Dragon Ball Fusions is an Nintendo 3DS RPG released on August 4, 2016 in Japan, and was released in the U.S. on November 22, 2016. One day the main character alongside his friend/rival Pinich gather all the Dragon Balls and summon Shenron. They wish to make the greatest budokai tournament in the world. Shenron grants their wish; a wormhole appears sucking both the player and Pinich into another dimension where cites appear on floating islands. Meeting Bulma, she explains that the wish was granted and a tournament is being held to decide who the strongest fighter is, bringing forth individuals from space and time to do so. However the tournament requires a team of five people to enter. Wanting to enter the tournament but also wanting face each other, the two split up to explore this new world and recruit allies to join their group.
The gameplay is turn-based with the added flair of being able to knock back opponents into your allies or other enemies for more damage. Usually 5-v-5 battles, with some characters being able to fuse during battle. Your team has 5 ways to attack: a simple melee attack, a simple ki attack and 3 special techniques (which use up energy). If you build up the ultra-gauge, your team will be able to do one of two things: an Zenkai Attack which if done successfully will unlock your enemy as a playable character, or Ultra-Fusion, which is a 5-way metamoran fusion that turns the entire team into an giant, powerful warrior.
This game provides examples of:
- Adaptational Nice Guys: The Ginyu Force are incredibly friendly towards the heroes, teaching them the Ultra Fusion technique, and are saddened when Frieza orders them to try and kill the heroes. Afterwards, the Ginyu Force maintain a Friendly Rivalry with the group.
- Adventure-Friendly World: Several characters mention that training is incredibly easy in this new dimension, allowing canonically weaker characters to catch up to those much stronger than themselves. Special note goes to the player character. At the start of the game, they're outclassed by Raditz and Nappa. By the post-game, they and their team are able to defeat Beerus, who is implied to be going all out.
- Advertised Extra: Despite being prominently featured on the boxart, Broly has little relevance to the story, opposing the heroes for a single floor before quickly being forgotten about.
- And I Must Scream: Pinich's rather sad fate after his Ultra Fusion. The Fusion is only controlled by Frieza and Cell. However, Pinich is still conscious, and has thoughts separate of Frieza and Cell. This means that Pinich is quite literally, trapped in his own mind, completely powerless of his actions due to Frieza and Cell's control. It is also implied that Pinich knew this, in the events leading up to it, and seems reluctant to do it, knowing the result. You can't help but feel sorry for him. Despite how he is rather prideful towards the player and others at times, he's still simply a child. One can't imagine how he feels during the fusion.
- Anime Hair: The CAC can have some crazy hair styles.
- Ascended Extra: Goten, Trunks, and Pan play a major role in this game.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Stages that take place in space allow for this.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Naturally with all the villains in the franchise not everyone can take center stage so the role go towards Freiza and Cell, who manipulate Pinich into joining teams with them and undertaking an Ultra-Fusion, allowing them to fuse into a being with enough power to destroy the universe.
- Big Damn Heroes: When Pinich loses the Tenkaichi Budokai, he ends up pulling a Rage Quit by fusing into the Ultimate Ultra-Fusion and blowing up the planet via Death Ball. Beerus and Whis drop in, Whis reverts time and Beerus casually flicks away the Death Ball.
- When the CAC/SSJ Pinich fusion use a 3000% Zenkai Attack to defeat Celluza and return home, finishing off the combo with a super-powered Rolling Satan Punch.
- The Big Guy: Kid Goku is the strongest member of your initial team when he appears.
- Blown Across the Room: Whenever a powerful super attack hits the opponent.
- Bowdlerise: The western release of the game, very strangely enough, replaced all swords with...sticks. Even stranger, the special attack "Sword Attack" retains its name despite this.
- Especially odd since guns and cursing remain intact.
- The Bus Came Back: Tiencha, who only appeared in Budokai 2, will be making a return here.
- Kid Goku and King Piccolo return as playable characters for the first time since Budokai Tenkaichi 3.
- Continuity Nod: Goten is obtained one level below Trunks; a reference to the fact that due to being slightly younger Goten is slightly weaker than Trunks is. The level they are obtained at also almost matches their age during the Buu Saga.
- Cute Monster Girl: Any of the female Aliens and Otherworlders.
- Cutscene Boss: After Ultra Pinich is defeated, Freiza and Cell fuse into Celluza in one final attempt to kill the main hero. Unfortunately for them the player character and Pinich fuse, creating a fusion so overwhelmingly powerful the power boost in the following Zenkai Attack goes into the thousands.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character: As the second game to allow customization after the Xenoverse series, the main character of Fusions serves as this. Unlike Xenoverse, where the characters are talented fighters, and prodigies with multifaceted skillsets who can learn almost any move, the protagonist of Fusions has a limited learnset, and is very weak without merging with someone else.
- Downloadable Content: Two have been released. In the English release both became available for free as part of an update patch.
- Future Trunks and Goku Black (both normal and Super Sayian Rose forms) from Dragon Ball Super. They can fuse with Kid Trunks and Broly respectively to become EX Trunks and Kalory Black.
- Super Saiyan Blue Vegito, Super Saiyan Trunks, Zamasu, Fusion Zamasu, and Gomasu (AKA the fusion of Zamasu and Kid Goku).
- Expy: Kalory might be based off of Broku as mentioned below.
- Pinich acts a lot like a nicer, friendlier version of his mentor, Vegeta.
- Final Boss: A rather impressive fusion between Pinich, Frieza, and Cell, which ends up looking like a demonic Super Saiyan. It can also transform into a Great Ape.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: As an after-effect of a misguided wish. The ones who suffer this the most are Kid Goku, who comes from the original Dragon Ball series, and Pan, who comes from GT.
- Friendly Enemy: When the heroes first meet the Ginyu Force, none of them are aware they work for Frieza. The two teams develop a rapport almost instantly, and teach each other special moves; the Ginyu Force teaches the heroes the Ultra-Fusion, while the heroes teach the Ginyu Force the normal Fusion Dance. They mutually compliment each other afterwards. When Frieza orders the Ginyu Force to kill the heroes, Ginyu protests. Frieza makes it clear that his order must be obeyed and leaves, and the Ginyu Force allows the heroes to go heal and train before the fight. After the battle, when they meet again, there's no malice and the Ginyu Force are happy to see the heroes again.
- Friendly Rivalry: The player character and Pinich. The player character prefers to focus on the friend part, while Pinich prefers to concentrate on the rival part.
- Fusion Dance: Besides the Trope Namer appearing, this game introduces two new variations:
- EX-Fusion, which allows anyone to fuse regardless of power levels while wearing the Capsule Corp Metamo-Ring, in a way combining both the Fusion Dance note and the Potara Earrings into one note . As the Fusion Dance is still required to perform Ex-Fusion, however unlike the normal Fusion Dance and Potara Fusion, EX-Fusion is considered to be far far weaker by comparison.
- Ultra-Fusion, which has five people capable of fusing together turning them into a giant warrior. Note, the five is only individual characters, as EX fusions are actually capable of fusing in the Ultra-Fusion, and you can have all five team members as EX Fusions. As a result, you can technically have a ten man fusion.
- Gendered Outfit: Mostly averted, as it's possible to unlock most outfits for both genders. There's a few that are restricted to one gender or another, though most can be gained through fusion.
- Gender Bender: Played With but thankfully Averted Both Androids 17 and 18, and Gohan and Videl (in their Saiyaman costumes) can perform EX-Fusion to become Android 1718, and Great Saiyaman 2 respectively, however the resulting fusion will always be male, even if 18 and Videl are the ones to initiate the fusion.
- Golden Super Mode: Golden Freeza and the Super Saiyan form is in this game. Interestingly, fusing with other species still enables the Saiyan protagonist to transform into a Super Saiyan (as they are still a Saiyan-half after fusing), but it's interesting with a Frost Demon like Freeza or Frost — it turns their cranium golden.
- Heel–Face Turn: Considering this is a collecting game, after you beat the game, you can recruit pretty much all the villains on your team.
- Hub Level: The Capsule Corp spaceship your team will travel in.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: If weaponless characters have supers attacks that use weapons, they'll pull the weapon out of nowhere and do the attack, and then the weapon disappears afterwards.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: The final battle turns into this once Ultra Pinich goes Great Ape, allowing Pinich's consciousness to fight back against Freiza and Cell.
- Lighter and Softer: While the Xenoverse games have some bits of humor, this game, the dialogue, fusions, and gameplay is played for laughs. The chibi artstyle works, helping the humor tone of the game.
- Limit Break: All-Out Attacks and Ultra-Fusion.
- Me's a Crowd: Cell takes advantage of time being screwed up by the wish to invite an army of himself from alternate timelines.
- Mythology Gag: Prilin
was a hypothetical fusion of Krillin and Piccolo made for an art contest.- Kalory could be based on Broku, a character that appear in an old Dragon Ball Z TCG. note
- No Kill Like Over Kill: Several special attacks, like Sphere of Destruction, Supernova, and Blaster Meteor, are able to knock out everyone in the area, including your teammates.
- One-Gender Race: The Namekians.
- One-Winged Angel: Pinich's Ultimate Ultra-Fusion and its Oozaru form.
- Patchwork World: The new dimension is composed of bits and pieces of the Dragonball world, copied and pasted largely at random.
- Physical God: Beerus and Whis are playable, so this is naturally the case. Also, the two are able to fuse together.
- Poor Judge of Character: Yes Pinich, trusting Freiza and Cell's claim that they reformed won't backfire at all.
- Post-Final Boss: After beating the game the player is challenged by the Champion Team, which consists of Hercule, Beerus, Whis, SSJB Goku, and SSJB Vegeta, and only Hercule needs to be defeated to win the fight.
- One of the very last post game sidequests has you going up against Goku and Vegeta in a gauntlet; as Super Saiyans, as Super Saiyan 3s, as Super Saiyan 4s, as Super Saiyan Blues, and finally fused as EX Gogeta.
- Power Creep, Power Seep: This is a game where you can have Kid Goku face against a fusion of Beerus and Whis.
- Promotedto Playable:
- Gine. She previously made an appearance in Extreme Butoden as a Z-Assist.
- This game marks the first playable appearance of Bulla.
- Scenery Porn: The open world fused locations are quite detailed and colorful, full of memorable places like Satan City, Namek, Distorted Hell, Space and so on.
- Shaped Like Itself: It's possible to fuse Kid Trunks with the Future Trunks from Dragon Ball Super. His name? EX Trunks.
- Side Quest: This game has a lot of them, especially in the post-game.
- The Smart Guy: Trunks is usually the one to explain new concepts and takes over the tutorial for the player.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad:
- Kalory. He was the first EX-Fusion to be teased and revealed and appears on the game's cover.
- The human male character who appears in all promotional artwork, the trailers, and in the manga where he's named Tekka.
- Weirdly enough, Goku and Vegeta can't be unlocked until after the story is over.
- Super-Deformed: All characters appear like this. Averted with Maxi-Fusion which makes you normal sized albeit as a giant, and giant bosses.
- Supernaturally Young Parent: When Tekka runs into nine-year-old Gohan, their team is guaranteed to have his fifteen-year-old father, his future little brother who is only two years younger and his future nine-year-old daughter. Gohan becomes swiftly and suitably shocked.
- "Super Sentai" Stance: The Ginyu Force, the Doola Force, the Great Saiyamen, Jaco and any of their fusions all pose in such a way.
- Tag Team: If any of your teammates are near you on the attack timeline, it will activate a team attack.
- Took a Level in Badass: In DBZ/DBS, Bulla/Bra is a baby or a little child, and in DBGT she is a teenager with no fighting skills. Here, she is another fighter.
- Unwitting Pawn: Pinich becomes this late in the story by letting the Obviously Evil Freiza and Cell to join his team, who teach him the ability to Ultra Fuse. When Pinich does this to try to gain the upper hand on the player character his consciousness is overcome by Freiza and Cell's in the resulting fusion.
- Villain Team-Up:
- Frieza and Cell team up, ultimately hijacking their Ultra Fusion with Pinich to become the Final Boss.
- After stage one of the boss fight with Janemba, he turns into Super Janemba...and then Kid Buu shows up and the two actually understand each other (what with both being Psychopathic Manchild Omnicidal Maniacs), resulting in them fusing into Janenbu.
- What If?: With the ability to fuse anyone together, this seems to be the main premise of the game.
- What-If transformations like Legendary Super Oozaru Broly and Super Saiyan 3 Future Trunks appear as well.
- Kiclee, Prika, Shorny, Doola, Parm, Vereen and Kranola are female versions of Goku, Vegeta, Ginyu, Jeice, Guldo, Recoome and Burter respectively.
- Saiba-King is a Saibaman that somehow grew beyond its limits.
- One of the enemies is a robot version of Goku called Mecha-Goku, and it can even transform into Super Mecha-Goku.
- One of the final bosses of the game is the Oozaru form of the Ultimate Ultra-Fusion, a fusion of Pinich, Frieza, Cell and two of Pinich's friends, Wanta and Paprika.
