Remember Budokai Tenkaichi on the PlayStation 2? Of course you do, we’ve all screamed “kamehameha!” with the Wiimote (flinging aside) or spent hours rematching friends over and over again across the games’ many, many maps and playable Dragon Ball characters. And while there have been plenty of Dragon Ball games, none have come close to the kind of local play that series filled for millions of anime and Dragon Ball fans worldwide. Now, developer Spike Chunsoft returns with publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment to give fans the sequel they’ve been waiting for. Enter ‘DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO’, a true sequel to the Budokai Tenkaichi series, where players can play the late Akira Toriyama’s vast number of imaginative characters in the famed Dragon Ball universe.
Now let’s see how this relic holds up.
Sparkling Battles
Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO is a 3D arena fighter. Players pick their favourite Dragon Ball characters and proceed to pummel the other side with a variety of moves all Dragon Ball fans know and love. It’s a unique fighter thanks to a number of mechanics like “Instant Transmission”, having a giant open-zone to do battle in, being able to swap-in and out of up to five characters on the field, and the like. Right off the bat, some of the things Sparking Zero has done with the formula is super cool. The maps you fight in are huge, and are far more destructible than ever. Nothing is more satisfying than countering an opponent and kicking them through half of Capsule City, not to mention just how beautiful everything looks.
Before I get ahead of myself, let me cover the basics real quick. In Sparking Zero, players have full 3D control and they can take fights from land to airspace and right into the sea. Your goal is to always press the advantage on your opponent by actively chasing them down, preventing them from charging up their “Ki” meter, and using your own Ki moves to take them down as fast as possible. You can, of course, get up close and personal through a set of melee combos and throws, but Ki attacks are your heavy damaging move sets that are vital to actually winning the battle.
But mind, just because they’re damaging, doesn’t mean they’re easy to land. Provided your opponent at least when through the game’s boot camp with everyone’s favourite green alien Piccolo, these Ki attacks are incredibly easy to block or even dodge. What that means is, if you want to land these attacks, you’ll have to combo off the other player and follow up with a Ki attack. But as players have many options to counter and fight back in 1-1 scenarios, such as “revenge counters” and Instant Transmission, this naturally leads to some seriously intensive fights that rival the Dragon Ball anime.
We also have a large roster of characters to pick from. The million and two Goku and Vegetas, their family members, characters from the Cell and Android sagas, Broly, a number of large units such as Great Ape Vegeta, GT and Super characters, and even the likes of Chiaotzu. The best thing about Sparking Zero is by far its combat system and it’s a lot of fun to play against difficult CPU-controlled enemies and against other players.
Though I suppose its also worth noting one major pain point right now: Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO has only one map for splitscreen play. Now I had heard ahead of time that this was going to happen, but now that I’ve had the game in my hand and having played it over the weekend, this very fact stings. Splitscreen play only lets players fight in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber map. Just one small house and a giant void of nothing, unlike the other maps that offers far more interesting level design, environment direction, and most importantly: spectacle. Splitscreen mode doesn’t support a second Xbox login either, so only the main player will see progression to their challenges. I can’t beat around the bush on this one—this blows, even more so when you factor in the lack of cross-play for online play.
Moving on—when you’re not in combat, you’re browsing the menus of the game. Sparking! ZERO has a couple of modes of play but they all center around giant arena battles. You have Character Episodes, which sends players (once again) through the history of Dragon Ball Z and beyond (though I did like Goku Black’s route quite a bit!). Depending on whether you win or lose a battle, you might see a different clear result that shows an alternative point in history where X won over Y. There is the training mode with Piccolo, which is quite nice! I threw myself into the game when I first started and realised “wow, I stink!”, and jumped into training to see how that was. The game mostly offers clear expectations on what to do and how to pull them off, with included examples if you need it the most. My advice to you is to master the block button because more often than not, you getting KO’d is because you’re taking the initiative a little too often.
Outside of that, we also have a Custom Battles mode. Here, players can create their own battles, complete with cutscenes and differing win slash lose conditions. It’s surprisingly in-depth, as you have five scenes you can work with and can place any character against any backdrop, change their poses, camera angles, and even text. Text is determined by a set number of lines provided by the game, with certain words being interchangeable. Best of all, once you’ve made your own Custom Battle and have completed it at least once, you can upload it for other players to play. I have no creative bone in my body, at least when it comes to Dragon Ball, so I can’t wait to see what other players put up.
We have a little encyclopedia about every Dragon Ball character in the game. Though its not just any old data page—you can also hear a little bit of commentary about each character through the power of “Girl Talk”: Videl, Chichi, and Bulma have plenty of things to say about everyone and thanks to that, even I spent a little more time here than I expected to. And lastly, every single thing you do in this game rewards you. Whether you win or lose battles, challenges progress and give you Zenni and titles. Zennis can be spent on buying new characters, clothes, items for character customisation (such as lowering ability cooldowns), and the like. Oh, and if you clear certain conditions, you get to summon Shenron and ask him for free stuff. I used all mine on my player level, because why not?
My biggest complaint with Sparking! ZERO is actually with its user interface. You see, every option on the menu has an in-game transition rather than a blank loading screen. It looks cool and I love how smooth it can be, but navigating it is a pain because the game can stutter while shuffling through tabs, messing up your inputs. And then there’s the character selection screen when in battle, which is basically an uglier and clumsier version of those ‘Naruto Ultimate Storm’ games. Not the end of the world, but its worth noting nonetheless.
DRAGON BALL Sparking! ZERO is a great 3D arena fighter. It’s got a sizeable roster, huge maps, and a fun combat system that I quite a bit of mileage out of over the weekend. A clumsy user interface and only one splitscreen map does suck the life out of the party a bit, but there’s still a great game here for Dragon Ball fans and arena fighter enthusiasts. ∎
DRAGON BALL Sparking! ZERO
Played on
Xbox Series X/Xbox Series S
PROS
- Beautiful visuals - the DB cast comes to life in HD proper.
- Fun core gameplay.
- Lots of modes for play.
CONS
- Local 2P only has one map.
- User interface is very clumsy.
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