Dragon Ball’s power and influence can not be contained in one type of media. Goku and the series’ iconic Dragon Balls are prolific in manga, television, film, and more. On the video game front, we’ve had plenty of Dragon Ball games over the years, too. The past few iterations of 3D Dragon Ball games have put large-scale and hectic fighting to the back burner a bit, which were more candidly present in the Budokai Tenkaichi series.
Now with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero on the horizon, developer Spike Chunsoft is going full force to bring new energy to the Budokai Tenkaichi series with the next iteration of its 3D arena fighter. After playing a three-hour demo, which took me through several modes, I’m finding that Sparking! Zero really emboldens what some of the 3D Dragon Ball games have been missing for a bit: powerful characters with absolutely busted power levels.
Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero is primarily focused on creating and showcasing the massive world-destroying bouts the anime series is known for. But rather than shying away from that strength by selectively making a cast of a few “balanced” characters, Sparking! goes all out and asks, “Why not include more than 180 characters with demonstrably different power levels just for fun?”
Train with me
Rather than being enticed to dive headfirst into CPU battles with the massive cast, I’d actually have to learn how to play the game first. Super Training seemed like the best place to start. Playing as an Adult Gohan, Piccolo taught me the basics of movement, Ki, energy blasts, special moves, and more. Most of this seemed simple enough, but the challenge escalated quickly.
Skill Count is one of the core pieces of Sparking! Zero’s fight system. It’s expressed as a blue bar that charges over time and allows players to expend a certain number of energy for skills like Super Perception or Revenge Counters. Transformations and fusions are achieved through this system. It enables strategy and player choice in every bout. Would you rather save your energy to pull off Revenge Counters and gain the upper hand to stop an opponent’s ravenous onslaught, increase your attack or defense stats for a short period of time, or pull off a quick transformation?
Throughout my demo session, I found myself mainly saving the Skill Count for Revenge Counters. Though they would cost two bars of Skill Count, I’d always be able to stop my opponent in their tracks with a successful counterattack. There is an innate strategy involved and the choice you make in a match is dire, since whatever you decide to use your Skill Count bars for can make or break a fight.
After getting a bit more than the basics down in Super Training, I think I was solidly ready enough to forgo the rest of the training missions from Piccolo for the time being. I had a good grasp of the mechanics and systems.
Fighting dreams
After learning the ropes, I was eager to get into the hectic action the series is known for. I pushed forward to the Player vs. CPU battle options. I was immediately stunned by seeing the monstrous character roster firsthand. It has rows upon rows of familiar characters, forms, transformations, and fusions. Goku and Vegeta have more than a dozen slots to themselves each due to being mainstays in the series proper. That’s how deep it goes.
I even find characters that only made an appearance in a fight or two before dying at the hands of Goku, like Raditz or the Ginyu Force. Though I have not sat down properly to watch Dragon Ball Super, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I had the option to play as newer Saiyans introduced in the series, like Cale and Caulifla alongside their fusion Kefla.
I could choose up to five characters for my team, so I put together a dream squad: Super Saiyan 4 Goku, Uub, Caulifla, Kale, and Kefla. Sparking! Zero allows for those kinds of all-encompassing fantasy mash-ups thanks to its enormous roster — so long as you’re not looking for characters or their variations before the Z iteration in the West. Even with the game releasing in a few short weeks, Spike Chunsoft still has plans to add even more characters down the line, according to producer Jun Furutani.
“We have plans for characters from Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, the movie, as well as [Dragon Ball] Daima, totaling over 20 characters in three batches of DLC,” Furutani tells Digital Trends.
The controls are very different from most 3D anime fighters I’m familiar with, like the Naruto Storm series. Holding the triggers opens access to different moves and skills, which I was still trying to remember throughout my play session. For the demo, I stuck to the basics to defeat my enemies.
The freedom of movement and scale of fights had me in awe. I found myself fighting underwater and blasting my opponent away into breakable objects such as boulders, trees, and small hills. I could fight and rush down an opponent in a wide variety of iconic locales at different times of the day, too. West City is especially striking in both the day and night variations.
There are several modes where players can test their skills. Bonus Battles require me to play out specific scenarios like fighting Beerus by using Vegeta. Custom Battles let me create my very own stories and climactic fights by choosing titles, music, stances, cut-ins, and more. There were quite a few already-made Bonus Battles in the demo build I tried. One tasked me with winning against a team solely composed of Solar Flare users. Bonus Battles task players with using a set of fixed fighters, often against characters that do not get as much of a spotlight in the series as the mainstay regulars. These fights break up any potential monotony by challenging you to try characters you may be unfamiliar with. Maybe you’ll discover a character you never knew about that becomes a favorite — that’s bound to happen in a roster with more than 180 characters.
Any time I was hit by a Solar Flare in the fight, the screen turned into static, grayed out, and completely obstructed my vision. Throughout this fight, I squinted my eyes any time I was on the receiving end of a Solar Flare. It was frustrating, but in all the right ways.
I dabbled a bit in World Tournament mode too, which has its own twist. Rather than depleting my opponent’s life to win, I need to knock them out of the ring. I can’t say that I lasted long in those fights, but the mode shows off how battles can be won without brute force. Maintaining discipline and having a strong knowledge of the battlefield can be just as important as pure skill.
Episode Battles: Goku
In the final hour of the demo, I got to play through Episode Battles. This mode allows players to reminisce by reenacting seminal brawls in the Dragon Ball universe. Outside of Goku and Freeza, there are also Episode Battles letting you see different points of view of the overarching stories/sagas and control pivotal characters like Jiren or Trunks in their own (Dragon Ball Super) narratives.
The first took me through Goku’s journey at the start of the Saiyan Saga. It’s a story that has been told many times in Dragon Ball games with Goku’s long lost brother Raditz telling Goku he is an alien from another planet before kidnapping a toddler Gohan. I fought Raditz near Kame House, but I ended up losing (staying true to the source material). After that loss, Piccolo showed up to lend aid, and I was given a diverging path. I could work with him or go it alone. I chose to team up, but had I not then Krillin and Master Roshi would join me in the upcoming Raditz battle instead. That idea gives players incentive to jump into Episode Battles multiple times to see all the ways they can play out.
Now using both Goku and Piccolo, I faced Raditz before the story played out as it does in the anime. Further along Goku’s episodes, I had to fight Great Ape Vegeta, a much larger opponent. It was a surprisingly tough battle even on normal difficulty. I retried a few times, even getting a notification asking if I wanted to dial down the difficulty. I declined and tried to fight on, but could not beat Great Ape Vegeta in the time I had. The challenges are real.
Episode Battles: Freeza
From there, I jumped into Freeza’s Episode Battle. It began on Namek and had me playing as Freeza with my first fight being against the trio of Krillin, Gohan, and Piccolo on Namek. Freeza’s playstyle is brutal; I honestly felt bad for Gohan as I pummeled him. Like the Goku Episode’s Great Ape Vegeta battle, fighting three characters with only one — even one as powerful as Freeza — is quite a challenge. Once again, I couldn’t best them by the time my demo was over. I’ll have to spend more time learning the complexities of the combat system to get it done.
Even if I lost, I still found myself marvelling at how spectacular all these fights look. I had played Dragon Ball: Budokai back in the day, but my interest never really extended beyond many of the series’ 3D fighting games. Here, I was constantly impressed by how gorgeous, meticulously detailed, and extravagant this game looks on the PlayStation 5. Furutani gives credit to the current generation of consoles for letting the team fully realize its vision for a proper Dragon Ball game.
“With this game with the graphics prowess happening recently with the next-gen consoles, we were really able to take the graphics side of things to the next level and very freely control your characters in this game,” Furutani says. “It’s a very immersive experience, weather changes in these stages. You are able to destroy things. I think it’s like the next level of anime games compared to what may have come out in the past because of the tools that we have now.”
After the three hours I spent with Sparking! Zero, I couldn’t wait to jump back in. I don’t know the last time I had such a desire to dig into a 3D fighting game — especially one in the Dragon Ball series. Hopefully, I’ll be able to bump my own power levels up once I get more time with the final release.
You’re on notice, Great Ape Vegeta.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero launches on October 11 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
