I don’t think any IP is as experienced at celebrating itself as Dragon Ball. We’ve watched game after game, looking back fondly on Frieza Saga, Cell Saga… We’ve watched game after game, retelling time and time again. I admit, it got tiring after a while and I was worried about sparks at first! Zero equals the same. It seems I was very wrong. Dragon Ball: Sparks fly! Zero becomes less of a narrow nostalgia trap and more of a festival dedicated to the series’ earliest moments and more recent climaxes.
Dragon Ball: Sparks fly! Zero is the latest entry in Bandai Namco’s brilliant 3D arena fighting series, which you may remember had a huge fanbase back in the days of the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series. The game isn’t so much a spiritual successor to the series as it is a muscle-bound relative discovered years later on a distant planet. It has the same underpinnings but will be released in 2024 with all the graphics quality and online infrastructure available that year.
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This is the core gameplay of “Dragon Ball: Spark”! “Zero” is every bit as funny and shocking as you might imagine. The animation seems to perfectly recreate anime scenes or manga panels. There are up to 11 super moves, with tons of special lighting effects and additional dedicated animations that practically light up the screen. Sparks fly! Zero understands the most basic lesson of the great Dragon Ball games of the past: you can’t just look
The character list is so vast that it borders on silly. But each character is crafted with such attention to detail that it’s so clear it pops off my monitor like braille – you can feel it! It’s an imbalanced thing and you see that as a negative quality, right? However, respect for the original material is crucial. Don’t expect Mr. Satan to stand up to Broly. You can give it a try though, and everything is so well made it’s a lot of fun if nothing else. Balance on the altar of some nebulous, competitive future in Sparking! Zero is just stupid and I’m glad Bandai Namco put entertainment first.
The core of the game comes from a selection of single-player journeys within the Dragon Ball story, told from the perspective of various characters throughout Dragon Ball’s history, such as Goku and Vegeta. What’s special about this game, besides its vast scope, is that you can unlock different outcomes through narrative choices or impressive combat performance. There’s a lot to play here, and while most players tend not to replay games these days, Sparking! Zero gives you a tempting reason to do so. It’s so exciting to dig into old levels, choose different paths for your characters, and see how things develop.
This is a clever gimmick from Sparking! zero. Dragon Ball fans’ imaginations have been running wild for decades. “Can this character beat this?” “What if Goku asked Piccolo to kick rocks early on?” Capitalizing on the fanbase’s love of speculating and hypothesizing about ability levels is a perfect fit for the Dragon Ball IP. I think the creators of the Dragon Ball games may have been trying to give long-time fans something to sink their teeth into, in addition to higher quality retrospectives over the years. This is a refreshing shift that Dragon Ball fans should enjoy.
Once you’re done, there’s online matchmaking, and the netcode is pretty good based on what I tested (although, I didn’t get a chance to play Transatlantic, so it might crash in that case), which is a nice The secret of time. I can play Trunks online with a six-pack of just about any drink and have a great night.
As for the cons… I think the game needs a more comprehensive tutorial from the beginning. It throws controls and a bunch of defense mechanics at you, but the player doesn’t learn much about how the game actually works. For example, when an opponent blocks, it tells you that a slow, punishable charged attack can break through. But loot can do this, too, and the game doesn’t even mention them at the beginning. You have to figure it out. Additionally, the camera can sometimes be an obstacle, especially at close range. Sparks fly! Zero, at the worst moments, can be a jumble of audio/visual noise as your eyes scramble to figure out what’s going on.
Dragon Ball: Sparks fly! Zero is funny and, as one could hope, a meaningful satire of the source material. I spent some time in training mode, popping up the supers and comparing them to old anime episodes, and smiled to myself when it matched perfectly. But moving on from what happened in Dragon Ball Can Already happening, this game manages to make the original story even sweeter. Dragon Ball: Sparks fly! “Zero” is a festival to commemorate Goku, and it is also a must-buy for old fans of Akira Toriyama’s works.
The game was reviewed on PS5 using a code provided by the publisher. Will be released on PS5, Xbox Series X and PC on October 11
