Dragon Ball Sparking Zero review: our wish has been granted

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero is without a shred of doubt the most fun I’ve had with a game this year, so far.

As a Dragon Ball it exceeded my expectations, and while there were a few ideas I think could have been pushed further I simply can’t complain at the quality this fighting game provides.

Take a look at the trailer for Dragon Ball Sparking Zero below

As a successor to Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 it’s not a secret that Sparking Zero had a lot to live up to. While it’s not available on modern platforms many Dragon Ball fans like myself hold fond memories of Tenkaichi 3’s roster, earth-shattering combat and environmental destruction.

Sparking Zero expertly takes what we knew and loved from Tenkaichi 3 and enhances it for modern platforms, and dare I say, it’s perfect.

Bandai Namco

All 182 characters, yes I played as them all, are fun to play and fun to play against though I will recommend ramping up the difficulty to Super if you’re a veteran player. Combat is a bombastic union of style and scale, and while there are many moves and techniques to master they’re not a prerequisite for your victory.

That being said I’d highly recommend learning them, as Sparking Zero brings back some old favourites as well as new ones to teach the old dogs some new tricks. Perception is arguably the biggest change, as depending on the amount of skill points you have saved up it allows you to pull off some ludicrous countermoves.

My personal favourites were the Ki-Blast deflects, as effortlessly batting away Buu’s Kamehameha as Vegito simply added to the spectacle and flair of the battle. Perception can also be used to stop an opponent’s melee attack, but if they’re quick enough they can counter your counter which almost made me fall off my chair the first time it happened to me.

For new players, and old, you can learn just about every move and mechanic in the game through the training mode. This was very helpful early on as some of the story missions can get ridiculously hard, but there are lower difficulties to switch to for a more casual experience.

Experience is the best teacher though, so throwing yourself into as many battles as you can is the best way to progress, and while I didn’t get the chance to fight any humans the AI did more than enough to test my mettle. This is especially true of the Dragon Ball Super characters, almost all of which have trespassed into the domain of the Gods, and have that might reflected into their gameplay. If you fire a Final Kamehameha as SSJ Blue Vegito as SSJ4 Gogeta fires a Big Bang Kamehameha, not only do you get a fantastic beam clash mini-game, you also break reality around you for a second. Both characters transcend the physical plain and temporarily have their battle outside their dimension before things snap back to normal. This is a level beyond cool, and it’s unique to the God-like Super characters.

Bandai Namco

Thankfully, the Dragon Ball Z characters will do their clashes wherever they were fighting before. Throw in some of those clashes in addition to some gorgeously animated moves ripped straight from the anime and every battle feels like an event, so God-knows how it’ll feel when two actual players duke it out for supremacy.

As for additional content you won’t just be fighting normal battles. You can engage in tournaments with various rules like ring-out conditions or a ban on flying, or try out Episode Battles. The Episode Battles act as the main story and What-If portion of the game. Now we’ve seen the story of Dragon Ball Z a hundred times by this point, so I was looking forward to seeing how the game would innovate that story now that Dragon Ball Super was here to play too.

Players are given the choice of several different story branches, Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Future Trunks, Piccolo, Frieza, Goku Black and Jiren as an unlockable one. In all honesty they were a mixed bag, and I came away from most of them feeling satisfied but longing for more.

While playing each story you’re presented with two new options compared to previous stories. The first is a first-person mode that lets you see the cutscenes from your character’s perspective. I liked this a lot during my preview, as seeing iconic moments like Goku getting beam-cannoned and the last push against Jiren in the Tournament Of Power through our hero’s eyes was a neat gimmick, just a shame it felt so out of place so often. Too many moments where you could go first person were when characters were just standing talking to each other. Nothing was really gained from changing your perspective, you’re just seeing the villain-of-the-week monologuing at a distance rather than up-close where the normal camera would be.

The branching paths were also hit-or-miss. Vegeta’s story was the best in my opinion as there were loads of opportunities to right the wrongs in his history, like defeating Cell before his perfect form could wreak havoc, and shaking off mind-control to stop Buu from emerging. Other What-If encounters were less interesting though, like Zamasu killing Vegito and Trunks before they could defeat him, as all you got for the trouble was a short storyboard that in summary says "he wins" before you go back and let the canon story play out.

Bandai Namco

I wasn’t disappointed by the story mode, far from it, and the branching paths do provide replay value, I just think it could have been a little more and having Future Trunk’s story completely skip over the Android and Cell Sagas is a crime I will not forgive.

Any animosity you may have for the Episode Battles could be remedied by Custom Battles, which allow you to create your own stories within reason. You can either let the game do most of the work for you, you just have to choose characters, settings and a title card, or you could go more in-depth and create actual cutscenes and dialogue. Despite my best efforts I was not cut-out to be a director, but the tools are there for those who put the time into learning them. If you’ve no interest in creating your own stories whatsoever but still want more What-If goodness there’s a long-list of premade scenarios to enjoy, and once the game is live players will be able to upload their own stories, providing an endless amount of content.

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero has granted the wish of many by modernising a series that’s been long-due a revival. It’s a love letter to fans of the series who’ve been dying to see what King Cold would say if he met Lord Beerus, and longing to hold their own Tournament of Power with their friends online. No expense has been spared here. You can feel the passion behind every development decision, like letting players summon Shenron for new characters, dressing up those characters in different costumes, and the new-and-improved Encyclopedia, which still has Chi-Chi and the other Dragon Ball ladies talking smack on the boys and their stupid hair-styles.

It’s without a doubt the best Dragon Ball game I’ve ever played, and if I ever stop playing it over the next few months it won’t be because I’m not enjoying it, it’ll be because I’ve broken my PS5 controller trying to win too many clashes.

Pros: Faithful but modernised combat, visuals that could blow up the moon, so many characters, plenty of side content, both offline and online

Cons: Episode Battle could have done more

For fans of: Dragon Ball, Anime, 3D Arena Fighting Games

9/10: Exceptional

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero releases today, 8 October, for early-access participants, and 11 October for standard edition players. The game is for PC, PlayStation 5 (version tested) and Xbox Series X/S. Review code supplied by the publisher. Find a complete guide to GAMINGbible's review scores here.