Let’s get straight to the point. Dragon Ball fans, you’re in for a treat with Dragon Ball: Spark! Zero. I sat down and played the game for about an hour at the 2024 Summer Game Fest earlier this month, and it was a pleasant surprise for me. A syrupy dessert made just for Dragon Ball taste buds. It’s the word “HYPE” with a capital H, screaming at you.
I, like everyone else present, was introduced to these features before trying out the battle mode. As such, I can only write down my first-hand impressions of the standard battle system, but regardless, I think the entire suite of modes looks fantastic. Story mode lets you sit back and quickly play through decades of Dragon Ball storylines, something we’ve seen before, but certainly not at this level of graphical fidelity. This game is stunning, constantly throwing bright colors and nostalgia at you.
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The team responsible for this game could have left it at that and players would probably have been satisfied, but the addition of alternate scenario endings (special non-canon storylines that players can choose voluntarily or unlock through combat performance) is really tempting. It’s an interesting way to solve a real problem with Dragon Ball games, one that goes back a long way in the series’ history. You can only watch the Frieza Saga so many times before it’s fun. Everyone knows what happens. But add a little fun, a little what-if, and suddenly there’s a whole new reason to do it.
You can even make your own little story segments! You can put any character into a custom scene and act out the battles of your childhood dreams. It even has a photo mode! This isn’t usually the kind of mode I spend a lot of time in, but I can understand its appeal to a subset of Dragon Ball fans who want to fiddle with the characters and build their own fan canon.
All of that is good, but it’s only as good as the core gameplay that holds it all together. If the combat is bad, then the game is bad. It doesn’t matter how good the presentation is. Thankfully, it’s great. We’re told that this game is a spiritual successor to the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai games, and while you could certainly look at the gameplay alone and see that as an obvious point of comparison, you Feel It also.
I never played a Budokai game as a kid, and didn’t try it until I was an adult, but I was blown away by the shameless fun it had. Sparking Zero has that same energy. It’s not some balanced PvP experience, and many of the key decisions other arena fighters make are thrown aside for the sake of staying true to the IP and the cool factor, and the game is all the better for it.
So you have three character slots for your team, right? You get to choose Goku, Vegeta, and… who cares, Mr. Satan. If you gather enough resources, you can perform a fusion dance–perfectly translated from the manga and anime–and create an even more powerful Gogeta. Yes, you can just choose Gogeta from character select without having to go through all that rigmarole, but screw you! That rigmarole is pretty cool!
In the version I played, Goku and Vegeta had a ton of variations (as you’d expect), but each one had different superpowers and special moves! The first character that came to mind was Broly – he has two levels of power-ups, and a wildly different move set depending on which form you’re in. It’s like candy, you just want more of it. If you have a favorite character, they’ll probably be in the launch version with all the fanservice you could want.
After watching a brief preview of Dragon Ball Spark Zero, I was blown away and, frankly, very excited. I still have a few unfulfilled wishes — for example, I wish there was an easy way to see which story endings you’ve unlocked, and that jumping back and collecting them all wouldn’t be too painful. I wish the online netcode was good so people could rip through the game without frustration. But barring some tragic misstep on launch day, I absolutely recommend this game to anyone interested in the series. For die-hard fans, book a week’s vacation.
