Dragon Ball FighterZ Controls Guide - How to Block, How to Change Character

In Dragon Ball FighterZ, you’ll need to master the control scheme of the game quickly if you want to dominate the competition online. In this Dragon Ball FighterZ controls guide, we’ll teach you how to properly block an incoming attack, as well as how to execute any of the basic attacks in the game.

If you instead need anything else to do with Dragon Ball FighterZ, including a general beginner’s guide for the game, as well as a character roster overview, head over to our Dragon Ball FighterZ guides walkthrough hub.

Dragon Ball FighterZ Controls Guide

As with any fighting game, you first thing you need to do in Dragon Ball FighterZ is to get to grips with the controls of the game. Although you can actually customise the button settings for your standard console controller in the menus of the game, we’ve listed out the default controller scheme for Dragon Ball FighterZ just below:

• Light attack - Square/X
• Medium attack - Triangle/Y
• Heavy attack - Circle/B
• Special attack - Cross/A
• Z assist 1 - Left bumper
• Z assist 2 - Left trigger
• Change character - Hold left trigger
• Dragon Rush - Right bumper/Light + medium attack buttons
• Super Dash - Right trigger/Heavy + special attack buttons
• Ki Charge - Light + special attack buttons (Square/X + Cross/A)
• Vanish - Medium + heavy attack buttons (Triangle/Y + Circle/B)

As we’ve noted above, there are actually multiple ways of pulling off some moves in Dragon Ball FighterZ. For example, to execute a Dragon Rush attack you could simply press the right bumper on your controller, or you could press the corresponding buttons for a light attack and a medium attack together, which would be Square and Triangle for a PS4 controller, or X and Y for an Xbox One controller.

You’ll note two ‘assist’ moves in the controls list above, and you can use both of these to call in either your first or second teammate, to temporarily help you out in the fight. Dragon Ball FighterZ always uses teams of three characters, and so the Z assist moves are ways of quickly calling in one of your allies to take a swipe at your opponent, before retreating to the sidelines. We should note that the ‘change character’ option listed above is different from the assist moves, and allows you to change the character you’re currently playing as, to one who’s waiting on the sidelines.

Dragon Ball FighterZ How to Block Attacks

There’s also the blocking aspect of Dragon Ball FighterZ, which can be difficult to master and time correctly. Using the left analog stick, you can either press backwards, away from your opponent to block a normal attack, or back and downwards to block a low attack. Timing is critical to this however, as you have to initiate the block at the same time as your opponent’s hit connects with you. Blocking isn’t easy to master by any means in this game, but there is a tutorial mission for blocking that can help you get the timing of the move down.

These might be the basic controls of Dragon Ball FighterZ, but what about executing some of the powerful Special Moves, like Frieza’s Death Ball or Goku’s Super Kemehameha? For a complete list of all Super Move attacks belonging to various characters in the game, head over to our Dragon Ball FighterZ Special Moves guide.

Dragon Ball FighterZ Special Moves

Finally, there’s the Special Moves type of attacks in Dragon Ball FighterZ, which are undoubtedly the most powerful in the game. All characters in the game have two types of Special Moves, one which requires one bar of the Ki Gauge near the bottom of the screen, and a more powerful Special Move which requires three bars.

To pull off the weaker of the two attacks, no matter which Dragon Ball FighterZ character you’re playing as, all you need to do is turn the left analog stick ninety degrees anticlockwise from facing downwards, and press either the right bumper or the right trigger. Pulling off this attack is fairly simple, and is likely the one you’ll be executing more in the heat of battle, since it only requires one bar of the Ki Gauge to be pulled off.

In order to pull off the more devastating Special Move that costs three bars from the Ki Gauge, all you need to do is instead turn the analog stick clockwise instead from facing downward, and press the right bumper or right trigger. This powerful Special Move attack is basically guaranteed to take off nearly half the health of the opposing character, provided you can land the attack.

For a complete breakdown of every single Special Move in the game for every character, head over to our Dragon Ball FighterZ Special Moves guide.