Do you want to play Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot? Here is a first guide to help you progress efficiently, and without fear of doing something stupid or simply wasting your time. This guide is far from exhaustive, and you can find more targeted tips in our other guides, but it's a good place to start.
Progress and exploration
At the beginning of the game, you'll spend your time bumping into invisible walls and your options will be terribly limited. It's best to focus on the main story without necessarily trying to clear the whole map. The notable exception is the secondary quests, marked in blue, that you must do at this point in the story. They bring valuable soul emblems, experience and gifts.
The Ki detection, activated with R1/Rb is very useful, look for purple or multicolored lights, they indicate the best loot like D-medals, souvenirs, etc.. Its range is however limited, these objects are not displayed from afar, contrary to the normal ones, which appear in yellow. Enemies are also displayed, with their level, which is very useful for xp farmer or to dodge them. This will also help you for hide-and-seek games.
The many floating colored orbs don't all have to be picked up, they reappear every time you leave the map or change chapters. Flying a few laps around quickly to pick up most of them is a good idea, but don't waste the evening cleaning up the entire map. Wind corridors marked by floating rings, or orbs with limited time, however, are worth a little detour.
If you're fed up with aggressive pirate robots, you can escape them by flying fast (hold down the left joystick).
You can sell items you have too many of to the merchants, then use the money to buy information about the location of special items from certain NPCs or Baba.
Community & Soul Emblems
The game will quickly explain the basics. You are free to move the soul emblems with the characters from the saga in the different groups, but not the group leaders. It is therefore better to give the specialized gifts to the corresponding group leaders, and the awakening water to other characters that you will move from one group to another as needed, except for Kaïo from the training group, whom you should progress as fast as possible. Don't waste your "Cooking" gifts on Goku for example, it's perfectly useless. Remember to use those gifts regularly, and to place your new soul emblems once unlocked.
Apart from the group leaders, all soul emblems have more or less pronounced predispositions for each community group. Some are more suitable for adults or Z Fighters, but nothing prevents you from placing them elsewhere to unlock a useful bonus.
Forming links with your soul emblems is a good way to quickly grow a group in level. You can see what links are available for each emblem by entering its details.
Special skills and techniques
From the beginning of the game, you can invest orbs in your heroes' talent tree by going to the character menu and pressing Y/Triangle. The options will be limited at the beginning, but as the game progresses, new techniques will be introduced or more powerful versions will be available to you.
You can also assign your special techniques in any way you want by pressing X/Square in the same menu. This allows you to have the shortcuts you prefer, and similar techniques assigned to the same keys for all your characters.
Fights
A guide dedicated to fighting is coming, so we will only list here the basics.
Start by eating at a campfire before a big fight, you can accumulate up to 3 bonuses, that means you can eat 3 times in a row. It also allows you to get all your life gauge back. Afterwards, Chi-chi's complete meals will be even more important, with much more massive bonuses, even permanent bonuses.
Probably the most important technique in big fights is probably the teleportation with A/Croce, it's the equivalent of dodging or rolling in other games. Many of the bosses' fearsome techniques require perfect teleportation to dodge them, so you need good timing and not just hammering the key.
Blocking with LT/L2 is mostly used for small melee shots, you can then follow up with an energy explosion or teleport into the enemy's back. As you still suffer damage, it is not suitable for blocking super attacks.
Special techniques that project the enemy can be the focus of your combos, such as demon rush or body grab (RB+B or X in general), as they are easy to place, the enemy is propelled, and you can chain a second attack with B, followed by a melee strike combo or kamehameha or equivalent without the enemy being able to dodge.
Find here the list of successes to be validated in DBZ Kakarot to get the platinum, including hidden trophies. Watch out, spoilers.
