Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero (2024)

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is possibly the greatest fighting game ever made. It greatly outperforms the previous one with its amazing graphics, multiple game modes, speedy gameplay, and unlockable characters—over 180 in total. It's one of those games that gets better the more you play. Unquestionably, Bandai Namco and Spike Chunsoff have created the ultimate fighting game. I’m having so much fun with Sparking Zero. It’s essentially everything I want in a Dragon Ball game. There’s more than enough content to keep you busy at launch, but it’s exciting to think about what Spike Chunsoft will add down the road.

Played some 40 hours of this. I really enjoyed when I began playing many months ago. Had some sense of achievement, like beating some hard bosses in Elden Ring. But then, as I progressed to other characters, the alternate routes became increasingly impossible to beat at my skill level. Conditions are too vague and too hard for an average player, which in my opinion defeats the purpose of unlocking content through story mode. Bandai patched things which were inconsequential to the story mode experience and looks like they made many fights absurdly hard. There were times in which I was getting beaten up up to 40-50 hits in a combo by the CPU character and when I managed to get a few hits in, the CPU would pull a counter out of nowhere.

So, yeah, I believe Bandai should really fix issues with difficulty in story mode and vagueness in stated conditions for alternate routes. I payed a lot of money for this game and I just spent some three hours trying to beat two fights. And I didn't manage to do it. I'm not having fun anymore with the game, so that's uninstalled for now. Maybe some time in the future Bandai patches these issues and it'll become enjoyable again.

Very fun. Probably the most fun 3D anime fighting game I've played (though I haven't played much aside from the Storm series). I mainly played the main story campaigns along with the what ifs present. The gameplay feels very tight and fun, and the visuals are incredible especially with HDR (plus the fanmade patch for it).

I will say I had a few gripes with it. The overall presentation of the story in the campaign feels kind of lackluster and bland. I prefer how Ninja Storm seems to present it more as if you had never experience it before. But I guess they were trying to fit a lot of different arcs here. The gameplay is also really really fast. Which I ended up getting used to and enjoying but could see others not really liking. Lastly some of those what ifs were incredibly annoying and honestly kind of unfun. The AI used for the enemies is very random, making them sometimes be incredible good at the game and sometimes not. Combining this with very tight time limits made so many of the what ifs just not fun, and added like 12 hours to my overall gameplay time for no reason.

Still this is a very fun game even with just the single player aspect. I'm sure for those who are more into the multiplayer online aspect, this will be really incredible.

Played it on PS5 and finished it after 32 hours. I finished all of story mode (episode battles) and the bonus battles. I unlocked all characters and all costumes available. I never really dabbled in online multiplayer, though.

My history with this game is somewhat of a rollercoaster. The game was super hyped online, and the reviews were so bombastic, that I got hyped as well. And so I went and bought the Ultimate edition. But after a while I realised the game did not live up to the hype. It is an ok, serviceable game, it’s not truly bad, but also not good.

The episode stories are very repetitive and often recycled, somewhat barebones, and some alternate route unlocking conditions are extremely annoying. The fighters all feel the same, and I adopted the same winning strategy with all of them: go into sparking mode, rush the enemy, do a melee combo, do a melee combo again, then use the sparking ultimate before it runs out. I copy pasted this strategy for 90% of battles, and this made the game feel somewhat boring and lacking. The enemy AI is super weird at times, too.

There are more than 100 characters – that’s what the marketing says – but many of them are just like 20 variants of Goku or Vegeta. And the customization is basically non-existent. The available costumes range from real costume changes – which I like – to “go from Vegeta in a suit to Vegeta in a suit with scratches on it”. So yeah, I am being quite critical, but indeed this game feels unfinished and somewhat unpolished.

Having bought all of the season passes already, I just hope that future updates will considerably improve the game. And I’m curious to play the story mode of those updates (if they feature a story mode). But, ultimately, playing this game just made me want to replay Xenoverse 2, so in that fact, I think that Xenoverse 2 – in spite of its flaws – is the way better game.

Very confused in the story. Battles are basically identical for different characters. Shallow. The arena is not very well-designed. Most of the characters are only the same character at different ages.

It might be good for the enthusiastic fans of the animation, but as a game itself, it's not very good.

Having some motion sickness and the mechanism of flying is not very meaningful. It doesn't add much fun. I finally understand why most fighting games are still 2D nowadays.

Well, I have to say... I have seen the complete roster and I am... impressed. Truly impressed. However, I'm a little worried because the roster have more fighter than they said, so... Maybe some of these characters are DLC? They are already in the game, so that would be inexcusable. Let's hope they are not.

Otherwise, the only problem would be the absence of local multi (one map is not enough), a truly important problem, BUT I can kinda forgive that if the roster is as good as it seems.

What we know until now:

The good:

• The gameplay looks promising.
• It looks awesome.
• Alternative stories look interesting.
• You can customize your characters appearance.
• Beerus and Toppo in a Tenkaichi game.

The bad:

• No DB, GT nor movies characters (that hurts)
• Local multiplayer is a shit (just the worst map)
• Shitty Super characters such as Brianne team or the female saiyans.

Since most of my time with fighting games comes from the local multi, I won't buy it until it get really cheap. Some things look promising, though.