, there are instances where characters have been forced to fight more than one opponent at a time. With a 2D Dragon Ball game like FighterZ or Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai, it becomes difficult to cram more than one fighter at a time on the map for a battle.
At best, additional characters can be swapped out as the main fighter and used as support characters, but this doesn’t come close to the experience of fighting on a map alongside multiple allies, and opponents, at once.
6 2D: More Competitive
As we stated before, most three-dimensional Dragon Ball games emphasize other aspects besides just fighting. Because the combat suffers as a result, these games gain a reputation for being more for casual players. In contrast, what the 2D games lose in diversity, they gain in competitiveness.
With 2D Dragon Ball games like FighterZ, it doesn’t take long for players to discover intricate, hidden combos, and before long, they may even find themselves competing in tournaments for monetary prizes!
But perhaps the best thing about these 2D Dragon Ball games being more competitive is that they’ll be more widely received by gamers who aren’t Dragon Ball fans, which can only lead to the production of better-quality Dragon Ball games in the future.
5 3D: Three-Dimensional Character Models
Although it’s easy to forget that Dragon Ball, like most anime, is a 2D show, much of the appeal of 3D Dragon Ball games comes from the fact that we get to see our favorite characters digitally animated as we’ve never seen them before.
Who doesn’t want a 360-degree view of their favorite Super Saiyan and that golden aura from every possible angle?
4 2D: Fewer Frustrating Moments During Battles
Every Dragon Ball game has its glitches. More often than not, they’re fixed in a timely fashion so that many players don’t ever experience them. This is different from the outright exploitation of a game’s mechanics that we’ve seen in several Dragon Ball games, especially in 3D titles.
In Xenoverse, for example, many players have used the wide 3D space to run away from their opponents until the timer runs out, or even hide behind indestructible objects, like a building that would normally be reduced to rubble when hit with a Supernova in the anime. This ruins the game for players who’d prefer to play fair and avoid using cheap tricks.
In a 2D Dragon Ball game, the smaller, vacant maps make these tactics impossible, meaning that battles will be fought between players who’ve actually earned their wins.
3 3D: More Interesting Maps
As we stated in the previous entry, 2D Dragon Ball games often feature maps that, while they’re less cluttered, are much smaller in size. These maps can get boring fast, unlike the more expansive maps present in games like Xenoverse and Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot.
Players may choose to fight on Planet Namek in Xenoverse 2, but once on Namek, they can trade blows with a foe in the sky, underwater, on a tiny Namekian farm, in the Namekian village, or even in front of Goku’s spaceship! The change in scenery across a single stage will give battles an extra layer of dimension that is absent on a 2D map.
2 2D: Looks More Like The Anime
Dragon Ball Super: Broly did incorporate a good amount of stylized CGI, but for the most part, Dragon Ball, like most anime, is two-dimensional.
2D Dragon Ball games just have a special place in the hearts of many fans because they resemble the anime a lot more, especially in games like FighterZ or Extreme Butoden, where the character models look like they were lifted straight from the show.
1 3D: More In-Line With The Series
Although the anime is 2D, the characters definitely didn’t live in a two-dimensional world! They moved in many different directions. Not just left and right. In playing a 3D game like Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, players will be presented with an experience that, while it may not look just like the anime, is actually more in-line with how the Z-Fighters experienced their world.
At the end of the day, one of the main reasons we play Dragon Ball games is so we can take a walk in Goku’s shoes, no matter how heavy those weighted boots of his might be.
NEXT: Dragon Ball: 10 Unique Characters (That Are Only In The Video Games)
