Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero Review

Dragon Ball faithful, we never thought it would happen, but after over 15 long years (16? 17? Who’s keeping count!) we finally have a new installment in the legendary and beloved Budokai Tenkaichi series. Many childhoods were defined by this series, and Bandai Namco is bringing it back in sparkling fashion with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero.

For the uninitiated, everyone outside of Japan knew the series as Budokai Tenkaichi, with Budokai Tenkaichi 3 being a favorite of many. In Japan, the series was known as Sparking, so in a way, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero represents a return to its roots, taking the formula and resurrecting the series in a way that retains what made it special while adding modern flourishes.

The resulting product is an arena fighter that is fast-paced, intense, visually stunning, and incredibly fun. Emphasis on fun, because Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is fun to the highest degree and is a series return that fans should not hesitate to jump into.

Wish Granted

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, at its core, is an arena fighter that lets players live out their Dragon Ball fantasies, placing players in control of 182 fighters spanning Z, Super, GT, and other arcs that can satiate any fan. To be expected, though, is that out of the 182 characters, many will be repeats of a character but with just a different form: Goku Z Early/Mid/End, Goku Super, Soku Super Saiyan God, Goku, Ultra Instinct, and so on. To be fair, their movements and power levels are not fully identical, sticking to canon, but Goku taking like 20 character slots in various forms feels a teeny tiny bit dirty.

With so many characters to choose from, players may feel overwhelmed, and those who want the ultimate experience will have specific characters to look at because Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is not a “balanced” game by any means. The game specifically has strong characters that are canon to the anime, like Ultra Instinct Goku, and will certainly trample over some weaker personalities like Yamcha and others. Players coming into the game expecting an esports title like FighterZ won’t find that here, as half of the fun is feeling the power that these characters bring to the table.

Despite this, the other half of the fun is where Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero executes beautifully. The game almost perfectly translates the fast and frantic fights you’ve seen from the anime and brings them to the your platform of choice in stunning form. Players can execute environment-obliterating attacks, teleports, Ki blasts, Kamehamehas, and much more. Battles are ultra-fun, and Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero fully captures this idea and goes to town with it, and while it is easy to jump in and grasp most systems, the combat is deceptively deep, but the middling tutorial that the game opens up with does a lackluster job of getting you ready as it even misses out on teaching players obvious mechanics.

It certainly helps that Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero looks and sounds absolutely crazy, in a very good way. The animations and special attacks are off the charts, and you can feel the commitment of the developers to making this look as good as it plays. The game respects the source material in terms of combat, and for many, this is all that really matters, making Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero a sight to behold from a spectator’s point of view. The game nails this essential aspect so well that it single-handedly carries the experience, making it as fun as it is.

Ground Zero

While that’s the case with combat, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero’s story mode could use a bit of work, although it’s quite understandable because by now, who hasn’t played or seen Dragon Ball events to a certain degree? That aside, newcomers looking to learn a bit about the lore of Dragon Ball will be quite disappointed because there isn’t a retelling here that’s complete enough to get you up to speed, unlike Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. There are branching paths, basically what-ifs that show an alternate ending to certain pivotal points in the series (going against Raditz without Picollo, for example), but they don’t merit the trouble of even experiencing since the outcomes felt predictable, even if they were nice to have to some degree.

Episode Battles in Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero will let players run through certain battles from a character POV (Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, etc) but with little to no story explanation because of too many skipped scenes, only Dragon Ball veterans will actually understand what’s going on. To compound the problem, cutscenes are limited to still screenshots a la PowerPoint presentations that make the mode feel cheap and tacked on. Add the brutal difficulty of some fights, and you’ve got yourself a mode that you can probably do without.

Despite this, another mode called Custom Battle amps up the fun factor by a ton, allowing players to create the Dragon Ball battle of their dreams. Players can choose the characters, the levels, the effects, the scenes… basically creating a battle scenario with ridiculous conditions that are only limited by your creativity. The best thing about this is that you can upload and share it with other players around the world, offering a virtually endless stream of user-generated content.

Of course, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero won’t be complete without an online mode, and things can get really sweaty very fast. Despite the game lacking rollback netcode, something that FighterZ only recently got, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero offered a surprisingly smooth experience marred by only a handful of laggy matches that didn’t ruin the fun.

Because of the aforementioned character balance, or lack thereof, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero offers a ranked mode that utilizes destruction points (similar to Budokai Tenkaichi 3), placing a cap on how many characters you can take on your team. Some of the more powerful characters like Ultra Instinct Goku will cost upwards of 7 DP, while others like Yajirobe will cost way less. You’ve got 15 DP to make it work, and whether you take multiple characters or just a couple of extremely powerful ones will be up to you. It’s great, and it adds some semblance of strategy and order in an otherwise crazy game.

Should you wish to throw it down with friends in the comfort of your own home, a split-screen mode is also available, although it’s the most basic iteration of it because players can only battle it out in one stage, which is absurdly lacking.

Verdict: Buy it!

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is a dream come true for fans of the series, bringing back the beloved Budokai Tenkaichi series in all its glory to modern platforms. Fights are flashy and fun, while its immense roster of characters is enough to satisfy players looking for a fighting game fix.

It’s not without its faults, and the game’s story mode could have used a bit more love. While the story arcs of Dragon Ball have been replayed and retold to death, the rushed retelling of important events misses an opportunity to onboard newcomers.

That said, this is the best Dragon Ball title we’ve had in a long time and is a definite pickup for those looking for an arena fighter that’s not your typical anime offering. Akira Toriyama would have been proud.

*Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero was reviewed on a PS5 with a review code provided by the publisher.