Dragon Ball Sparking Zero Review: Break the Heavens

After 17 long years and two skipped console generations, the Budokai Tenkaichi series returns with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, bringing the Japanese series name worldwide. And what a return it is! Featuring over 180 characters, limitless replay potential, and bombastic battle mechanics, Sparking! Zero is not only one of the year’s best games, but one of the best Dragon Ball games ever released.

Roster

The sheer robustness of Sparking! Zero’s offerings demands to be discussed up top. Its roster features characters from the beginning of Dragon Ball Z all the way through to Dragon Ball Super’s Tournament of Power. Fans were able to breathe sighs of relief when Dragon Ball GT fighters like Super Saiyan 4 Goku and Dragon Ball Z movie villains like Cooler were also announced for the base game roster. It includes obvious heroes, but also smaller characters like King Cold and Spopovich that aren’t often included in Dragon Ball games. Essentially, Sparking! Zero features everyone’s favorite characters, even the deep cuts.

But a large roster wouldn’t be as exciting if every character felt the same, and this is where Sparking! Zero really excels. Even the 25 different versions of Goku feel somewhat unique due to different special attacks, skills, and costumes. The way characters take battle damage and have their clothes rip is even different depending on which version of Goku or Vegeta is battling. Supers and rush attacks will have cinematic call backs to specific scenes in the anime, and some characters will have unique grab animations depending on their opponents, like Goku grabbing Frieza’s tail.

Sparking! Zero isn’t shy about being imbalanced, and even embraces it as the game tries to remain as true as possible to the franchise. Someone like Super Saiyan Blue Gogeta will feel wildly stronger than Yamcha – as he should! The best characters will have larger health pools, devastatingly powerful ultimate blasts, and skills to enter Sparking mode without charging up the required ki.

Score: 5/5

Game Modes

The amount of game modes available means you’ll never be bored with Sparking! Zero. There’s the regular battle mode where you can pit your team of fighters against the CPU or against online opponents; various tournament modes, each with their own rule sets; Episode Battles, with eight characters’ stories to explore, and Custom Battle mode, which gives you freedom to make your own battles.

The story of Dragon Ball Z has been told time and again across video games, so Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero doesn’t try to cover everything that happens. As an arena fighter and not an RPG like Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot or the XenoVerse games, Sparking! Zero cuts some corners with its story, which is to say most beats are told through static images and text narration or character dialogue. Because the story is broken down by character, you’ll have to jump around between characters to experience it chronologically. Fans of Dragon Ball won’t have a tough time keeping up, but any newcomers to the franchise might be confused as events like Cell absorbing the Androids or Gotenks’ battles against Buu are glossed over or omitted depending on what character’s story you’re playing through.

The main appeal of the Episode Battles are the “What if?” paths left for players to discover. Certain battles have two-sided green arrows on the battle image, indicating they can potentially lead to a branching pathway. How to trigger those branching pathways isn’t always clear; often even your primary objective is simply to “survive” or reduce your opponent's health to an unspecified amount. But when those branching stories are unlocked, boy, are they fun. For example, if Goku survives against Raditz, he’ll be part of the battle against Nappa and Vegeta from the very start. Some things are constant – sorry, Krillin, but you’re still going to die, triggering Goku’s Super Saiyan transformation against Vegeta – but other outcomes are completely new, like Goku defeating Cell early and preventing his transformations into Semi-Perfect and Perfect Cell.

The “What if?” paths are some of the most fun and inventive story mode battles in Dragon Ball games, and offer up a lot of replay value as you try to unlock the branching pathways. And try you will, as some battles can be hard. I struggled in attempting to unlock Goku’s branching paths early on against Raditz, and could only do so after returning hours later with a better grasp of the game. We’ll see if some Episode Battles prove too difficult for the community and if the developers tweak the difficulty settings as secondary objectives to trigger the branching paths can’t be achieved on the lower difficulty.

Custom Battles give players the ability to create their own episodic fights. The characters and stage are of course selectable, but the level of customizable detail in all other aspects of the fights is remarkable. You can edit together different shots of the characters to create an opening cinematic, swap out nouns and verbs to customize the battle’s titles, and even decide different victory requirements. You’ll have to beat a Custom Battle yourself to upload it online for other players to experience.

Playing during the pre-release period for press obviously meant there weren’t many Custom Battles uploaded, but I can only imagine the limitless possibilities for Custom Battles Dragon Ball fans will concoct. No story content for Dragon Ball GT? No problem, as you know dedicated fans will splice together their own custom story-inspired fights and upload them online. Want a Tournament of Power with GT characters against Super characters? I’m sure someone will create it.

Score: 4.5/5

Gameplay

All of the wonderful characters and endlessly replayable game modes would be for moot if Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero’s core gameplay loop wasn’t exhilarating. But just like Goku and Vegeta’s classic battles, the combat is layered, exciting, and full of fun surprises.

Simple on the surface but difficult to master, Sparking! Zero will appeal to players new to arena fighters and veteran Budokai Tenkaichi players alike. Without diving into the game’s tutorials, simple combos are easy to chain together by mashing square/X and executing supers poses no challenge. It’s a perfect “pick up and play” game that anyone can have fun with, regardless if they know their Vegeta - Super Saiyan 2 (Z-End) from their Vegeta - Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan (Super).

But beneath the surface layer, Sparking! Zero offers very deep gameplay mechanics the most dedicated of players will spend hours in training mode mastering. This is especially true with the amount of defensive options available. Outside of the basic guard/deflect, new super perception allows for defending against a wider variety of enemy attacks. The new revenge counter also adds a great wrinkle to fights as it allows you to interrupt an enemy’s combo with an attack of your own as a sort of parry.

In addition to the expected supers and ultimate blasts, characters will also have new skills at their disposal. Some of them, like explosive wave, are handy for breaking out of an opponent’s combo. Others can allow your fighter to enter Sparking mode without charging into it, offering advantages in battle. New elements like the defense mechanisms and skills – in addition to series staples transformations, fusions, and amazing super attacks – make each and every fight dynamic and unbelievably fun.

Score: 5/5

Presentation

In addition to being one of the most fun and replayable Dragon Ball games, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is also one of the most graphically impressive. Utilizing the power of the Unreal Engine 5, Sparking! Zero is a sight to behold. The exponentially large maps all look amazing and are filled with destructible elements. Knocking an opponent into a building in West City and fighting amongst the rubble is a thrill. Destroying a map has never looked so good.

Character models are some of the best we’ve seen in a DB game. To some fans’ chagrin, Sparking! Zero is stylized after the Naohiro Shintani designs from Dragon Ball Super: Broly, meaning some coloring is different, Bardock’s default outfit is the Saiyan armor from the Broly film, and kid Goku has a blue undershirt he never actually wore during the original Dragon Ball sagas. Every player’s mileage will vary on specific design choices, but as a whole the models are beyond impressive, with character designs being colorful, highly detailed, and very expressive.

On the negative side, the camera will sometimes dip beneath the stage floor, showing just a black bar on the bottom part of your screen, and the stages can get a bit busy at times with how destructible the environments are (you’ll occasionally lose track of an enemy when fighting in transparent rubble or because your character’s glorious aura takes up so much of the screen you can’t see your opponent in the distance). But the few minor presentation nitpicks I have are nowhere near large enough to detract from the overall experience.

Score: 4/5

Verdict: The Best Dragon Ball Experience We May Ever Have

After dozens of hours with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, I can’t wait to play dozens more. With such an expansive roster, exciting game modes, and some of the best arena fighter gameplay around, Sparking! Zero kicks off the fall gaming season with a bang and has firmly planted itself in the conversation for 2024’s best game. It’ll make every Dragon Ball fan giddy with excitement, and will live installed on their hard drives for years to come.

Disclosure: A free copy of the game was provided to PGG by the publisher for review purposes.

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