I know I've seen my fair share of people upset that they never did manage to find another game to fill the niche that City of Heroes filled, so while I don't expect that this will do the trick for everyone, it did for me (not perfectly, but very damn close).
Dragonball Xenoverse 2
I should preface this by saying that this game requires more reflexes and understanding of key combos than traditional MMO fare, though it's not quite a fighting game by any standards (comparable to Smash Bros perhaps). The main thing that made me catch myself giggling like an idiot was the world building and storytelling, though it certainly helps if you enjoy the ridiculous world that is DBZ of different colour laser beams firing everywhere.
The sheer amount of love work that went into this by the developers clearly shows, and the dialogue differs by what teammates you bring with you to assist on missions. (AI controlled for main campaign, AI or PC depending on whether you play offline or online coop PQ later on) It feels like you're actively involved in the story and lore in the living world of DB. (Captain Ginyu is apparently a pretty good guy by how he supports his squad..)
There's a respectable degree of costume customization, power variety (no recolours, but you gain movesets by training under various ingame characters, eventually learning their ultimate combos via RPG-esque progression to build your own combos), but anyway, my brief summary:
Pros
-Costume customization (selection nowhere near CoH but still respectable, do note you cannot recolour some thematic outfits, look for the prismatic icon for ones you can change)
-Power customization (not in animations or colouring, but combo creation to fit whatever you enjoy doing best, though this boils down functionally to either CQC or Ranged nuking or both with a smattering of stuns and other status effects, though if you're familiar with DBZ you should know what the emphasis is on)
-Instanced, can be played solo or coop (the world shows other PC's as NPC's if you opt to play solo). Missions are all on 15 minute timers, so they rarely drag on (most won't take you more than 5 minutes, so you won't find yourself stressed on the clock, which leaves missions short and to the point)
Cons
-Having a gamepad will most likely help your experience, haven't tried K+M (may require hardware purchase)
-Gear grinding is somewhat lacking, I don't have much use for my money or medals that I've accumulated that I can figure out. Granted, I've just started the PQ missions (see below), so maybe this changes.
-Some fights will be difficult (or easy) depending on what "training" progression you chose to advance, and the class stat assignment isn't really intuitive. I picked Saiyan for my first character and went mostly balanced specs, where apparently they're meant to excel in ranged attacks. If you screw up, your mentor will shout at you (or encourage you depending on whoever you picked), and you can take another go at it later when you're better.
Anyway, I haven't had this much fun with a game since Portal, so if it hits all the right beats for anyone else, knock yourself out. I'm about 40 hours in and just finished the main campaign and am starting to get through the "Parallel Quest" semi-raid missions, so there appears to be replayability so far.
Be safe out there heroes; VO, SoH, CoT all will probably not be here and/or polished for a while.
