How Good is B-197 Divine Belial Nexus Adventure-3? (Beyblade Burst BU Review)

Affiliate Disclosure: If you buy something through some of the links on this post, you won’t pay any extra, but we’ll get a small commission. This helps us keep things running. Thanks for your support!

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B-197 Divine Belial Nexus Adventure-3 is our introduction to Beyblade Burst BU, which is effectively an extension of Beyblade Burst Dynamite Battle as it uses the same Layer System.

BU has started after the anime’s discontinuation; products will continue to hit the shelves despite this, much like the Heavy Metal System’s Gimmick Specialty series.

Divine Belial is the third evolution in the Belial line, coming almost exactly a year after Dynamite Belial’s debut.

But how good is B-197 Divine Belial Nexus Adventure-3? Read along to find out what we thought of the new parts of this first release of what seems to be Takara-Tomy’s final Burst series.

Product Details

• Brand: TAKARA-TOMY
• Product Code: B-197
• Product Contents:
  • Divine Belial Nexus Adventure-3
• System: Dynamite Battle Layer System
• Series: Beyblade Burst – Burst Ultimate

Part Weights

• Divine Blade: 9.39g
• Belial 2 DB Core: 8.05g
• Nexus Disk (1 Star): 30.62g
• Adventure Driver: 8.15g
• 3 Armor: 13.16g

Additional Notes

• All matches in this article were done in the B-09 Burst Standard Stadium using one Blader and a Full Custom Beylauncher LR.
• Stamina matches saw both combos switch out Disks and Drivers at the half-way point to account for Star discrepancy and Driver wear.
• This article was written in collaboration with WBO user Dan. Thank you, Dan. Additional Belial 2 DB Core testing, editing, photos, and formatting by Blader Kei.
• Finally, if you buy something through some of the links on this post, you won’t pay any extra, but I’ll get a small commission. This helps me keep things running. Thanks for your support!

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Divine Blade Review

The Divine Blade is the newest Blade in the Belial line, and it maintains compatibility with all previously released Gears. 

Both Dynamite/Devil and Dangerous have been designed with the ability to accommodate the F, V, S and L Gear, and the same holds true here. Divine Blade in particular is fully compatible with the Blade Gears F and L, so if you have those add-ons, try them on Divine!

Credible information has come about hinting that an A (Achilles) and D (Dragon) Gear will be coming out within the next few releases as well, also being completely compatible with Divine Belial Nexus Adventure-3 and former Belial beys. The former is suggested to be another Blade-related Gear and the latter an addition to Nexus Disc like the existing S-Gear.

This means to say whatever we find here may not end up being a definitive truth for all time, as these upcoming Gears may change the way we look at the Divine Blade entirely.

How good is the Divine Blade for Attack type Beyblades?

Compared to the Blade of the previous Belial release–the Dangerous Blade–Divine Blade manages to look much more subdued. It has a tri-winged design with metal to add some weight to each point, but similar to the rest of the Belial line, its underside is hollowed out to make room for the F Gear. 

Despite the metal weight added to the top of each wing, Divine still ends up being slightly lighter than Dangerous, up to half a gram.

Unfortunately for Divine, its horizontal contact points aren’t nearly exposed or heavy enough to do serious damage, meaning that the one of the only ways you can generate meaningful Smash Attack is through its exposed vertical points – namely the metal chunks.

Because the most potent form of attack it can display comes from these metal chunks, or very fortunate hits to the center-point of each wing, it becomes very hard for Divine to land knock-outs. 

Divine Blade has to be low enough relative to its opponent, troublesome even on the Jolt Dash Driver which is already notoriously short.

To give you an example of how impotent Divine can be in practice, we put it up against two fairly common Stamina setups.

Divine Blade Attack Type Testing

If you’re wondering why F Gear was used, the situation is much like Dangerous Blade: it needs the extra weight.

In this case the F Gear also doesn’t really interfere with Divine Blade’s most useful contact points. Divine Blade just happens to not be very effective as an Attack type, unfortunately.

While Divine Blade’s contact points aren’t refined enough to be a serious right-spin Attack Blade, it does exhibit fairly high recoil similar to Dangerous Blade.

In some cases, being able to produce a lot of recoil isn’t necessarily bad if it results in more damage being done to your opponent, whittling them away sooner than yourself.

Is the Divine Blade Better Than The Devil/Dynamite Blade? 

With that in mind we turned our attention to Divine Blade’s potential uses in Stamina combos.

As it stands, the Dynamite Blade and Devil Blade are at the top of the Belial line in terms of Stamina usage and matchup competency, so we tested Divine Blade against them.

The Verdict: Divine Blade is inferior to the Dynamite/Devil Blade

Unfortunately for the Divine Blade, its design holds it back from being quite as reliable as Dynamite/Devil Blade for Stamina oriented combos. 

There is no question that Dynamite/Devil is head and shoulders above Divine in the head-to-head, and considering how potent Dynamite/Devil has continued to be, it may be hard to knock off its throne.

Is the Divine Blade Better Than The Dangerous Blade? 

It may not be able to surpass the Devil Blade, but we decided to see how it does against the Dangerous Blade, which also fell just short of Dynamite/Devil but tended to do just slightly better in opposite-spin matchups. 

Read our in-depth Dangerous Blade review here for a thorough breakdown of where it shines and falls short.

Because we already expect the Dangerous Blade to be slightly less impressive in the same-spin matchup, and its slight niche over Dynamite/Devil was certain opposite-spin matches, we started by comparing Divine Blade and Dangerous Blade based on performance versus the Vanish Blade.

Here is how Dangerous Blade did, as a benchmark:

As you can see, in practical terms the results were much the same between the two. Dangerous Blade was technically able to win more frequently, but it was still losing with the same frequency. 

Divine Blade did indeed “lose less”, but it won less as well, and there were just a touch more draws. In general it is fair to say they perform equally, and their overall behaviour in battle being the same would make this conclusion seem not-so-surprising.

If they behave similarly and produce similar enough results in opposite-spin, our next step is seeing how they do in a head-to-head matchup. We have used a few different Drivers to try and answer this question thoroughly:

As one may expect, two particularly recoil-laden Blades going at it against each other results in a few knock-outs here and there.

In general one would get the best of the other through massive hits that deplete spin quickly, with Divine taking a very slight edge in this set of testing.

In this matchup there were a decent amount of knock-outs and even a few Burst Finishes thanks to Bearing Driver’s weaker spring. In general, though, Divine Blade would outperform Dangerous in this matchup when strictly looking at out-spins. 

Dangerous Blade was about as likely to out-spin as it was to produce a knock-out or Burst Finish, whereas Divine Blade regularly out-spun Dangerous convincingly.

With a much more stable Driver in play, oddly enough Divine Blade could not keep up with Dangerous Blade at all. Whether this is a testament to Dangerous being better on the Xtend Driver or particularly bad on the Bearing Driver, we can’t be sure. 

Either way, Divine Blade seems to be at least on par with Dangerous most of the time, if sometimes just a touch inferior in the head-to-head depending on Driver.

The Verdict: Divine Blade seems to be comparable to the Dangerous Blade.

While we’d love to say Divine has a clear-cut advantage over Dangerous, it seems that they are back-and-forth with each other more than anything, and seem to occupy the same opposite-spin niche at best.

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Belial 2 DB Core Review

The last time the Belial 2 DB Core was released was in the B-191 Overdrive Special Starter Set – a top tier purchase considering all the competitive valuable parts included. 

This is the first time it is released in a relatively inexpensive and accessible form. Considering this is definitely the best existing right-spin DB Core thanks to its Burst Stopper, it cannot be ignored.

Read more about the original release of the Belial 2 DB Core in our Dangerous Belial Almight review.

How is the B-197 Belial 2 Dynamite Core different from others?

Other than being a deep red this time, the Belial 2 DB Core’s Burst Stopper here seems to be a bit harder to activate and harder to retract, based on the two copies we tested.

This means that it may be potentially riskier since you must launch noticeably harder than the original black version to activate the stopper, but also much more potent and reliable when activated.

To give you an idea of the difference in activation consistency see the tests below comparing one of the red ones with one of the black ones (both in mint condition). Closely powered launch strengths were used in order to compare how often their Burst Stopper would activate. 

We used a particularly heavy setup, featuring both F and L Gear to make us more aware of our launch power and make it a bit more apparent, as heavier Beyblades tend to need more strength to spin and release.

In general the red Belial 2 Dynamite Core tended to require noticeably more power to have the Stopper extend out, with the black Belial 2 Dynamite Core’s Stopper coming out 25% more in comparison. 

With that said, our red Belial 2 Dynamite Core’s Stopper is also noticeably stronger and more difficult to retract once extended. 

How to choose which version of the Belial 2 DB Core to use

If this is more than just a fluke, it may be valuable to alternate which Belial 2 Dynamite Core you use depending on how hard you intend to launch a given combo compared to just how much strength you want the stopper to have.

Attack Type Beyblades

For example, if you like to launch your Attack type Beyblades with a lot of force, and want something like the Savior Blade to not burst quite as much, it would make sense to use the B-197 red Belial 2 DB Core for its harder to extend but more durable stopper. 

Stamina Type Beyblades

Alternatively, if you have a Stamina type Beyblade you’d like to launch more weakly but still have a good shot at having the stopper come out, the easier to extend B-191 black Belial 2 DB Core may be best.

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Adventure Driver Review

The Adventure Driver takes much of its inspiration from the Venture Driver found in Dynamite Belial. It is a tall Driver that features a small Flat tip at the center with two pieces of thin slanted rubber on opposite sides. 

Is the Adventure Driver competitive?

When used without an attachment (V Gear) the rubber is fully exposed and when a Beyblade is at a slant, or banked, rubber makes contact with the stadium, momentarily speeding it up. Alone, the Adventure Driver tends to be very unstable and not exactly a reliable choice for any one type of combo. It very easily destabilizes itself.

With the V Gear attachment the rubber ends are retracted and you are left with the small Flat plastic tip and the wide V Gear to provide some noticeable LAD. This mode is much more reliable, but not particularly effective either. 

Adventure Driver Attack Type Testing

Here is a brief comparison between the two options available to Adventure Driver: with V Gear, and without.

We used Rage 3A because of the height of the Driver and because Adventure Driver’s potential Stamina usage is currently non-existent. Its Flat tip shape simply cannot last compared to legitimate Stamina Drivers even with V Gears additional LAD.

The purpose of a combo such as this one isn’t necessarily to knock-out the opposing Stamina combo, but instead hit it with enough force and frequency to deplete it of spin completely. This is especially true when using the V Gear.

Adventure Driver Stamina Testing

To be completely thorough, we did some opposite spin Stamina testing to determine the efficacy of Adventure (V Gear) Driver’s LAD ability and compared it to Venture Driver’s. 

While Venture isn’t particularly well-known for its impressive Stamina capabilities, it is more than good enough to assess whether Adventure really is an upgrade or not in the opposite-spin matchup.

We also chose to do an opposite spin head-to-head between the two, since the above results told us that Venture and Adventure perform quite similarly – not so great – but didn’t give us any inkling as to which may be “better”. These were our results:

This result was much more interesting. Whereas above both Venture and Adventure would tie or lose, here Venture took charge and only won or tied. Adventure Driver, for one reason or another, perhaps related to less of a buffer between the Flat tip and the V Gear that Venture Driver has thanks to consistent rubber, could not manage to out-spin Venture Driver in the opposite spin pseudo mirror-match once. 

The Verdict: Adventure Driver is not competitive.

The Adventure Driver lacks enough opposite spin stamina ability, and it doesn’t have enough speed or grip to be a meaningful alternative to existing top tier Attack or Stamina Drivers.

Sad as it is, the Adventure Driver lacks any real specialty. It seems haphazardly put together and serves no definitive purpose. Even with the V Gear it lacks any reliability, and seems to perform comparably to Venture Driver, if not worse.

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Should you buy the B-197 Divine Belial Nexus Adventure-3?

Because of the importance of the Belial 2 Dynamite Core, and the fact that this release is significantly cheaper than the only other release to feature this core, B-191 Overdrive Special Starter Set, the purchase of B-197 Divine Belial Nexus Adventure-3 isn’t a complete wash. Apart from this highly important Dynamite Core, though, B-197 lacks a bit of competitive value.

Parts Summary

Divine Blade

The Divine Blade lacks a definitive strength, and appears to be Dangerous Blade by another name.

It lacks the same-spin stamina that Dynamite/Devil have, produces similar opposite-spin results to Dangerous, but doesn’t particularly one-up it. It is difficult to find a place for this Blade in a meta of specialists.

Belial 2 Dynamite Core

The Belial 2 Dynamite Core is a must-have, simple as that.

It is the definitive right-spin Dynamite Core because of its Burst Stopper gimmick, finding a home in most any combo you can think of. 

While the Burst Stopper on the red ones we got seem to be a bit more difficult to extend and retract than the original Black, that shouldn’t stop you from considering picking it up, especially since it is far more affordable than the B-191 Overdrive Special Starter Set. And in fact, it might be more competitive because of this for some combinations.

Nexus Disk

Nexus Disk is a part that, since the S Gear’s debut, has seen noticeable use in Attack oriented customizations as it adds additional weight and contact points. It also does seem to see some use on stamina combos using parts like the Mobius Driver as well for the weight and weight distribution. 

This Disk is particularly good for freeing up space for Over and Giga in a multiple Beyblade match type (ex. 3on3, WBO Deck), but also underrated because of the few things it is used for, it excels at. 

Adventure Driver

The Adventure Driver is really not particularly useful at this time, unfortunately. It seems like a less effective High Charge Dash Driver at best.

The rubber gimmick makes it so using it without V Gear feels like a deliberate handicap, and even with V Gear the Adventure Driver isn’t reliable enough to see use. 

3 Armor

We conducted testing with the 3 Armor and many others in our Ultimate Valkyrie review. It is an excellent Armor that has a place on most any combo, but particularly Stamina oriented ones. It is also found in many, many releases by now, though, slightly decreasing its value here.

Final Score: 6.5/10

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What do you think of B-197 Divine Belial Nexus Adventure-3? Comment below!

If you’re thinking of picking up B-197 Divine Belial Nexus Adventure-3 and have any questions, feel free to ask below and we’ll do our best to answer.

If you’ve already picked it up, We’d love to hear about your thoughts and testing experiences with it. Perhaps there’s something you’ve found that we’ve missed here!