![|500]() ## 2026-04-23 Okay so in my opinion **Dragon Ball Fusions** is probably the best **Dragon Ball** game that doesn’t have **Fighterz** attached to the end of it. Hear me out. **DBF** is a turn-based game on the [[Nintendo 3DS]]. It came out in November 2016 in America, meaning not a single person cared about it because the [[Nintendo Switch|Switch]] was about to come out the following March. This is unfortunate, because I think **Fusions** is a genuinely great game if you’re a big **Dragon Ball** fan. The basic premise is that you create your own character, build a team from a ton of **Dragon Ball** characters[^1], and fuse them together to win battles. Your OC can fuse with any character in the game, but other characters are able to fuse with lots of others. This leads to a ton of fun “what if?” scenarios that would never be explored in other **Dragon Ball** media. What if Krillin and Piccalo fused? What about Android 17 and 18? Or Goku and Broly? Or Goku and Bardock? Or Cell and Frieza? Or Captain Ginyu and the Great Saiyaman? There are about 72 fusions in all, and a lot of deep cuts are included. I never thought I’d see the day where Tapion and Fusion Trunks get paired together in a fusion, but this game made that possible, and subsequently let me geek out. Once you’ve got your team of little freaks put together, you send them into battle. **Fusions** is a turn-based game that kind of plays like **Monster Strike**. Your team of 5 squares off against the opposing team in a circular arena, and your attacks will make the enemies get launched around like billiard balls, assuming they don’t manage to defend in the direction of your attack. If you knock an enemy into one of your party members, they can smack the enemy into another direction. Thus, you’re incentivized to bounce the enemy between as many of your team as possible, before knocking them out of the ring. Doing this not only pushes back their turn, it also gives you a chance to steal their moves, which you can then equip to your various party members. It’s pretty simple, but it never stops being fun and satisfying when you get a good chain going. The animations are also excellent, [especially when you start getting to the more powerful attacks.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ0X56vuZhI) The last wrinkle in the combat system is the Five-Way Fusion. Fill up a bar and you can get your whole team to fuse together, combining all of their visual traits to do a big fancy special attack. It is extremely silly, and that silliness is played up. In every other instance of the game, your characters are all visually chibi, but when you do this Ultra Fusion, you suddenly turn into one of Toriyama’s regular, human-sized characters to display the increase in power. The best part is that this entire system seems to have come about because Akira Toiryama[^2] once said that he believed that it’s possible for a large number of people to fuse into one. So it’s basically canon! This game has many faults — you can’t skip animations, and some of the unlock requirements for particular characters are egregious, and it’s a little short if you don’t delve into the post-game. But in a world where every anime game is an arena fighter with zero substance, **Dragon Ball Fusions** is a breath of fresh air in comparison. I’m bummed it wasn’t more successful, and that we’ll likely never see a more fleshed out follow-up to this game. [^1]: and original characters, but no one gives a shit about them [^2]: RIP to the GOAT