Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero review: "The pinnacle of fanservice"

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is exactly what you make of it. Growing up, my prized possession was a tub of action figures – a ragtag assortment of hard plastic G.I. Joes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and X-Men handed down from older cousins – I used to dump out on the floor at play time. Some of my "dudes," as my family sometimes called them, might have been more elaborate or better quality than others, but imagination trumped everything. Similarly, how much fun someone has with Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero will ultimately be determined by how creative they're determined to get with its gigantic collection of toys.

The fourth mainline installment of the previously dormant Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series, its surprise reveal came during last year’s Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour finals. But don't get this long-awaited sequel confused with the likes of Dragon Ball FighterZ and its high-level tournament brethren. Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is a decidedly unbalanced affair focused more on fanservice and spectacle, a mission statement made explicit with its massive playable cast of various Gokus, Gohans, and Vegetas, all of which are lovingly crafted with details large and small from the source material but would no doubt be a nightmare to develop for competitive viability.

With over 180 fighters from which to choose, Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero provides the most expansive range of characters the series has ever seen. Just about anyone a diehard fan might expect is here, pulled from every era of the Dragon Ball franchise to date. Curious how the young, relatively weak heroes from the original Dragon Ball might fare against the universe-shattering antagonists defeated at the end of Dragon Ball Super? Or maybe you'd like to shake up canon by introducing the fan favorites of Dragon Ball Z to their future counterparts in the discarded Dragon Ball GT timeline? It's not always pretty thanks to the wildly different power levels between these series, but Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero allows for all that and more.

Rock The Dragon

That said, you won't get anywhere without first learning the basics of combat. Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is surprisingly deep on a mechanical level, featuring a wide variety of attacks, counters, and movement options with which to replicate the fast-paced martial arts that serve as the foundation of the manga and anime series. However, the amount of information the tutorial throws at you – broken up into beginner, intermediate, and advanced lessons – is rather overwhelming at first, not to mention almost impossible to recall in the heat of battle without a decent amount of conditioning.

While simple combos can be performed by rapidly pressing the basic attack button, the sheer number of defensive options means this tactic will almost always be interrupted, parried, and counter-attacked by even the simplest CPU opponents. Achieving success in moment-to-moment exchanges and eventually winning battles in Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero revolves around careful, strategic use of three core mechanics: ki charges, blasts, and skills.

Ki charges are performed by holding down a trigger, and see characters stand in place to build up their energy meter, which is then used to perform powerful blast attacks – think Street Fighter's supers. Skills, on the other hand, rely on a separate meter that builds automatically over the course of battle, giving a maximum of six points for using on unique techniques.

Majin Buu, for example, can spend these points to stop an opponent in their tracks with Paralyze Beam or Sleep, regaining a big chunk of health in the process. Combine both skill points and ki charges to go beyond your limits, though, and you’ll enter Sparking Mode where you can use ki-powered moves for free and unleash each fighters’ devastating and cinematic Ultimate Blast technique.

All these mechanics combine to give Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero an excellent sense of momentum. Characters zip around the massive stages, crashing into one another in the blink of an eye to trade skull-crushing blows before separating again to cautiously build towards more powerful attacks. It's a joy to watch thanks to the game's dedication to replicating the late Akira Toriyama's distinct art style in Unreal Engine 5, but gameplay becomes a little rote as it codifies.

Rather than struggle with the ins and outs of hand-to-hand combat, I found it easier to simply put distance between me and my enemy, ki charge as much as possible, wait until I had enough resources to enter Sparking Mode, perform a short combo into my character's Ultimate Blast, and repeat. While human opponents will likely be more engaging, this cyclical strategy was enough to complete every single-player challenge the game threw my way. Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero never asked more of me, so I was never compelled to diversify my tactics or really improve at all.

Kamehameh-à la mode

The real meat of Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero – apart from the mountain of playable characters, of course – lies within the Episode and Custom Battle modes.

Episode Battle allows you to select one character from a limited roster and relive their biggest fights from Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super. Your actions can even alter major canon events. In Vegeta's story, for instance, choosing to shake off Babidi's mind control during the Majin Buu Saga spoils the weird little goblin wizard's plans entirely, leading to a future where the eponymous pink menace is never revived and everyone kind of just gets on with their lives.

None of these scenarios are all that noteworthy beyond surface-level "what if?" thought experiments, but they do provide a fun diversion from the well-trod official narrative (not to mention more opportunities to earn in-game currency for purchasing new characters and outfits).

Custom Battle, on the other hand, allows the imagination of a Dragon Ball fan like myself to run riot. Here you can pit any of the 182 characters against one another, mixed and matched in one-on-one bouts or up to five-on-five in team duels. Special effects can determine the conditions that cause a particular combatant to transform or swap places with a teammate. Players can also build custom intros and outros to explain why their chosen characters are duking it out using a variety of pre-built scenes and dialogue options. While there are constraints, more than likely to avoid pushing the game past its soft Teen rating from the ESRB, the level of customization on display is still impressive.

Uploading your creations for folks to play online, however, first requires completing them yourself, Super Mario Maker-style. I'm still struggling to get my scenario where chubby samurai Yajirobe earns a spot on Dragon Ball Super's Team Universe 7 by beating up Ultra Instinct Goku, Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Vegeta, Ultimate Gohan, Golden Frieza, and Android 17 through this process, but one of these days, my beautiful vision will be shared with the world.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is the pinnacle of fanservice. Its radically inclusive cast means diehards can look forward to playing with at least one of their favorite characters – unless they really like, I don't know, King Piccolo's son Tambourine or someone equally forgettable – and the Custom Battle mode should provide hours upon hours of creative fulfillment after finishing everything else the game has to offer. I haven't kept up with Dragon Ball since the days of afternoon Toonami reruns, but more than once I found myself simply lingering on the main menu and watching my old friends interact. The care the developers took towards adapting this beloved franchise shines through in every punch, kick, and energy blast, and it's this respect for the source material that, at the end of the day, makes many of Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero's shortcomings easy to overlook.