Dragonball Xenoverse 2's "Expert Missions" are what I've always wanted in a Dragonball fighting game. It's a bunch of missions where the opponent is more like a traditional tough boss to beat with special abilities. In this mode, there are giant balls of energy that you have to fight and blast away or you and your team will get damaged heavily. Sometimes, you can also get sent to different dimensions/time with the help of some kind of demonic power that's based on the story.
The only problem with expert missions are they are still somewhat buggy. For example, if you're fighting a Giant Ape type of boss, sometimes they'll use that giant energy ball attack, only for them to somehow get teleported under the ground and you won't be able to attack them anymore so you'll have to restart the mission. It's very common on the PC version of the game.
Dragonball Xenoverse 2 is less grindy in my opinion. Although the items and moves that you'll get from the quests are still random, they are much easier to get. The special items that you could only get from those rare Time Patrol battles in missions are now also common because the Time Patrol encounters seem to have been set in the missions themselves and you can activate them by talking to the Time Patrollers.
The side missions that you can do while roaming around the map are fun! You'll have to deal with other Time Patroler teams and do other stuff like doing emotes in front of certain characters so that they'll give you clothes or new emotes. Their dialogues are usually lighthearted and funny, with sometimes a hint of naughtiness mixed in (one girl won't stop touching her namekian partner, so the namekian partner keeps complaining lol!). The characters you'll get to talk to in the map also have their own little stories. For example, there's this Time Patrol duo who will be arguing early on in the game, but after you make some progress in the missions, their relationship will also seem to improve for the better. Little details like that are entertaining to me so I always make it a point to talk to the characters after major events in the game.
The fighting mechanics seem to be more fluid and fun as well. Combos are easier to do and there seems to be more "branching out" that can be done so that your combos won't look too repetitive.
If there's one complaint I have (aside from the buggy expert missions), it's that landing the Ultimate Attacks are much harder this time around because the computer opponents will actually avoid them. That's all good if that's the only thing they do, BUT some of the special attacks are actually weird. For example, there's this Kaoiken Kamehameha combo where you beat up your enemy with Kaioken powered combo before blasting them with a big Kamehameha. Unfortunately, even if you try it on a computer opponent with no active AI in training mode, the Kamehameha will miss majority of the time. Why? It's probably because the "hit box" is too small or the computer opponent recovers quickly by default in such a way that they'll always somewhere off to the side instead of the front. Whenever you launch a special or ultimate energy attack, there's this animation at the beginning where you lock onto the opponent while charging up your power, BUT when you fire the energy blast, all the computer enemy has to do is move a little to the left (or accidentally move) and your beam won't hit them.
In this case, the only way to make sure that your opponent gets hit by an ultimate attack is by removing their stamina (which helps them "vanish") by landing a "Stamina Break" move, which is basically a hard punch or kick to the gut to stun them. Even then, they can still recover pretty fast and could escape your ultimate attack!
The "Stamina Break" has been given so much importance that launching an ultimate attack can backfire at you quickly. For example, if you use a very slow ultimate attack like 100X Kamehameha, the enemy might somehow rush to your back and land a stamina break on you. One hit is all it takes and your stamina would be gone! When your stamina is dead, you are defenseless. You can attack, but you can't vanish, you can't fly away, I don't think you can even block! This is the time that the cpu opponent will brutally punish you with a seemingly endless combo until your stamina comes back after a few seconds.
The cpu enemy is really much more "intelligent" this time around, which I love because I got tired of Xenoverse 1's computer opponents who seemed to be into self punishment by running into every attack I give them. The only problem is that the cpu opponent's increased battle aptitude also comes with some cheapness in it. For example, their stamina seems to regenerate much faster than a human player's! They can also seem to perfectly block your attacks, resulting in a "Just Guard", meaning you are left defenseless for a moment because they blocked your attack perfectly, and they'll make you eat combos like that. One time I saw Golden Frieza in another battle "just guarding" attacks from multiple opponents one after another! Fortunately, there is no more "Armor" type of protection in the game, so fighting Broly isn't so unfair anymore.
All in all, I love Dragonball Xenoverse 2, I just hope they fix the buggy Expert Missions and lessen the cheapness of the cpu opponents... and maybe fix some of the skills that are just nearly impossible to land even on a defenseless training computer opponent.
couldn't figure out how to play it actually
if he's a reasonable price. Going rate is whatever you want at this point to be honest. I would keep him..just to make even more funds on it.
:
