| Dragon Ball Legends | |
| Developer: | Dimps |
| Publisher: | Bandai Namco Entertainment |
| Producer: | Keigo Ikeda[1] |
| Series: | Dragon Ball |
| Platforms: | Android iOS iPadOS |
| Released: | (Android) |
| Genre: | Fighting |
| Modes: | Single-player Multiplayer |
Dragon Ball Legends (Japanese: ドラゴンボール レジェンズ) is a free-to-play mobile game based on the Dragon Ball anime franchise. Developed by Dimps and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, it was released in Japan for Android on May 24, 2018, and for iOS on May 31, 2018.[2] [3]
Legends includes elements of fighting and strategic card battling games. The player can control the characters by tapping the touch screen to make them attack and swiping it to move around the 3D environment.[4] During the fights, players can use up to 3 characters, each of them has an element and depending on the opponent's element, their attacks can do more or less damage.[5]
Cards are automatically drawn from a deck, these allow to unleash combos of melee, ranged and special attacks.[6] Certain cards used by the player grant them Dragon Balls. After getting 7 of these, the player unlocks "Rising Rush" for their characters. This allows the character to unleash a super attack that is much more powerful than the typical combo attacks.
Legends also has a gacha system allowing players to collect specific characters from the Dragon Ball series, although not from the yet-to-be-animated manga, there are 4 rarities and a sub-rarity; these are HERO, being the weakest and most common, EXTREME, being less common than hero units, but still weak in gameplay; SPARKING, which are powerful but often overshadowed by Sparking: Legends Limited characters, as the latter rarity has units with better stats and have special finishing moves if the player uses a specific attack to end the fight. Lastly are ULTRA characters which are the strongest characters, upon initial release, and tend to be meta shattering. In order to collect these characters, one must summon them from their specified "banner." ULTRA characters can only be summoned on their specified banner, at a 0.35% drop rate.
There are only 3 ULTRA characters in the game (Super Saiyan Goku from the "Frieza Saga" of Dragon Ball Z, Vegeta from the aforementioned saga, and Omega Shenron from the "Shadow Dragon Saga" of Dragon Ball GT) that are not summonable and must instead be obtained by completing their respective events.
Legends was announced during the Google Game Developers Conference in March 2018.[7] The game was released in May 2018.
The game reached 4.5 million pre-registered users worldwide, the highest for Bandai Namco Entertainment.[8] By August 2021, the game had more than 50 million registered users.[9] Legends received the award for best game of 2018 at the Google Play "Best of 2018" awards ceremony.[10] By April 2024, the game surpassed 100 million registered users.
A month after its launch, the game grossed $40 million, reaching number 3 on the Japanese App Store.[11] By February 2019, it grossed more than $140 million worldwide, surpassing the record of the previous Bandai Namco title in the franchise, .[12]