Dragon Ball XenoVerse
PlayStation 3 review

So I got this game on PS3 during the last Christmas sale & I can honestly say I'm (at least somewhat) regretting the purchase.  The game itself isn't bad, but multiplayer introduces a whole SHITLOAD of problems with no way to deal with it other than perhaps logging into a single player lobby to avoid them.  Let's get down to the pros & cons (color-coded to indicate whether an issue is caused by players themselves rather than the Bandi/Namco):

• MMO Multiplayer environment
• Customizable characters (race, gender...with most races, appearance, skills, items, etc.)

Neutral:

• DLC:  This really can be good or bad depending on the point of view of the customer.  The game is expanded through DLC, which means the game gets new content every so often & keeps the game interesting with new skills, equipment, quests, mentors & items, however whether paying a fee to get that extension to the game is acceptable to the player or not is really a matter of opinion.

Cons:

• No digital manual for PSN buyers.
• Limited customization of controls (with the exception of special moves used through shoulder buttons).
• Poor camera angles.
• Missions occasionally break, which nearly always results in a loss of that mission being added to your playing record...  A few examples can be found in my Dragon Ball XenoVerse Technical Difficulties playlist on YouTube.
• Game saves are saved on the system, not on game servers.  This may be a good thing for those who wish to freely reset their progress, but it's for the most part a hindrance seeing as you have to entirely start over from scratch should the save go corrupt or your hard drive die.
• Copying restriction on the game save, meaning you can't even back it up unless you're a PSN+ subscriber or you want to do a lengthy system backup (mine are taking upwards of a day & a half as it is; luckily restoring the system only takes about 3 hours).
• High bandwidth usage: mainly this means that the game is slow loading characters of other players or even NPCs if there are a ton of other players in the area, so it doesn't really function well in an MMO environment.  The faster the connection rate, the faster they will load, but you usually won't see half of the other players around you by the time you walk past them if you are moving.  Part of the problem with this is the game leaves ghosts around of player characters in Toki Toki if they don't properly log out of the game before shutting down the game & the game itself doesn't remove these ghosts even during idle timeouts.
• Online server timeout; this seems to have been a feature to stop people from idling in the game, but it causes more problems than solves them...  Server timeouts do not remove player ghosts, nor does it even do a proper log out & I would expect probably causes them as well, given a lot of the time not logging out breaks your ability to do auto-patrols on that character until you log back in & log out properly & this is what is usually seen after an improper shutdown of the game.
• Connections to the server are very rarely stable, so disconnects are pretty regular.
• Multiplayer instability; this mainly means connection problems that is going to prevent you from joining multiplayer teams or rooms.
• If one person is lagging in the game, everybody lags.  One annoying aspect about this is you can attempt to gang up on an enemy, but if one person is already hitting them, you may never even hit them regardless of whether you're spending ki on special moves or not.  Lag also can cause other problems such as warping enemies, which can make it impossible to hit anything.  Another thing to point out about this is that the latency gauge is always from the players point of view, so it's not really possible for the player to tell if they are the one that's lagging unless they're own latency checks on a computer (such as continuous pings to any given reliable site).
• No proper chat function; your chat options are through a list of pre-written statements.  Proper keyboard support would have come in handy here, which is interesting that the developers avoided this (probably expecting abuse/harassment to happen through it), given proper keyboard support is available only for character name entry (when you create a new character).
• Microphone functionality only works in multiplayer rooms, not in the lobby (Toki Toki).
• If using a microphone other than a system-based headset (one that has an onscreen display, such as a Sony headset; Turtle Beach headset aren't included), entering a multiplayer matchmaking room will always unmute your microphone if it was muted when you entered the room.
• Does not honor your PSN blocklist; the only thing this will do is block people from sending you invites to teams/matches through PSN & only friends can do that anyways, so the PSN blocklist is irrelevant with this game if only for blocking friend invites from people acting like a fool in the game.
• No report feature whatsoever!
• Spammers all over the fucking place! There is no anti-spam function in the game, so it won't cut them off after a number of messages like most games would do if the developers were concerned about losing players. You can't report spammers, you can't even block them, even by adding them to your PSN block list.  Even as a last resort, you can't even shut off the chat window.  The only way you can shut off the chat window is to join a Single Lobby rather than what would be normal for online players & this forces you to forgo certain functions you would have otherwise.
• Team Idlers: This means people can get into a Parallel Quest & do absolutely nothing! You can't boot them even if you are the host (unless you do so before the match starts) & you can't report them.
• Host Idlers: This means somebody will host a room, but literally just sit there even when they have a full team & not allow the match to proceed.  PQs need the host to ready up before the match will start, so this is another form of griefing in the game.
• Host leavers: Hosts of PQs can literally use this to grief players by leaving a PQ before it's over & some of these PQs can take some time to complete, so it's lost time if not lost zenny on the items used in the match (which you get back in the account of a MP disconnect).  Disconnects aren't uncommon in the game, so there is the possibility that either you or the host disconnected from the server, which will appear to you that the host has disconnected regardless of whether that's the case or not (unless you also disconnect from PSN).
• Team leavers: This means you start a PQ/match & the person leaves part way.  This isn't always their fault, as disconnects appear to be commonplace in this game...  I believe I saw something that stated a penalty if  you do it too often in matches, however I have yet to see any proof of this...
  
  Taking this a step further, I found out that leavers can use that griefing tactics to further grief you by breaking healer NPCs.  The problem is that if they keep talking to a healer NPC, other people in the team can't speak to him to get heals either; this is taken to the extremes if they decide to leave the PQ while still talking to that NPC, which makes the healer useless for the the remainder of the PQ.  I have exported a video from my Twitch channel to my YouTube channel where it will show an individual doing this here.
• Team booters: This means if you join anybody's multiplayer room, the host can boot you for any reason/without reason.
• Voice Harassment: Get somebody who decides they want to tell you off in a room, many times at the end of a quest/match (particularly if you lost), before they boot you or leave a room.  You can't do anything about it other than block them on PSN, which the game completely ignores...  There is no report feature, so about your only option is to use a video capture device & upload videos of those instances (provided your device picks up their voices in the video).

The final thing I have to say about this game is if you have a high tolerance to complete fucking morons & enjoy games in the Dragon Ball series, this game might be a good buy.  If you have a low tolerance to morons who would rather cause problems than actually play the damn game, then avoid this game like the plague.

I'm going to reiterate that this is a review for the PlayStation 3 version, as I have not played any other versions.  There is the possibility that the PC version may be better optimized & built towards multiplayer.

UPDATE:  There has been a recent update to the game on PS3, but I can't find any notes regarding what that update has done, so I can't go into a lot of detail on it.  What I can say is I noticed an option to upload your save for the game, however given I haven't tried it yet, I'm still not sure exactly how this works, so for the time being the review is just getting an additional note rather than an update to the main part of it.

The spamming is still present, however I have noticed that it doesn't appear to last as long.  It is very possible that the game had a chat overflow added to it to cut off those doing excessive spamming, but without update notes, that's really hard to tell.  The only way I could find out for sure would be to spam myself until I get cut off, but I wouldn't want to grief others in the way legit spammers do, so if I were going to do it, I'd do it in a Single Lobby & I can't say for certain the rules would be the same as opposed to a Multi-Lobby.  So for the time being, this is also being added as an additional note until I can actually verify this to be the case.

Review last updated 3/5/2017

UPDATE:  After much deliberation, it has been determined that Bandai/Namco is making it a point to attack my YouTube channel in response to this (mostly) negative review on their game, much like Wild Game Studios did against Total Biscuit (a.k.a. Cynical Brit) on his negative review of Day One: Garry's Incident.  Only the publisher can file copyright complaints against videos on community media sites, where Bandai/Namco is already aware of videos of griefers that spam the game into oblivion based on a thread started on their forums (the forums now disabled, however the link will open a PDF backup to what was there before they got disabled) directly linking to videos on my channel (ironically only my stream page was getting flagged, not griefer/technical difficulty videos, however it is believed they were targeting the link on the page pointing to this review).  So this is deliberate abuse of copyright complaints against media on YouTube to lash back against negative reviews against their game (it's not the first time it's happened, but perhaps the first time I know about from a big name company; previously I had only heard of indie companies doing it).  One thing that pushes this belief further is that directly before my first stream of the video was prematurely ended with a violation of service notice from YouTube, there was a viewer that was stating that the sequel was out & was apparently trying to get me to hurry & buy at; my response to the attempted build in hype was that I was not in any hurry to get the sequel if Bandai/Namco couldn't fix the problems in the original game & so far the lack of response in the thread regarding the review (primarily the spamming problem) would give the impression they are ignoring the issue entirely, however the complaints against my YouTube Channel would state otherwise.  So this is deliberate abuse of YouTube copyright policies to retaliate against those writing negative reviews against their products.

It seems it is time for me to write a negative review against the publishers themselves; I wasn't intending on starting a public boycott against them unless they banned my access to the game, but that will be the next step if either that happens or my YouTube account gets terminated in response to their complaints.  It is because of these constant attacks on my channel that I originally forced moderation of comments & disabled viewing of ratings on videos, in the end deciding that public listing is no longer a path I wish to pursue & have opted to take the private listing only available to subscribes to my new video blog (accessible only on request) to help mitigate further attacks in the future.  Further details about what has led up to this decision can be found on the YouTube review located here.

UPDATE:  At this point, I am boycotting all further purchases of anything with the Bandai/Namco logo on it or is a part of their franchise.  Details about the review of the company can be found here, while the boycott against them can be found here.

Technical Difficulties videos/playlist

Wall of Shame videos/playlist

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