Dragon Ball Sparking ZERO Review: It is the hype

Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO is exactly what I wanted out of a Budokai Tenkaichi continuation barring a few key exceptions. It does so much well and is a fantastic modernization of the series—at times to a fault.

At times, Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO blew my expectations away and lived up to every hope I had walking away from my preview last month. And, with over 20 hours in the game across its different modes, I never truly walked from a play session feeling disappointed.

As I battled through the retelling of various stories, tournaments, and what-if scenarios, the only thing that held Sparking! ZERO back were its own limitations that became exposed when it reached the peak of its powers.

If you are a fan of the Budokai Tenkaichi games who have been hyping up the release of Sparking! ZERO, a fan of Dragon Ball looking for a good time, or just someone interested in a solid arena fighter with a lot of depth to its gameplay and presentation—Bandai Namco has delivered. It just won’t go to a level further beyond.

Perfection in motion, limited when not

Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO is one of the most beautiful games I have ever experienced when it comes to pure graphical fidelity mixed with a clear goal of capturing the source material’s style and enhancing it. There is not a single moment when characters are in action that would look out of place in an episode of the anime.

Spike Chunsoft delivered on making this return feel like you are stepping into the Dragon Ball world every single time you load into a match. From how your moves impact the landscape to charging up changing the weather, everything looks stunning. And that applies to every character’s moves too. 

Sure, animations for supers out of characters like Gogeta or Broly are going to look a bit better than some examples, but for the most part, every fighter gets a chance to shine in a way that highlights just how good this game can look. That is bookended with excellent sound design and effect work as well.

Unfortunately, that same high-quality approach doesn’t always apply when it comes to cutscenes in the Episode Battle mode. 

You won’t ever be laughing at ugly models or anything like that, but the entire story mode in Sparking! ZERO uses in-game models for its presentation and splits between three styles: full cutscenes, models doing small movements, and splash screens showing visuals or animations.

When the game wants to, its in-game cutscenes enhance the story by giving you a look at how key moments from the anime or the what-if scenarios would play out in full action. In some instances, you can even choose to experience entire cutscenes through the eyes of the character you are playing, which completely changes how you see and hear things.

However, you are more likely to get brief cuts between limited action or partial attacks spliced with still panels just explaining what happened rather than outright showing it as it jumps around story points—and sometimes entire arcs.

This never detracts from the gameplay, but it makes certain parts of the single-player mode feel a bit rushed or unpolished when it looks like something you can put together in the game’s Custom Battle mode.

Battles that get a Zenkai boost

Speaking of battles, I touched on how good Sparking! ZERO felt in my preview, however, after spending even more time with the game, I can’t understate how important the Short Dash is when it comes to adding a new level of movement. 

Having the freedom to dash in any direction without using energy is a game changer that opens up a lot of options when paired with other new mechanics like the Vanishing Assault, which lets you instantly launch a charged melee attack while teleporting forward. Likewise, the Revenge Counter gives you another tool to pressure your opponent even if they are the one throwing the punches.

Overall, Sparking! ZERO feels like the Spike Chunsoft team took the core of Budokai Tenkaichi 3 and pushed it to the limit (if Saiyans had limits that is.) There is enough depth here to entice players who want to dig in and hone their skills heading into online matches while still offering a great baseline experience for casual fans ready to have the best action figure battles in Dragon Ball history. 

The only two gripes I have with the battle system and controls faded with time, as getting used to the Super menu was more about learning how to input moves precisely without closing out too fast—coming from BT3 which just let you hit the buttons without a menu opening. The same is true of how finicky some super dashes or Vanish Counter inputs could be, it just took practice to cut down on my own clunky movement.

As for the different battles you can go through, Episode Battle lets you handle the more traditional, story-centric type of stuff while the tournaments, Custom Battle, etc. give you more freedom to customize your experience—and characters.

I personally spent the most time going through different tournaments to try and unlock content and challenge myself under various rulesets. The randomness of the Yamcha Games to full team battles without the ability to fly in the Tournament of Power really gives you a nice spread of options that you can play and customize for online and offline play.

After playing around with the Custom Battle creation tools a bit more, I still think that has the most potential to extend Sparking! ZERO’s reach with community-made challenges and scenarios. There will be limitations, but they aren’t as heavy as I initially thought in my preview. It will pair nicely with normal online matchmaking options and built-in tournament functionality.

Episode Battle almost reaches perfection

I saved Episode Battle for last because story content is where my love of this type of game can fizzle out if it is handled poorly. Thankfully, Sparking! ZERO does a fantastic job of providing a full Dragon Ball story experience with plenty of variety and options to skirt around the same cannon storyline we have experienced dozens of times before. 

Instead of offering a separate mode for what-if scenarios that change the fabric of the Dragon Ball timeline, the developers baked them directly into the main campaign. Throughout your time with Sparking! ZERO, each character featured in Episode Battle will take you down unique paths you might have never expected to see brought to life in official franchise media.

At its best, Sparking! ZERO gives you the ability to play out completely different scenarios based on how you perform in key battles—going as far as to create new narratives, interactions, movesets, and even characters. This is where you can truly appreciate the freedom a game like this provides when it comes to storytelling and creativity.

Whether it is a simple example like Goku surviving his fight against Raditz and then having to face Vegeta without the use of the Kaioken all the way to having Gohan playing a bigger role in Super’s story from the start, there are moments here that had my inner 11-year-old grinning from ear to ear. But that is a peak that the game can’t maintain for long.

For every cool, fleshed-out timeline where Gohan wins a fight he wasn’t supposed to and lives up to his potential with unique cutscenes and interactions that change Dragon Ball’s narrative in major ways, there are three of someone winning a fight and getting three still frames that tell you how this impacted the story before tossing you back to the world map. 

Just like with the cutscenes, not all experiences within a “Sparking Episode” are made equal in Episode Battle, and it shows the more you play it. 

Some will be better than others and you will bounce around arcs and moments at random between your character choices and the split paths, such as Goku having three different ways to experience the Saiyan Saga while Vegeta’s episode doesn’t even start until his fight with Cui. The only consistency with what you get is that Goku has a lot of detailed paths and everyone else gets one for every few available—but they are all fun to experience despite some being more fleshed out.

While the quality of each path is suspect, my main complaint with Episode Battle is the format it sets up for unlocking a Sparking Episode. 

When you come to certain key battles, there will be a marker showing a potential split in the timeline that you can unlock by doing specific things. Most of the time it is as simple as winning a fight in a specific timeframe or way before a scripted move or conversation begins. This can be very challenging at times, and Episode Battle as a whole has some difficult fights to keep you on your toes, but the real battle comes when you have to backtrack. 

Say you unlock the Sparking Episode path right away. Awesome! That means you get to experience a coll what-if scenario without having to replay the fight and finish that challenge (or look at the map to see what hidden hints the game will give you after trying a few times.) Unfortunately, you then have to go back to that battle where the split happens and play it out again, but worse.

Instead of having an all-out battle with the CPU, you have to throw the match or stall long enough for the scripted end to happen. There is no option to bypass a scenario and continue the cannon story without needing to ready up for a battle you have to intentionally play poorly in. It throws off the entire flow and led to me leaving some episodes to try other characters and give myself a break before coming back.

It feels like the Sparking! ZERO team is just scratching the surface of what a Dragon Ball game can be if you truly embrace giving the community what it wants—new, unique ways to enjoy the story they love through fresh takes and fun what-if additions. With some extra work, this approach could make a sequel’s Episode Battle mode something truly special instead of a mixed bag that leaves you latching onto a handful of moments rather than the entire experience.

Perhaps we’ll have a little one-on-one

Looking at my time spent with Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO and at what will likely be dozens of additional hours playing online with friends or clearing out the last bits of Episode Battle, I can happily say that Budokai is back. 

If you are looking for a Dragon Ball experience that will let you get as deep into the battle system and customize everything from your fighters to your battle scenarios, Sparking! ZERO is more than worth your time. Episode Battle alone will soak up plenty of your time, and that is before you delve into tournaments, Custom Battle, or online play.

Sure, I wish there was more representation for OG Dragon Ball and some rough edges were polished, but the peaks Spike Chunsoft was able to reach bringing this franchise back exceeded my expectations and delivered what I now view as the ultimate Dragon Ball experience just for the scale alone. It just couldn’t maintain its final form long enough to reach a level that would truly trespass into the domain of the gods.

Dragon Ball Sparking! ZERO: 8/10

Thanks for reading! This was the review I was looking forward to writing the most, and I hope I did the game justice if you were either super hyped to read about it or on the fence about picking it up for yourself. 

If you want to hear more of my thoughts about Sparking! ZERO or the huge changes coming to the Halo franchise, the new episode of the Timesphere Podcast has both on YouTube and podcast services. If you want to keep up with my writing and other projects, please consider subscribing to the blog, following everything else I do, or sharing on other platforms. 

To wrap this up, I want to say rest in peace to the talented Gibert  “Doc Harris” Auchinleck, best known as the original Ocean dub narrator for Dragon Ball Z, who passed away today at the age of 76.