Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero (PlayStation 5)

The beloved Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi series is back with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, bringing all your favourite characters from throughout the series together for an all-out brawl. Like its predecessors, the game is an arena fighter, letting the action take place across massive environments. The game released October 11^th, 2024 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

The episode mode of game consists of different episodes for a number of characters: Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, Future Trunks, Frieza, Goku Black and Jiren. These episodes are mostly retellings of Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super. For example, Goku’s story takes him from the Saiyan Arc, all the way to the Tournament of Power. As you might expect, these episodes only really focus on that particular characters fights in these arcs instead of full retelling of the arcs, including what the rest of the cast are doing. However, most major fights are covered across the 8 characters. This story structure is about what you’d expect from an anime arena fighter title, however this game does a good job of retelling the arcs with some cutscenes to go with the fights.

One feature that sets the story apart from your typical anime game is the “What If” style routes that characters have, allowing you to make choices at pivotal story moments to change the outcome of events. For example, Goku can choose to leave Piccolo behind when leaving to face Raditz early in the story and this changes the story massively through the Saiyan arc and Namek arc. These additional story routes add some variety and interesting ideas to an iconic story that is likely familiar to the majority of players.

Overall, the story portion of the game is a fun retelling of the story of the series from each characters perspectives with some interesting “What If” paths to go through. The fights also offer a surprising amount of challenge rather than being a cakewalk, making them a perfect place to start playing and learning the ropes before tackling the online modes.  

The game plays out as an arena fighter, similar to other titles like the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Series or Jump Force in that they take place in large 3D arenas to move around in and focus on big flashy attacks. Having said that, Sparking! Zero feels a lot more deep than other games in the subgenre, particularly in terms of the sheer number of mechanics to keep track of. On offense, you have your basic light attacks that are quick to come out and lead to combos, alongside stronger heavy attacks to help you get through the opponents guard. Then each character has more flashy and powerful attacks activated through the use of Ki: the games energy mechanic. This lets you use your more powerful attacks, like a Kamehameha or Galick Gun. After fully charging your Ki meter, you can continue to charge Ki and enter the Sparking state, allowing you to hit harder and unlocks the ability for a massive ultimate attack such as a spirit bomb. This all leads to a great offensive system that is easy to pick up and play but with enough depth for you to not be able to just mash a single button and come away with a win.

The defensive side of mechanics has a lot to choose from, with your normal blocks, dodging out of the way of attacks or if you have good timing vanishing to appear behind your opponent before an attack hits or parrying an attack. Counterattacks are also possible in exchange for extra resources, giving a balance between wanting to focus on offence or keeping a strong defence, adding even more depth to the combat. All of these mechanics are explained in the tutorials that I would definitely recommend going through, after the basic tutorial that automatically plays at the start of the game, I still didn’t know all of the different mechanics, making the extra tutorials definitely worth your time.

Outside of Episode Battle, the game features a number of extra modes, notably Custom Battle, Ranked Match and World Tournament alongside Player match which serves as a casual mode for online play without the pressure of ranked. Custom Battle is similar to the “What-If” battles in Episode mode, with scenarios that would have never happened in the original story being able to be played out like if Burter took on Hit, Dyspo and Kakunsa to prove he really is the fastest in the universe. These custom battles are a lot of fun with extra scenarios to play through with matchups that would never happen in the main series. Another nice touch this mode has is the ability to create custom stories for battles and publish them online for all the world to see, leading to some very entertaining ideas other players have come up with. Then you have your online modes: Ranked match, World tournament and Player match. These three modes allow you to play against other players online, letting you battle it out with your friends or try to top the world leaderboard in ranked mode. The netcode for the game is stellar and I didn’t experience any issues in my time playing the game online with all my matches being smooth throughout. One thing that did come as a disappointment was the lack of crossplay, something that is usually present in fighters these days, stopping me from playing with players on other platforms. Besides this minor complaint with the games online offering, the sheer amount of content available is fantastic, and that’s without even mentioning the games roster of characters.

The game features a grand total of 182 playable characters spanning the series long history, with the majority of the characters you can possibly think of being present, with even more being added as DLC in the future. Granted each form of a character counts as a new character slot, so you’ll find a lot of different Goku’s and Vegeta’s in the roster but the sheer amount of characters on offer is astounding. Everyone from your big hitters like Goku or Frieza all the way to one off characters like Frieza Force Soldier, giving huge possibilities to who you want to add to your team. One feature I found to be a nice touch is the DP Battle mechanic in some of the games modes. Each character is assigned a DP value, and you have 15DP to make up a team of up to 5 characters, stopping you from just putting the 5 strongest characters you can in a team and encourages you to use different levels of characters to make up your dream team. Personally, I choose the entire Ginyu Force, adding up to exactly 15DP, and even hitting their iconic poses before the match starts.

From a visual standpoint, I think Sparking! Zero is the best the Dragon Ball series has ever looked in gaming, and that’s coming from someone who loves the style of FighterZ. The vibrant artstyle is perfect for Dragon Ball and the character models are fantastic and animated fantastically showing off the characters personalities well. For example, since Mr Satan can’t fly, he just runs when you try to fly, with other characters having the same sort of little details that really shows how much the developers love the source material. The different arenas you can fight in are huge and have tons of detail, letting you battle in a variety of locations such as Planet Namek or the Tournament of Power’s arena. The flashier abilities in the game look fantastic with some cinematic animations alongside your ultimate attack that plays a fully animated cinematic as you destroy your opponent. The music that plays during battles is also fantastic, including some iconic songs from the series’ numerous anime. There is also both English and Japanese voice acting on offer, both being great so it entirely depends on your own preference for which to choose. Overall, the presentation of the game is great and has a huge amount of small details that fans of the series are sure to love, really capturing the vibe of the anime and being stunning to see in motion.

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is arguably the best overall gaming package that the series has produced. Everywhere from the roster to the amount of different modes is filled with content to explore. If you can think of a matchup you’d like to see with Dragon Ball characters, this game likely will let you do it. The game is a joy to play regardless of if you’re battling through the iconic arcs of the story or taking on your friends online. I can’t recommend the game enough to fans of the franchise.