Dragon Ball Legends is Bandai Namco's smartphone fighting game, developed by Dimps (the studio behind Budokai and Xenoverse) and released in late May 2018 for Android and iOS. It is free to download, built around real-time matches against players worldwide, and blends 3D combat with a card system. Like nearly every successful mobile game, it runs on a gacha: characters come from random draws, which you can pay for with real money.
How it plays
You pick three characters from your roster and fight one-on-one, swapping fighters mid-match. Tap the screen to attack and swipe to move and dodge around the 3D arena. Actions come from cards that are drawn automatically:
- Strike (red): close-range attacks that rush your fighter at the opponent;
- Blast (yellow): ranged ki barrages;
- Special Skill (green): buffs for yourself or debuffs for the enemy;
- Special Move (blue): each character's strongest technique.
Some cards earn Dragon Balls: collect all seven and you unlock Rising Rush, a devastating attack that can end the match. Every character also has an element (red, yellow, purple, green or blue) arranged in a circle of strengths and weaknesses, plus two special elements, light and dark. Timing, character swaps and dodges are what separate average players from strong ones.
Did you know? On screen everything looks real-time, but on the server each second is split into 250-millisecond slots in which the two players take turns. That trick, running on Google Cloud, is how Bandai Namco made matches between players on different continents possible.
The story and Shallot
The story mode, split into parts and chapters and still ongoing, follows Shallot, a brand-new Saiyan designed by Akira Toriyama. He wakes up with no memory in a world where characters from different eras collide, from Goku and Vegeta to villains from GT and Dragon Ball Super. Other original faces join him, such as the mysterious "Saiyan in Red" Giblet, later revealed as his twin brother, and Zahha, an ally who turns out to be the main antagonist. It is an ensemble what-if tale with purpose-built fights and plenty of dialogue between chapters.
The gacha, explained plainly
The main currency is Chrono Crystals. You earn them by playing (story, events, missions, login rewards) or buy them with real money. You spend them on summons, single or ten at a time, on limited-time banners that showcase new characters. Rarities run from Hero and Extreme up to Sparking, with even more coveted tiers on top: Legends Limited, Ultra and, since February 2026, the new Legend rarity. For the most sought-after characters, the chance per single draw is a fraction of a percent, so needing many pulls is normal.
There is also power creep: new characters tend to outclass older ones, and in PvP the pressure to keep your team current is real. You can play without spending, with patience and smart choices about where your crystals go, but setting yourself a budget is wise.
A note on in-app purchases. Legends is free to download but includes real-money purchases and randomized draws. The odds are listed in the game: read them before you spend, and turn on parental controls on younger players' devices.
Numbers and awards
In December 2018 it won Best Game in Google Play's Best of 2018 awards in Japan. In 2024 it passed 100 million registered users worldwide. On February 7, 2026, at the World Championship 2025-2026 finals, Bandai Namco announced a Guinness World Record for the most playable characters in a PvP action game: 676, and the count keeps rising. Critics were cooler (69 on Metacritic), but its staying power speaks for itself.
Who it is for
Players who want short, competitive matches on their phone, with 3D visuals and the series' voice cast, and who are fine with how gacha games work. If you would rather have a complete team fighter with no draws or currencies, Dragon Ball FighterZ is the one for you.
Our take
Legends is the mobile Dragon Ball game closest to a real fighter: real-time matches are fast, readable and often tense, and Shallot is a welcome addition. Its limit is the genre's limit: the gacha weighs heavily, and staying competitive costs time or money. It is missing from our ranking of the best Dragon Ball games only because a game that changes every week is hard to compare with finished titles.