The 12 Days of Christmas begins: 12 days, 12 posts. Every day at about noon, a new post. No reposts, just entirely new ones.
A variety of stuff, some of it leading into projects that I'll do more with in 2023. Starting things off with some DBZ.
This DLC is mostly just a grind, very little to it. They can be excused because they made this DLC in 2020 while short-staffed. Movie 14 was pretty cool though and I'm glad they added it to this game. Beerus is a great "villain" (though he's more like a neutral party).
Gokou and Vegeta are summoned to the planet of Whis and Beerus due to their great power. It's sort of like the movie Predators. Now Whis is going to hunt them for sport train them.
Whis is probably the most powerful character in the canon up to this point. Contrary to what this game says, I think he's more powerful than Beerus. Not sure if anyone ever surpasses him. He's basically the Supreme Kai's overboss. Regardless, he's here to test our heroes in a series of battles, to see if they get the right to face this guy:
Lord Beerus, the most powerful being in the universe.
*this universe. Wait, what? You mean there are other ones?
Gokou: "SQUEEEEE"
Thus begins the training to become Super Saiyan God. They start you out with a bunch of low-level fights. Because...you can jump into this DLC at any point in the game and it levels you up. It's basically a "win button" for the main story because you can outlevel everything in the main story in two hours and then go roll it. Imagine having Super Saiyan God when you fight Raditz. It won't be much of a fight because you'll one shot everything up to like, the late Buu Saga.
Here's my MAIN MAN, the Oracle Feesh. Not to be confused with Hecklefish, my other favorite fish.
I make sure my healing items are ready to go. Vitadrink L is basically useless at this point unless you spam it rapid-fire, so I'm actually pretty low on real healing. Luckily, level-ups heal you, and you get those after every fight here.
After a couple low-level Whis fights, Beerus challenges you to a quick skirmish.
After that, it's even more training! Luckily these lowbie fights fly by.
Funny thing is, Vegeta just sorta vanishes during all of this. Like the game totally forgets about him unless you manually switch your party to him. In which case it totally forgets about Gokou. Would have been nice if they'd both level up from the training, but no, have to switch between them.
Level 70 Whis is a main story endgame level opponent, but here he's just getting started.
I was forced to finally break out Gokou's full power against this form.
He gives Gokou the power to go SSJ! Which he could already do because I played the main game. ...this whole thing is really weird and probably poorly thought-out.
Why would they trivialize the main game by putting this win button here? And why make endgame players trudge through all this low to mid range leveling? This should just unlock once the main game is finished and start out post-SSJ3.
After many more fights, Whis unlocks more powers that I already have!
At least the game is aware of all this.
Winning these fights not only gives you exp, it also gives you exp potions that give the characters even more exp. Already I've gone way up from the endgame levels of 70ish. Only problem with the exp potions is that they stop working at a certain level, so it's key to use the lower-tier ones first until they stop working.
At this point I finally decide to eat all the stat food I've been hoarding all game. Except...the stat increases are ludicrous. 1 to a stat? Some of them are 2 to a stat! When I have 6 digit stats. Here's Vegeta eating a stat item and going from 12439943 HP to... 12439944 HP!
Even early in the game these would have barely done anything. There are better stat foods, but never to the point that they feel significant at this stage.
I switch to Vegeta so he can power up, since I'd like to see him be the one to slay Freeza in the next DLC. Spoiler alert.
Where are we going to find six Saiyans?
Whis magically ports them in and we get this quick shot of the ceremony before they presumably all sod off. Future Trunks is there? Why is Future Trunks there? Where's Videl w/ baby? THIS IS SO WEIRD
Now that SSG is unlocked, our heroes have reached a new level of power. Wonder if this is superior to DBGT's Super Saiyan 4. I kinda get the impression that it isn't, but Super Saiyan Blue is. There should be a saga in DB Super where the GT universe gets canonized as one of the different universes, and our version of Gokou fights the GT version of Gokou with Super Saiyan 4.
It'd be a good way to make DBGT actually have a point / some kind of usefulness in the overall canon, at least. Going by Pan's age, I think the Super timeline is a few years off from overlapping the GT timeline, so it could still happen and make sense.
Vegeta finally regains the traditional Vegeta overconfidence now that he has the power of God Ki.
We get another Beerus skirmish and I spam the still-OP Big Bang Attack. Pretty soon I'll need to learn the more powerful versions of it in the skill tree. I avoided the higher levels of the skill tree for a while because of how obnoxious the training fights are to learn skills, but now I should be able to one-shot all of those.
I like how SSG form has this sweet red aura.
Vegeta finishes Beerus with a massive attack, then Beerus emerges completely unharmed after the fight ends. He won't be that easy to topple. To fight him for real, I must reach Level 250!
...that seems a bit excessive. The main game is capped at level 100 (and somewhat easily beatable at 70). Why not just raise the cap to 150? 250 is such a weird number. Or maybe raise it to 200 here and 300 in the next DLC. I have thought about this too much.
At this point it's all about spamming fights against the strongest version of Whis that you can defeat quickly, making sure to win in under a minute and with a super attack (as that increases your exp potion intake by about 50%).
I use some exp potions on Gokou as well. Even though I'm maining Vegeta at this point, I don't want Gokou to fall too far behind. I might need to play as both of these guys in the next DLC.
I graduate to level 150 Whis, and he starts doing some really annoying cutscene super-moves that interrupt whatever attack I've got going on. I've got a Final Flash heading straight for him? Poof, gone, a cutscene started.
Speaking of Final Flash...yeah, I finally got it. I'm one-shotting all these training missions now to finish learning Vegeta's special moves, specifically Final Flash and the upgraded forms of that and Big Bang Attack.
Fully-upgraded Big Bang Attack does about 18 million damage, fully-upgraded Final Flash does about 22 million damage. The Big Bang Attack is quicker to fire, however, and harder to miss with. FF has its own advantages, like cutting through enemy projectiles to reach your foe (while BBA stops and blows up as soon as it hits something).
Surprisingly, despite all my hoarding, I only have enough Z-Orbs to max out Vegeta's skill tree, and only these specific couple of moves. I'll need to grind some random battles to get Z-Orbs for Gokou.
Editor's Note: I kinda made a mistake here and should have focused on powering up Gokou rather than Vegeta.
I made another big mistake here that's easy to make. Maxed out Vegeta's level with potions. Now I'm stuck farming potions as Vegeta without level-ups to sustain my HP. What I should have done is stopped leveling with potions around 235 or so and kept farming potions for Gokou. That way the level-ups from the fights would have kept Vegeta leveling (slowly) and restoring his HP while I farmed, with all the potions going to Gokou.
Since I capped Vegeta, now I have to either farm with a much-less powerful Gokou, or start burning through Senzu Beans every few fights.
Also, Gokou is more the focal point of the next DLC, so I should have focused on him here. Vegeta has all of his best attacks, Gokou doesn't. What I really need are more of the unfortunately-rare red orbs, which seem to mostly be gathered in small amounts from random fights and overworld floating. Those are crucial and the game constantly shortchanges you on them in the main and side quests. Luckily the next DLC has random fights that drop tons of orbs.
Case in point, here's me using a Senzu to restore Vegeta after a couple of fights. Yeah, at this point I'm better off just switching to the lower-level Gokou and getting to 250 much more slowly yet sustainably.
But first! I try the final boss of the DLC, Beerus. He's level 250, and you aren't allowed to heal. Fight is basically impossible under 250. Might as well give it a whirl. THIS is the hardest fight in this game (and all of the DLCs).
That's right, it's even worse than Android 20! My best bet is to spam Big Bang Attacks and dodge...a lot. It's Beerus at full power.
Hooo boy, here we go.
It's a great fight, a knock-down drag-out bout. Unfortunately...
...even with the likes of Ultimate Final Flash, I can't get near a win without heals. I think I got him down to almost half, so one or two Senzu Beans would deliver a win here. And I'm max level!
I switch to Gokou and get him powered up. Here's SSG in all its glory. An interesting form, but not really one of my favorites.
Eventually Gokou gets to level 250...and loses to Beerus, just as badly as Vegeta did. Damn. By blocking heals, they turned this guy into a postgame uberboss.
I have a couple of options left. Get really good at the game, or go to the next DLC to gain even more levels, since it raises the cap to 300 and lets you do MORE WHIS GRINDING~!
Yeah, I'm doing that. Let's go.
The next DLC is Movie 15, Resurrection F. It's basically the exact same plot as the Mecha Freeza storyline in DBZ. Just without Trunks. Freeza comes back for revenge, decides to beat everyone up while he waits for Gokou to arrive, etc.
Yeah, that's the ticket. Weird thing is, this DLC does nothing to necessitate level 300. There are no enemies over 250 in this game that I've seen. I guess they raised the cap to 300 just to give you something else to do once the main stories are all over. Or maybe there'll be a Broly DLC at some point that you need level 300 for. Who knows, since they keep adding to this game. I feel like this game might be an ongoing thing for years.
I get Gokou to level 264 and grind up enough random battles to get hundreds of thousands of Z-Orbs and learn his best Kamehameha and Spirit Bomb variations, as well as powering up the Super Saiyan God form itself. NOW he might be ready for Beerus.
Even with a 14 level advantage this is a tough fight! It took several tries. One thing that's paramount is avoiding Beerus' Nega Spirit Bomb (that's what I'm calling it) which does massive damage.
It was a hell of a battle, and a worthy postgame uberboss. Here's the fight:
Easily the hardest fight in this game / the DLCs and it isn't close. It might be easier at level 300, if anyone wants to actually grind that high.
Gokou finally gets Beerus to ACKNOWLEDGE HIM. Now that I finally got that done, I can move on to the second DLC for real.
And now, read the actual Battle of Gods movie post HERE. That was a while ago, wow.
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