Ask any Dragon Ball fan, and they’ll likely mention the Budokai Tenkaichi series as the best depiction of 3D Dragon Ball fighters. Its Tournament Mode was only rivaled by its extensive cast and almost endless unlockables. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I collected those Dragon Balls in Budokai Tenkaichi 3. The experience and setup encourage replayability and the opportunity to create matchups legendary match-ups across the entire Dragon Ball timeline. The announcement of Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero marks the first entry in the series in 14 years. In that time, the fighting game community has evolved with titles like Dragon Ball Fighterz, Guilty Gear, Tekken, and Street Fighter, but the fans haven’t written off Budakai Tenkaichi just yet.
A Long-Awaited Return
During Play Days, I was able to spend some hands-on time with the game to see which new elements will be added and what we’ll see returning. When compared to other fighters, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero has a layer of strategy during each match-up, which changes from character to character. Alongside playing the game, we were able to interview Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero Jun Furutani where shared that fans will figure out that each character’s moveset is specific to that character. The way the characters each punch or use abilities is different in a way that makes playing them feel unique. He also shared that the team’s goal was to make this the most immersive Dragon Ball game to date, which is found during certain cinematics where the player can switch to a first-person view. I was able to see what it looks like to get a Kamehameha blast to the face, so I hope to see this feature utilized as much as possible in the full game.
One thing I will say is that the fights have an arcadey feel to the control scheme. As you land basic attacks, your goal is to find time to charge Ki or wait to for the ability gauge to fill up to unleash more powerful attacks. There’s a slight risk and reward to these instances, but some of the best moments occur when things like two blasts meet, and you have to break the opponent’s beam or when you blast an enemy and knock them through several buildings. Given that I was only able to play for about 20 minutes, I wasn’t able to master the controls, but I did watch a presentation where I got to see gameplay of the highest difficulty. While this is a game that has approachable elements, it’s still a fighter with depth.
Looking Forward
My hesitation comes with replayability. After 20 minutes with only a handful of characters in the Free Play mode, I was definitely wanting to play more involved modes. I wasn’t able to play through the story mode, but I imagine this is going to be a big draw factor for fans. One other inclusion is the 2-player local mode, which can only be accessed in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. I’m glad that they were able to include this setting since this was the way that I played it growing up.
There’s still a lot to see from Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, but it appears like Bandai Namco is putting its entire backing behind this project to make it a memorable return to the Tenkaichi series. There’s still plenty to work on, though. As more is revealed about the game, I’d really like to see how the team approaches gameplay modes and unlockables, but from what I’ve played so far, Dragon Ball fans have a lot to look forward to.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is releasing on October 11, 2024, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC via Steam.
