Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission is the latest Dragon Ball spinoff from this time and Bandai Namco .
Dragon Ball has a Lengthy history in the Trading Card Game industry; together with it being one of the behemoths in Japan alongside Magic The Gathering Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! With chapters of Manga and so many fantastic characters across hundreds of episodes of Anime, the Dragon Ball TCG makes great sense.
Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission sports CCG (Character Card Game) gameplay, which means most of your strategy will be with characters cards and not Trap like seen in Yu-Gi-Oh! or Energy Cards from Pokemon. In each bout players will have to choose between 7 Characters; with each of them having their own HP, Guard and Power stats. There’s a decent bit of strategy in choosing the right characters in certain battles but in most cases, you’ll just end up choosing your most powerful cards.
Battles take place on a 4-row Grid so the main strategy here is choosing when to attack. Moving characters to the back allow them to recover their Power and choosing where to place each Character is immensely important to deal the most damage. Characters can team up, help one recover by moving in place and move. In the end as any card game, the end goal is to reduce your opponents Life Points by attacking them again and again till they can’t take damage anymore.
Since World Mission is based off an Arcade Game primarily there’s plenty of mini-games that honestly feel annoying more than enjoyable. There are mini-games for attacking, which if you time right allows you to deal higher damage as well as swiping cards via the touch screen. They feel needlessly tacked on and I wish there was an option to disable them. While playing the game online, in most cases the bout is won by the player who is better at the mini-games as the card meta is pretty much set in stone already.
The story of Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission is such a brilliant mess as its essentially a Dragon Ball power trip fan fiction written by someone who wanted more Super Saiyan transformations. There’s a ton of content in the Story Mode but I feel unless you’re a fan of the series you’ll just end up confused and annoyed.
Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission does one thing well and that is presenting the huge collection of cards. Each of the cards has some amazing art and collecting them can be addicting. You can also create your own cards in the Card Creation mode using items and art you win in battles. Similarly, you can create your own missions and upload them online for others to play. I’ve played a few of these matches and some of them are honestly more fun than some of the Story Mode battles.
Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission is intended for a very niche audience and doesn’t really translate the best to console and PC coming from an Arcade Game. I personally feel the game would’ve been better value if it was Free-to-play instead of releasing at a $60 price. World Mission has tons of content and a decent bout system but it’s hard for someone other than Dragon Ball series fans to get decent enjoyment from the game.
