Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 First Look

The Dragon Ball series remains one of the most popular mangas of all time. With Dragon Ball: Raging Blast, you were given the opportunity to take control of your favourite character and lay down ki-infused attacks on the opposition. For the upcoming sequel, Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2, developer Spike Co. Ltd has listened to fan feedback and has made a range of improvements. We sat down with the team to learn about some of the new features and get a brief look at the game in action.

You take control of one of 90 characters from the Dragon Ball universe, 20 of whom are new to the series. The gameplay is standard fighter fare, albeit on a larger scale with heaps of Saiyan powers thrown in. This means you can engage in hand-to-hand combat in midair, fire off a bunch of kamehamehas, and transform into a super Saiyan. Each environment has destructible elements, so you can smash opponents into rocks and create huge craters in the earth using your powers.

Controls remain largely the same, but they have been tweaked to make them easier for newcomers. The often-flaky camera from the previous game has also been reworked, with an emphasis on framing the action, keeping both your character and your opponent in view at all times. There will also be a new combo system, though no details on this were revealed. The story mode has been expanded, allowing you to play through some of your favourite battles from the anime, including famed fights against Vegeta and Freiza. The story is told entirely in battle, and Namco Bandai was keen to point out that there are no cutscenes to take you away from the action. The publisher also mentioned that there would be seven game modes in total, but they are being kept under wraps for the time being.

Other improvements include more-detailed character design and additional unlockables. The original Japanese voices will also be included, and you can switch between them at any time. It's also promised that the game will run at a steady 60 frames per second throughout, which we saw for ourselves when we got a brief look at the game in action. Visually, the game differs little from its predecessor, though we could see additional detail in the hair and facial expressions of the characters. The over-the-top transformations and ki blasts were all present and correct, and the super Saiyan transformation remains as impressive looking as ever.

Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2 is due for release in the third quarter of this year. Namco Bandai has promised to show more of the game at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, so keep reading GameSpot for more in June.