For those unaware, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot features two types of party characters, playable and support. Playable characters consists of those characters from Dragon Ball Z that took particularly active roles in the story, such as Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, Future Trunks, and Gohan, while support characters are those that were less important such as Krillin, Tien, Android 18, and Yamcha. These characters, with the exception of Android 18 are all limited by their biology and are therefore understandably not as powerful as the playable characters, but there are other ways beyond power that the upcoming DLC could bring these characters back into relevance.
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Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot Sidelines Support Characters
Early on in Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, support characters are incredibly useful. Even given the option to include Goku as a party member, fans still might opt to use Krillin instead due to his great utility. Krillin is capable of dealing decent damage with Destructo Disc, has a Solar Flare ability capable of stunning enemies and giving the player a much needed respite, and will occasionally restore HP and Ki to the player. These abilities all make him super useful if the player is struggling with a battle.
The issue is caused by Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot’s backwards difficulty curve. As the player progresses through the story, leveling up and unlocking new and more powerful transformations, the game begins to feel a lot easier. Raditz was difficult because all players had was Goku’s base form around level 4 with very few techniques, but his boss fight is arguably harder than Kid Buu’s because the player is just so much more powerful by that point. Once the player stops struggling, the need for support characters like Krillin simply fades away, and it makes more sense to include the best damage dealers available in a party, typically Vegeta, Goku, and Gohan since they have the strongest transformations.
This problem is exacerbated by the abundance of healing items. Even if the player doesn’t buy anything, all it takes to be overstocked on Senzu Beans is to simply visit Korin’s tower every now and again. When the player is fully capable of healing themselves in what few battles prove to be challenging there is even less purpose for including support characters in a party. Still, it is possible that DBZ: Kakarot’s Super DLC will fix this, bringing these characters back to the spotlight.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot Super DLC 1 Support Characters
There are two ways that DBZ: Kakarot could fix its support character problem. The first and most obvious way involves simply giving the support characters some kind of boost in power. With both Goku and Vegeta attaining Super Saiyan God in the DLC, the power gap mentioned previously is only going to expand. By either increasing their damage capabilities or raising DBZ: Kakarot’s level cap, these characters could made more powerful. It is worth noting that this isn’t entirely Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot’s fault, as this problem pervades the actual DBZ and DBS animes as well.
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The other way these characters could be brought back to relevance is by increasing the challenges the player will face. A leak claimed that level 250 Beerus will be incredibly tough, so it is unlikely that players will be able to win this fight by relying on brute force alone. Though it isn’t clear if characters aside from Goku or Vegeta will be allowed in this fight, challenging battles will hopefully be found in more than just the Beerus boss fight. In these cases, it may make more sense to take Krillin with his utility options into a fight rather than Ultimate Gohan just for the sake of damage.
Dragon Ball Super did a combination of these two things in order to take these characters off the sideline. Admittedly the power scaling in Dragon Ball Super is a little bit odd, and it seems as though some characters have gotten arbitrary power boosts for the sake of keeping them relevant, but for the most part fans have accepted that. Instead, more emphasis is placed on tactical thinking and unique usages of techniques in Dragon Ball Super’s battles, so if this sort of thing translated into DBZ: Kakarot, that would be nice.
DBZ: Kakarot Super DLC Could Make Support Characters Obsolete
On the other hand, it is possible, even likely, that the exact opposite could happen. With both Goku and Vegeta getting power ups that put them beyond even Ultimate Gohan (who up until this point was the strongest character in Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot), the likes of Yamcha and Tien just have no way of keeping up. If there was ever a reason to choose Yamcha over Vegeta, there won’t be one to choose him over Super Saiyan God Vegeta.
Truly it depends on how CyberConnect2 opts to handle these characters moving forward. If the DLC simply adds new forms for Goku and Vegeta alongside a fun boss fight, then these characters will likely fall further into obscurity. That said, there is real potential here for CyberConnect2 to do these characters justice in a way that the original Dragon Ball Z anime never could. Either way, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot’s Super DLC releases this Monday, the 27th, so fans don’t have long to wait to find out.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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