With the recent announcement that DBZ: Kakarot won’t be adventuring beyond the stories of DBZ, many fans are wondering why Dragon Ball Super has received so little love compared to DBZ. DBS isn’t every fans favorite part of the franchise, but it isn’t nearly as controversial in the fanbase as the spin-off series Dragon Ball GT. So it seems like a pointed decision to focus on the story arcs and characters within DBZ specifically, not that there are too few to focus on within that series, but many fans are somewhat battle fatigued from seeing the same stories rehashed repeatedly over the history of Dragon Ball games.
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Focusing on Dragon Ball Z Over Dragon Ball Super
It’s worth pointing out the exception’s to the rule here, as some games have a broader representation of the Dragon Ball series as a whole. The popular Dragon Ball FighterZ fighting game series pulls characters (and character forms) from a much wider pool than story games like Kakarot. Characters from DBS are represented fairly heavily with popular fighters like Beerus, Goku Black, Hit, and Kefla.
The fast-paced brawler also features transformations (a Dragon Ball staple) from the newer series including Super Saiyan Blue forms for Goku and Vegeta. The game even features several DBGT characters like Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta and the GT version of Kid Goku. It’s also worth noting that the Xenoverse series has characters from across the Dragon Ball pantheon, but that game’s format includes more playable characters than most traditional fighting games.
So the likely reason behind ignoring DBS to a certain point may seem fairly obvious, to capitalize on nostalgia. The storylines in DBZ are well known and well loved, so it seems like a safer bet to focus on those narratives in story-driven games like Kakarot. Some of the story arcs in DBS have been panned by some fans for being stilted or not being original enough. Others meanwhile, like the return to Future Trunks’ dimension and the Tournament of Power arcs were generally hailed for being true to form. The new series added some very interesting new villains to DBS and its alternate universe provided for even more Saiyans.
The seemingly pointed move to focusing on DBZ over newer parts of the franchise is a safe bet generally. More fans recognize and appreciate those parts of the overall story than any of the newer series (or even older like the original Dragon Ball). But with many other fans feeling like story-centric games set in the DBZ universe have become a little stale, it might be time to start looking towards Dragon Ball Super and beyond for more content to adapt into the video game format.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot’s third story DLC is set to release later this year.
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