Support Characters¶

Knowing that neither one can beat Raditz alone, Piccolo offers to team up with Goku to help defeat him. This gives you an support character to use in the upcoming battle, so you will need to understand what they can do. You can have a support character perform a Super Attack by holding down [R1/RB] and pressing the corresponding face button. Unfortunately, you can’t spam the same attack over and over, as there will be a cooldown. Using these Super Attacks will help fill up the Support Gauge for that character, which is the ring surrounding the support character’s portrait.

When the gauge is halfway full, they will perform some kind of action to help you out in battle. This action is dependent on the style of the support character, of which there are three different kinds. Note that the higher the characters’ Friendship is, the higher the capacity of the Support Gauge. You can view the Friendship by going to that character’s Soul Emblem, and increase it by giving them gifts. Moving on, let’s cover the three different kinds of support characters, starting with Offensive ones. They will prioritize attacking over anything else, like chasing after enemies and even using Super Attacks in tandem with your own.

Defense support characters will help you out by protecting you, like blocking enemy Ki attacks. The final type, Special support characters, will restore your health and Ki, plus they have slight chance to perform any of the actions of the other two types. As you progress through the game, you will have access to more support characters, so feel free to experiment with them.

 

Nam the Peddler¶

Once you gain control, you will be in the same area as Roshi’s house, but you won’t find anything here, especially since you’re stuck on the Flying Nimbus for the time being. Open up the world map and head to the region with Lucca Village, where you’ll find the next story mission, although there are two new distractions here. Before setting off, though, you get a short tutorial talking about vehicles and how you can dismount the Flying Nimbus now. This is all done with the directional pad buttons; Down on the D-Pad will dismount your vehicle. Do that, then fly northwest to the proper Lucca Village, where you will find a NPC with a substory.

Nam is trying to sell some fruit harvested in his village to earn money, but he’s not doing so good. Goku asks him if he has anything else, so Nam shows him some rocks that Goku thinks might be valuable. Your goal is to find someone who knows more about these rocks and thankfully, that person is in the same village, so head over and talk with him. He’ll take the rocks off your hands, but offers a trade for an Ammonite Fossil. You may think you’re done, but not quite yet. You’ll need to bring the fossil to someone, who is located northwest of the village. There’s a small area enclosed by some mountains, on top of a waterfall. Speak with this man to trade him the Ammonite Fossil for a Food/Water Capsule. Return to Nam with these to finish the substory. You will also receive Nam’s Soul Emblem after the substory is complete.

 

Gentle Giant¶

The second substory you can find in this region is located to the east of Lucca Village, on top of a plateau. The man you see before you is Eighter, or Android 8, from the original Dragon Ball. He needs your help in stopping some robots abandoned by the Red Ribbon Army a long time ago. The robot is marked on your map, to the south of Eighter, by the river towards the southeastern corner of the map. Approach them and get ready for a battle against three robots. This can be a little bit of an annoying fight, as some Assist Bits will spawn and help out the bigger ones.

There are three different Bits, an attack one, an assist one and a recovery bit. While it seems the healing done by the recovery bit isn’t too bad, you might want to hunt it down and destroy it before anything else. From there, you can concentrate on each main robot, knowing that they have an explosion-like attack, so be mindful of when they charge Goku. Note that you’ll have to destroy all of the big robots, as well as the bits, in order to finish this substory. Once they’re all gone, you’ll automatically return to Eighter and he’ll give you three Carrots and three Onions, in addition to the rewards below. You’ll also unlock Eighter’s Soul Emblem after the sidequest is over.

 

BOSS - Goku/Piccolo vs. Raditz¶

It’s time to get ready for the first true boss battle of the game, Raditz. Luckily, you have a support character with you for this bout, so you’ll have some help in depleting his health. Raditz is definitely challenging, especially as he begins losing health and ramping up the difficulty. He still has Cyclone Monday, which he’ll sometimes do on its own after charging up energy, so be ready for the charge-in and attack; blocking is still the easiest way to mitigate damage from it, since it’s annoying to properly dodge. When you see him doing a lesser charging up, he’ll perform a melee attack that can stun you for a few seconds.

The only other new move he has right now is called Saturday Crash, where he’ll shoot a bunch of large purple energy blasts at you. These come straight on, so dodging back and forth is a good way to not get hit. Since you have a support character in this fight, make sure you use Piccolo’s Super Attacks on Raditz, since it’ll leave you out of danger. The more support attacks you use with Piccolo, the more the Support Gauge will increase. If it becomes full, press L1 + R1/LB + RB to initiate a Z Combo. This is an automated combo that involves your main character and support character(s), dealing some nice damage.

With that battle over, it seems Raditz isn’t quite finished just yet. Piccolo has a plan, though, but he needs time in order to build up enough power for his Special Beam Cannon. That means it’ll be a solo battle between you and Raditz now.

BOSS - Goku vs. Raditz¶

In terms of battles thus far, this is the hardest one yet, as Raditz seemed to had been holding back in the previous battle. He still has access to Cyclone Monday and Saturday Crash, but gains a new ability in Double Sunday. This is a nasty little move, where Raditz will fly into the air and unleash two continuous beams that move around the battlefield. Note that the camera is fixed during Double Sunday, so you can only move vertically and horizontally. While the beams are moving around in a circle, with Raditz as the fixed point, they will track you as you move up and down. You can still dodge through them, but moving up and down can generally avoid the beams.

As his health gets lower, Raditz will begin pulling out all the stops. Saturday Crash will get upgraded to having three energy balls per cluster, so they will become a little harder to dodge. Also, Double Sunday will still be the same, except Raditz will unleash some energy balls that stay still in random positions, so there’s a chance you might run into them as you’re trying to dodge the beams. It also seems like Raditz can use Cyclone Monday back to back, so be wary if he uses it once. At some point, Raditz will initiate a Surge, which is an indication that he’ll gain super armor, so he won’t be able to be knocked back.

While in Surge, he will continually use his Super Attacks, plus at the beginning of it, a bunch of energy orbs will be unleashed on the battlefield. It can be difficult dodging all of his attacks in this stage, but persevere and he will come out of Surge stunned. This is your opportunity to unleash a combo on him, remembering that as he gets knocked away at the end of a melee combo, you can tack on something like a Kamehameha. Raditz will continually use this Surge setup throughout the rest of the fight, so things are pretty set in stone once he begins using it. Don’t be afraid to use items, especially if you get low on health yourself.

This will bring the battle to a close, so watch the scenes after it and get ready to train for the eventual coming of the two stronger Saiyans arriving.