7 - Dragon Ball FighterZ (PS4 2017) - BEAT - I'm of two minds when it comes to the story mode for this. First is that it's really boring. It's stilted in it's execution, bordering on being a visual novel with it being almost entirely stationary models standing around talking to each other (Insert joke about this being what DB has always been here). About the only nice looking thing is how good the models actually look, with their facial expressions. Combined with the half-assed boardgame/choose your own path mechanic, it's tedious. It's also told as a story in a really bad way, by being split into three "arcs", so you think you are getting the one story told in three different views, but it's actually three different versions of the story based on who you start as. Do you play as the hero's to see how they would handle it, do you play as the villains to see how they handle it, or do you play as the Androids and see how they handle it, all with different outcomes leading to a variation of the same conclusion.
I understand that Arksys doesn't really do much with their story modes, that Guilty Gear XRD is mostly just something you watch, but the lack of movement and action within the actual cutscenes feels underwhelming.
On the other hand, ORIGINAL STORY! It's not a good story, being just kind of an amalgamation of Android/Cell/Buu stuff, but Dragon Ball games are notorious for boringly rehashing the same sagas over and over again. So I'll take something that is at least not that. What's best about this story, even if very little makes sense (How did 21 rebuild 16 seemingly with the same memories as his original self and how did she even get the Namekian dragon balls to revive all the villains in the first place?), is all the interactions between characters. People who never met or you always wanted to interact with, probably have some sort of dialogue discussion. It's great hearing Goku and Gohan talk about fusing, or Cell testing boundaries with Adult Gohan, or Gotenks wondering what he should call Goku and Vegeta being that he's two people in one and they are both dads to the other kid. This, and only this, is what sells the story.
As a DB fan, it's pure gold. It's such a shame its stuck into the weak story mode, but hearing the dialogue could be pretty funny. But again, that's only as a DB fan. Anyone who's just wanting to having something fun to play will probably hate the story mode, because it's not well designed, it's not an interesting enough story, and really it just teaches bad gameplay habits with how poor the AI is. Gonna have to relearn how to play to handle the multiplayer better lol