Battle Stadium D.O.N. is basically Super Smash Bros. with anime characters. What makes it special is the franchises that were included in this crossover fighting game – D.O.N. stands for Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Naruto.
Don’t expect accurate representations of power levels, as the game is balanced so that no single character will be overwhelmingly stronger than the rest (which is what would happen if they stayed true to the power levels in their respective franchises – characters from Dragon Ball will destroy everyone else). But the visuals do look like they came out of the series (though they are modeled more after the manga than the anime), as the characters use their trademark screen-filling attacks and all have transformations. The stages may be constrained but they do capture the look and feel of their respective franchises.
The game starts you off with 2 to 3 choices of characters from each series and a handful of stages, but there are missions in the game that let you earn coins/points that you can use on a lottery later on, which in turn will let you unlock the rest of the characters. Once you fully unlock the roster and the stages, you’ll have a good representative cast from all the franchises involved. The game is Japanese-only but the menus have English text so you can still get into matches without understanding a lick of Japanese.
As for gameplay – as mentioned above, it’s Super Smash Bros. but with Dragonball, Naruto, and One Piece stages and skins. The stages constantly spew out power ups or have environmental hazards. The fights can be anywhere from 1 vs. 1 to 4-way free for alls. The character has a button for melee, jumps, and special attacks (which is also used for the screen-filling super moves). Instead of an HP bar for each player, there is a single sliding HP bar shared by all the characters where damaging the other characters will make your share of the HP bar larger. The goal is to get all the share of the HP bar, but until then, it’s going to be a yo-yo of a match as characters who are already almost out of HP can still make comebacks and come out on top.
Buy or Not?
It depends. On its own, Battle Stadium D.O.N. is a decent Super Smash Bros. clone that is enjoyable to play, but is hardly something to seek out if you’ve already played a lot of SSB-type games. If you’re a fan of all the franchises involved, then definitely seek out this game. At the very least, it will let you settle age-old debuts about which character can kick the posterior of whom.
