Dragon Ball Xenoverse

A video game released in early 2015 based on the Dragon Ball license. In Age 850 (The anime and manga end in Age 784) the Supreme Kai of Time detects something messing with the timeline. Future Trunks, who the Supreme Kai of Time drafted into being her assistant to atone for his misuse of time travel, is unable to directly interfere due to the events being attacked concerning people he knew. To get around this he uses the Dragon Balls to ask Shenron to find him a hero to help him protect time and space. This hero is a customizable player avatar

Xenoverse rescues a lot of plot elements and several stylistic elements from the defunct MMO Dragon Ball Online. This is noteworthy because those elements, including a few new characters, were directed by Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama.

A sequel titled, unsurprisingly, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 was confirmed for late 2016.


 * Adaptation Explanation Extrication: The game doesn't cover where the new Majin have come from. In Dragon Ball Online they were the result of Buu creating a mate for himself after stumbling upon some porn. Only an NPC's vague mention of the Majin mutiplying hints at their origins. Averted in the sequel, where the opening for Majin time patrolers has them spying on the moments leading up to their races creation and their origin is the focus of a large sidequest.
 * Artificial Human: Mira was one in Dragon Ball Online and while never directly stated and description for his clothes in the DLC confirms he still is. It's deliberately left open if the main character was summoned from some other place in space and time or was actually created by Shenron.
 * Artificial Stupidity: Allied NPCs in the first game are rarely good for anything more than distracting the enemy. This was fixed in the second game.
 * Ascended Fanboy: Some of the English voice options for the player character are by people who previously worked on Dragon Ball Abridged
 * Beam-O-War: Averted outside of cutscenes based on the original events of the series. Despite the iconicness to Dragon Ball, the developers couldn't find a way to make it work in a fight with more than two people nor make it something other than a button mashing contest that slowed down the gameplay.
 * Pummel Duel: This however is in. Both combatants are invulnerable while one is active and they always end in a tie with both combatants gaining a full bar of ki and suffering no damage.
 * Bellisario's Maxim: Mentioned in relation to parallel quests where the player character is told to not think to hard about them. Only a handful make sense as more than a gallery of opponents with a vague theme thrown at the player.
 * Canon Foreigner: Towa, Mira, and the Majin race are some of the rare examples made by series's original creator. Supreme Kai of Time was only mentioned in Dragon Ball Online
 * Calling Your Attacks: Naturally. What attacks the player character will voice instead of just grunt is, unfortunately, largely random. Also unfortunately the voice preview during the first game's character creation only includes grunts and not "Kamehameha", making it hard to predict how this will sound (this was fixed in the second game).
 * "Close Enough" Timeline: The Supreme Kai of Time's powers are enough to smooth out things like a giant pink man coming out of nowhere to beat up the bad guy back into the original timeline once you've fixed the major damage. The remnants left behind when she does this form the alternate timelines that make up the sidequests.
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Stamina and ki of enemy characters does not work like it does for the player character, making drain skills way more useful than they are supposed to be. Enemy characters often have multiple health bars, which is impossible for the player to obtain. This is also among the many things fixed in the second game, showing the enemy's ki and stamina so the AI can't cheat.
 * Delayed Ripple Effect:.
 * Dummied Out: Both forms of are mostly playable, even having a wide variety of fully voiced vs. quotes and can be unlocked through cheating in the PC version. Great Apes are also largely playable, but less complete.
 * Foreshadowing: appeared in Dragon Ball Online and reappears in Xenoverse 2.
 * Game Breaker: Blue Huricane can kill anything.
 * Gosh Dang It to Heck: Vegeta's death quote (especially his Great Ape form) is "darn you", even though damn is freely used by other character in several other quotes.
 * Joke Character: Hercule is a joke character like all his playable appearances in a Dragon Ball game. He can't even use the basic vanish dodge.
 * Lethal Joke Character: As Hercule can't use Ki his ranged attack is throwing rocks which, unlike real ki blasts, break super armor. This makes him more useful than you'd think as an ally.
 * Heroic Mime: Aside from grunting and Calling Your Attacks, the player character never says anything. Justified when time traveling as paradox prevention, but not when in the time nest.
 * Hitbox Dissonance: Great Apes have weird hitboxes that often make super attacks go right through them.
 * Lethal Chef: The Supreme Kai of Time, though this is only ever alluded to at the end of the DLC.
 * Nostalgia Level: The sidequest Super Saiyan Legend and its unique ultimate finish requirements (leave the fight area to talk to an NPC Krillin who then becomes an ally, then letting him die to Frieza) that produce a fight with Super Saiyan Vegeta (who proclaims himself "master of the universe") are a reference to Super Famicom Dragon Ball game Super Saiya Densetsu where very similar actions during the final fight would result in a fight against Super Saiyan Vegeta to the theme Master of the Universe.
 * Old Save Bonus: Confirmed for Xenoverse 2. A transfered save transfers clothing, items and money, as well as making the first game's main character appear in the story.
 * Offscreen Moment of Awesome: One of the NPC time patrol members, talks about how he is dealing with a wildly off the rails version of the pre-timeskip Dragon Ball timeline. In this timeline King Piccolo and his demon army, the Red Ribbon Army with Dr. Gero's android program unhindered by Goku interference, and (latter) Babidi with Majin Buu all fighting each other. All of this occurs off-screen.
 * Peninsula of Power Leveling: The "Great Ape Festival" quests. Unfortunately even these struggle to provide meaningful experience past the original level cap of 85.
 * Random Number God: Drop rates and even if special clear conditions will actually apply is extremely finicky in the first game. The second has, thankfully, been confirmed to ditch it.
 * Set Right What Once Went Wrong
 * Super Sentai Stance: All parts of the Ginyu Force poses are emotes in the lobby. They are also learnable techniques that provide stats boost, the right combinations of which can form a Lethal Joke Weapon that makes you nearly unkillable and hit like a truck.
 * Time Cop
 * Timey-Wimey Ball: Time Travel works differently than how when Future Trunks first came to the past. Presumably the Supreme Kai of Time 's nature vs. the time machine is involved.
 * Villain Override: The main cause of most interferences to the timeline is the bad guys possessing one of the existing bad guys to increase his power..
 * Worf Effect: We know the newly powered bad guy is stronger because he can now beat up Goku/his friends. Future Trunks is beaten up a few times for this purpose too.
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Part of a dummied out vs. quote for, but it never happens otherwise.