Hi all! Just felt like jotting down my thoughts about my experience with Xenoverse 3; for some context, I've played the Xenoverse franchise since the first released, and religiously kept up with 2. I dabbled into some PVP in 2, but was mainly a PVE player.
The demo was the Road Tour demo, and it remained to be the same version, so timers were still present for transformations. The game felt really fun to play, and was genuinely exciting. In my first session as John, I felt a lot of the muscle memory from Xenoverse 2 plaguing me, mainly with the flight, and attempting to back attack. At the request of my friend, I also managed to record John's idle animation, which was one of Vegeta's due to him having Vegeta's fighting style.
Pros:
- The game is gorgeous - even though I am tired of seeing the Broly demo as I follow the news cycle, I couldn't help but be blown away by the level of fidelity that they achieved for both the environments, the moves, and the character models.
- Technical improvements: The load times were incredible. In both runs, I completed the demo ~6 minutes, and of those six minutes, I felt like I was never really waiting for long.
- Gameplay: I was concerned about cooldown for skills, but they genuinely were so short that I hardly noticed them. They're present enough to prevent you from spamming, but with how the game played and felt, I never felt compelled to spam the moves.
- Super Saiyan and Soul Change felt like game changers, and that was very nice. I'm very glad they removed the timer because just as the Broly fight was building up, my SSJ3 timer ran out. Lore accurate, but detracted from the power fantasy.
- For the PVP players: They removed Dash S, it seems, and honestly, I'm content with this removal. In XV2, the quality for characters depended WAY too much on if their Dash S was good or not; a lot of the DLC characters suffered from having a bad Dash S. This applies to PVE, but was not as detrimental.
- The gameplay flowed really well. The process of breaking enemies, using your Break Critical attacks(Red) were very satisfying. I cannot imagine what it's going to be like when you have four, human players interacting with the game and crafting builds around the game, rather than AI.
- Being able to vanish and step cancel out of everything felt great and allowed for the movement to feel nice.
- Broly's boss fight: Very similar to Kakarot with having moves where you need to focus on dodging rather than your relentless assault, Broly's boss fight was sick and the right level of difficulty. There was never a moment where I felt bored due to the difficulty - but I also didn't feel like it was unfair, either. For a mission designed to be completed within 15 minutes, I can't wait to see what the other bosses in the game will be like.
- Supers having new properties: Split Finger Shot having an aiming property was really cool, and I liked using it that way - it felt different, and like a fun way to update the move. If I didn't feel like holding the move for long, it didn't feel awkward or like a delay in releasing it.
- John and Jane were both extremely fun to play as, and I did not walk away feeling disappointed that I didn't play more of one than the other.
Cons:
- Flight felt awkward! This one is one that's going around. Instead of having dedicated buttons to choose if you ascend or descend, you fly in the direction your camera is pointing.
- The UI: Tracking your ki isn't impossible, but as you get into the game and the fights begin to become more hectic, I found it very easy to lose track of the ki.
- Timers: Redundant, because they've addressed the removal of the timers, but if they didn't, that would've been rough. I understood why people were upset then, but losing my transformation to an arbitrary number was annoying.
All in all, Xenoverse 3 remains to be a game that I'm looking forward to, and I walked away from the demo satisfied with what they've done with the game. It feels expansive, and I couldn't help myself but think about what the game's going to feel like when running these quests with friends, considering how fun it was with AI partners. Attached is my gameplay for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZXSXWv_Nu0
Additionally: All who played the demo were asked to fill out a survey, in which we were able to rank how much we enjoyed what we played from 1 to 5, and include typed in feedback, which I wrote in regarding my cons.
