Gaming

Dragon Ball Daima Makes Me Hope for More Than Just DLC

Dragon Ball Daima‘s world is filled with potential, so give it the RPG it deserves.

Dragon Ball Daima has become appointment viewing for Dragon Ball fans each week (despite taking this week off), and considering how Bandai Namco usually handles the franchise, it should be no surprise that Dragon Ball Daima is being put anywhere and everywhere when it comes to games. It’s obviously going to make an appearance in Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero since two of the three known DLC packs are dedicated to Dragon Ball Daima, but characters and more content from the show are also going to be added to Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot and the never-ending Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2.

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But is that enough for Dragon Ball Daima when it comes to Dragon Ball games? Of course it is — getting DLC in three separate games clears up any questions people would’ve had about show-to-game crossovers as Dragon Ball Daima went on, but if I can be a bit greedy for a moment, I’d like to see Dragon Ball Daima get its own game instead of just being DLC.

Dragon Ball games have historically stuck to the story of Dragon Ball Z throughout various adaptations. They dip into Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Super, and the movies at times, but it’s basically a guarantee that each Dragon Ball game aside from straight fighters will find some way to retell the events of Dragon Ball Z.

But if you take that same formula and apply it to Dragon Ball Daima, that’s what’s got me excited at the possibility of a Dragon Ball Daima game. The show’s voyage into the Demon Realm is uncharted territory for the Dragon Ball franchise, and it has the advantage over Dragon Ball Super in the sense that it’s not nearly as long in terms of episodes. The story is more contained with a defined starting point after Dragon Ball Z‘s Buu Saga and (we’d assume) a pretty defined ending in the future given that it has to tie into the larger Dragon Ball timeline somehow, so there’d be little question of what needs to be cut or added.

Fighting games are of course the go-to staple for Dragon Ball adaptations, but if Dragon Ball Daima were to get its own game, I’d much rather it take the form of something like Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. That’s technically a fighting game as well since that’s about 80 percent of what you’ll be doing in order to progress the story, but as someone who acknowledges their shortcomings in fighting games, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot felt different. The PvE, explorative nature of the game offered less pressure and more immersion, and I can only imagine what that’d look like in the Demon Realm.

Much of Dragon Ball Daima already lends itself to the structure of a game anyway. Dragon Ball Daima wastes very little time in actually getting Goku & company into the Demon Realm since that’s the most exciting setting for the show, so any Dragon Ball Diama RPG would benefit from a similarly quick intro so that you can start exploring ASAP. Dragon Ball Daima is full of new characters to meet in open-world encounters or story cutscenes, and as far as progression goes, Dragon Ball Daima already has worldbuilding in place that supports an RPG setup. Within the Demon Realm are three distinct Demon Worlds which, along with the narrative it’d have to follow, create very clear areas to be gated and revisited.

Taking the reins in the Dragon Ball Daima fights as Mini Goku in a game would be compelling, sure, but what really made me consider what a Dragon Ball Daima RPG might look like was Episode 4, “Chatty.” In this episode, Goku, Shin, and Glorio come upon a small settlement beset by Gomah’s Gendarmerie goons until Panzy intervenes. Coming up on a village that already has its own problems to deal with and deciding how you fit into that scenario is the bread and butter of open-world RPGs and would provide for perfect opportunities to flesh out a game beyond the show without diverting too much from Dragon Ball Daima itself.

I may never get my Dragon Ball Daima RPG, but I’ll at least see the characters from the show added to other games. We already know of several of the characters that’ll be in Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero‘s DLCs, and the trailers above for Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 and Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot preview what’s to come there, so Dragon Ball Daima fans will get more of Mini Goku and everyone else eventually.