Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot DLC 1 dropped yesterday, and with it many fans got to try their hand at taking down Beerus, the God of Destruction. That said, what many fans have found is that Beerus' boss fight is both absolutely amazing and dreadfully disappointing, leaving many to question their decision to purchase the season pass in the first place. The reason for this is simple, though the boss fight itself is extremely challenging and fun, it's about all there is to do in the new DLC. There's hardly any other content worth exploring, meaning once players beat Beerus they are pretty much done.
For those unaware, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot's DLC takes place in a continuity separate from the main storyline. This DLC can be accessed at the very beginning of the game, as soon as the player takes control of Goku and can access the main menu (right after the first Piccolo tutorial boss fight). Within the DLC area, players can train with Whis as Goku or Vegeta in order to get Sacred Water items which will greatly speed up the leveling process, and can train even further to unlock transformations earlier than the story allows or intends for the player to have them.
DBZ: Kakarot Beerus Boss Fight
Whatever gripes one might have with DBZ: Kakarot's first DLC, most would agree that the actual Beerus boss fight is great. His techniques all display his immense power and require the player to think outside the box in order to avoid or cancel. For example, Beerus' Spheres of Destruction cannot be avoided with the dodge button, but can be destroyed with a beam attack. Alternatively, the player can block the first ball that hits them and then use a vanish strike to avoid the rest and damage Beerus in the process.
Beerus provides a challenge which was until this point not present in Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. Though the beginning of the game and the challenging Raditz boss fight convinced many that it would be an uphill battle all the way through, it quickly became apparent that the numerous power ups the player gets would outpace the scaling difficulty of the boss fights. This creates an odd conundrum where Raditz, relative to the player's strength, is arguably more difficult than Super Buu, despite being statistically and objectively weaker.
Beerus' boss fight flips this around, making all the changes that the game should have implemented in the first place. He has unique attacks, several of which require more than just dodging repeatedly in one direction to avoid (although to be fair a lot of his moves can be avoided in that manner), he clearly is more powerful than the player despite being at the same level, items are restricted meaning the player has to carefully manage their HP rather than scarfing down beans like a Senzu junkie, and follows specific patterns which the player can catch onto and use to their advantage. Compared to the other fights in DBZ: Kakarot, this is a breath of fresh air.
DBZ: Kakarot DLC 1 - Is That All?
The big question that is no doubt resounding throughout the DBZ fandom right now in relation to the new DLC: is that all? After training with Whis to unlock the Super Saiyan God form as well as doing whatever leveling is required to get to max level, the player is able to fight and take down Beerus. While that battle is great for all the reasons mentioned above, there is almost nothing else to do after triumphing over the God of Destruction, and this has left a sour taste in the mouths of many.
Both Goku and Vegeta each have a new sub-story on Beerus' planet. Vegeta's involves cooking a dish for Beerus at the behest of the Oracle Fish and Goku's sees the two now godly Saiyans do battle before teaming up to take on the Destroyer God together. Though the training with Whis and the Sacred Water items provide a great way for players to level up if they haven't hit level 250 yet, that is literally all there is to do in the DLC. Nothing new has come to the actual base game aside from the fact that items and experience gained in the DLC carry over.
There's a lot of problems with this approach. For one, many fans had been complaining about the lack of good ways to gain experience and grind, with repeatedly fighting level 100 Bonyu previously being the best way to level up. Though that problem has certainly been fixed, it seems that Bandai Namco and CyberConnect2 went a little overboard in this case. It is incredibly easy to start a new game, level up into the 40s, and unlock Super Saiyan before even facing down Raditz for the first time.
This obviously breaks the immersion quite a bit in the main story, but there are even more problems within the DLC itself. Many expected the Dragon Ball Z movie, Battle of Gods to be adapted in a similar way to the main story's adaptation of Dragon Ball Z, with Bulma's birthday party and all the fights with Beerus that movie included. Instead, players received a new way to grind experience points and a single, albeit enjoyable, boss fight. All of this paired with the relatively awkward premise of the DLC and the poorly delivered dialogue lines makes the experience feel lackluster.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot DLC 1 had a lot to live up to if it was going to rival the great legacy that is the base game, and fans are divided on whether or not it did so. On the one hand, it fixed a lot of the game's core problems, but on the other hand none of that carries back over into the main game. Though Beerus' fight is certainly tough and enjoyable, nothing else will be, and the ability to turn Super Saiyan God is hardly useful because the player likely one shot everything aside from Beerus already. Still, there are rumors that another update will be coming soon, so players should be patient for now.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.