PS5

Published on October 8th, 2024 | by Nay Clark

DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO Review (PS5)

Journey to the West to be worthy of the best in the newest entry in the Tenkaichi franchise in 17 years! DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO is an action fighting game developed by Spike Chunsoft, published by BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment, and released on October 11th of 2024. Sparking! ZERO follows suit in providing exhilarating high speed battles while also introducing new gameplay mechanics that keeps the intensity rolling faster and new modes that bestow countless hours of flashy entertainment. The game has over 180 characters to master, including characters from Dragon Ball Super, and with them you can battle in online or offline multiplayer tournaments, play through the extensive cinematic story mode, or even create your own scenarios between friends and rivals across the Dragon Ball series. Experience all of this and more in this thrilling, animated, and compelling extravaganza!

Right off the bat, the game feels special. Jumping into the energetic menus feels like a celebration of this brand and the legacy of these iconic characters. The music is triumphant and the snazzy transitions between screens beams with flair. It exudes a true return to form attitude that reels me back to my childhood of playing these Dragon Ball games for countless hours. It’s a great sense of familiar nostalgia that Dragon Ball fans have been yearning for and this sentimental achievement gets embedded in only a matter of seconds after making it past the title screen.

The story mode in DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO, Episode Battle, is extensive and impressive. There are multiple characters that you can choose from and after selecting them, you will play through some of their most iconic battles from the anime. The mode is designed as photographic memories that have static scenes, small interactive cutscenes, and more intricate cutscenes between well known battles such as Goku vs. Frieza on Namek. There is a small map with different nodes indicating a cutscene or a battle with lines that follow that shows the outcome into the next stage, chapter, or saga. Some nodes may have a branching path which leads into one of Sparking! ZERO’s more enticing elements, Sparking! EPISODE. 

Some missions in the story mode will let you branch off into “what-if” scenarios if you choose a certain option or fulfill a particular battle requirement. A Sparking! EPISODE is an alternative road that leads to either an extra cutscene or a full blown chapter of events and battles after taking the different path. It’s a neat way to expand the universe and possibly settle some fan theories. For example, an early aside you can take in Goku’s storyline is if instead of going to fight Raditz with just Piccolo, what if all the other Z Fighters came along for combat support and what could that possibly mean for future threats? A lot of these are actually pretty surprising and I was always excited to go off the beaten path.

The game is easy to pick up and play, but hard to master. There is a lot to learn here and it’s a bit more complex than past Dragon Ball fighting games only because there are so much more intricate things you can do now. Going through training mode is a bit daunting at first, but once you start to understand how the gameplay systems play into each other then you will be blown away about how they can evolutionize a Dragon Ball game into even more of a Dragon Ball game. There are revenge counters, counters to counters, throws, counter throws, energy blasts and different ways to deflect them, short dashes, super moves, beam clashes, transformations, different ways to recover in the air, off of walls, and on the ground. There are a lot of new additions to make combat faster, flashier, and feel like the ultimate Dragon Ball experience.

Combat sees you and your opponent in a 3D battle arena where you can freely run, fly, and swim across. Some of these spaces are huge and thanks to the spacious playing field as well as the incredibly destructive environment, you or your opponent can lose track of each other at points; which you can easily use to your advantage. You can boost your character around at breakneck speeds or sometimes instantaneously appear right next to your contender to unleash a barrage of surprise attacks and energy volleys. The HUD is simple and clean and displays your Health, Ki, and Skill gauges. Whoever’s health completely depletes first loses, Ki determines how much blasts and energy you can unleash, and the Skill gauge is tied to your different moves.

Every Super Attack you use will expend your Ki gauge. Ki gradually restores slowly during combat or you can charge up to replenish it faster, but that leaves you vulnerable and open for an attack. The Skill gauge gradually grows over time and you can spend this recharging resource to initiate special actions like power ups, fusing, and triggering Sparking Mode. Continuously charging your Ki after it is filled will create another meter and filling this meter puts you in Sparking Mode. The weather changes and sparks fly as you swing harder and faster. In Sparking Mode, you can unleash your Ultimate Attack like the Super Explosive Wave from Trunks or Vegito’s Final Kamehameha which is always a sight to behold.

The gameplay in DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO can be lightning fast and extraordinarily dynamic. This is the closest Dragon Ball game that we have got to actually looking like the fights from the anime. While the basics will mostly get you through any fight, you will have to increase your battle prowess and absorb all the intricacies of the combat mechanics if you want to go up against players online. A barrage of punches and kicks can send the opposition flying across the map in which you can chase their flying body and bombard them with even more attacks that they can dodge or counter then you can instant transmission behind them and throw them through a mountain before blasting a wave of energy down into their body. It’s insane how fast paced these matches can be and you will never get tired of the adrenaline coursing through your veins. On top of all that, each character plays differently so it’s fun to figure out whose style you like best and build up a team of your favorite characters to rule the world of Dragon Ball.

Besides the main Episode Battle mode there are more modes you can engage with. Bonus Battles are premade scenarios that have their own set of rules. They are sort of mini challenges that you can try to complete that are built around a fun situation. Custom Battles are where you can create your very own Bonus Battle. You can put a character in any situation and come up with dialogue you want them to say. This mode is really creative and there is a considerable amount you can play with here like lighting effects or special winning or losing cutscenes depending on certain conditions played out in the actual battle you create. You can then save and upload your creation for others to play. In World Library, you can find other player created Custom Battles to play and gain inspiration from to possibly create something even more wilder.

There is a Battle Mode which is just a straight up match where you can select a team of fighters and choose a stage to play on. Super Training will teach you all the ins and outs of the gameplay. World Tournament is a tournament style gameplay mode where you fight battle after battle to go up the ranks to become the champion. Zen-Oh has orders for you to carry out and Whis has a stamp book for you to complete. These are like bonus objectives that you can do in fights or simply playing different modes to earn rewards. There is a shop to buy items and a place where you can customize your characters with different accessories, items, outfits, or taunts. There is also a gallery where Bulma, Chi-Chi, and Videl will tell you about all of the different characters, you can watch cutscenes or previously saved battles, and you can also view your personal player data.

Participating in all of these modes is vital in unlocking as much as you can. To leveling up your Player Level, increasing character proficiency, obtaining Dragon Balls to summon one of the three giant dragons that can grant you a wish, earning new characters, acquiring new titles or emblem pictures for your online title card, or reaping Zeni to spend on characters, outfits, music, and buffs for characters. There is so much you can do in DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO and the game makes sure you are always being rewarded. Some things like characters, you can only unlock by meeting certain requirements like completing a branching path in someone’s storyline, but if you have enough Zeni, you can just outright buy them in the shop if you want to.

Graphically, the game looks astounding. The wisps of energy swirling a character as they power up feel magical with wind and particle effects swirling around. The anime style looks smooth and perfect in game form. Bright colors pop and the cel shading looks better than ever. Dust clouds and rubble all look amazing and really gets you immersed into this magical atmosphere. The sound design is consistent with what you would expect for anything evolving Dragon Ball and while that may sound pretty boring overall, it does a decent job here at keeping the energy of the matches up. The quick zips and dash noises make you feel as light as a feather and you can really feel the blow behind charging up an attack. The soundtrack is undefeated with blaring trumpets that roar and get you pumped to overcome your villain. There are also some more comical tunes in here that I appreciated and used in my Custom Battles.

At some points, I did notice that characters’ facial expressions and animations were a little too stilted. Some points were obvious deliberate decisions just purely based off of adapting the anime style correctly, but sometimes it gets too jarring and odd looking. Another similar thing that happens is that you can basically over strain some bouts during fights and have to stay still in a “staggered” state until you fully recover. During a few instances where this happened to my opponent, no matter what I did, they just wouldn’t get back up; which made it super easy to just keep on blasting them until I won. At the character selection during something like World Tournament for example, the characters’ hair flops around in a goofy manner. Hair sort of billows back and forth excessively as if it’s underwater, it doesn’t look natural. With how fast the game runs, sometimes there are questionable things that feel too slow. In Super Training, after finishing and mastering a technique, you have to press a couple of buttons to go back to the training menu. This prompt takes a while to pop up and can be quite annoying when you want to quickly learn something else. Losing battles can be aggravating, but the time it takes for the screen to fade to the short cutscene of the other character residing over you to finally be able to pick if you want to retry or not feels exceptionally too long. It’s better to just pause during combat and restart if you think you are going to lose instead of anxiously waiting to jump back into the fray. The game can also have some wonky camera problems so expect some environment clipping here and there if you are messing around a number of different structures.

 I did enjoy the unique conversations before battles like if you get Bardock and Goku to fight each other, they will have distinctive dialogue that’s pretty entertaining. During some cutscenes in Episode Battle, you can switch the camera to a first-person mode which I thought was a fun addition and can enrich some scenes in a clever way. Also during tournaments, if a character does a big damaging blast, all of the people will run out of the stadium. I thought that was amusing. As someone who loves playing games alone for the most part, there is a lot of single player content here besides the obvious online and multiplayer components. Even without comparing or contrasting this game to past Dragon Ball games, it stands tall on its own by providing a myriad of content, phenomenal replayability, and immense fun with even more on the way in the game’s upcoming Season Pass.

Final Thoughts?

While yes, this is just another Dragon Ball game, it stands in line with the best of the best in style, presentation, graphics, sound design, gameplay, and content. It is surprising how polished DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO actually is. Besides the sheer amount of things to do from the long story mode, bonus battles, and achievements you can strive for, the sophistication with the combat is fun to master and the actual gameplay feels buttery smooth thanks to new and improved systems. Even though a lot of the 181 characters are a bunch of different versions of the same character, there’s plenty of variety in the selection right from the start. DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO is the perfect welcoming back into the franchise. Thanks Shenron! My wish has been granted!

About the Author

Nay Clark Gaming holds a special place in my heart and I never stop talking about video games. I really love all types of games and have an interest in games that have complicated stories and lore because I enjoy untangling the mystery of it all. When I'm not gaming, I unsuccessfully try to control three amazing and incredibly bright kids.

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