Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero review

As someone who grew up with the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai trilogy and merely dabbled in the later Budokai Tenkaichi games, I'll admit that I was bitter when I first heard about Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. In my eyes the inferior trilogy of PS2 games was being brought back, and all I could do was sit and watch. And watch I did, as Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero soared in on a flying nimbus straight to the top of the Dragon Ball game totem pole. 

While Dragon Ball games were mainly 2D fighters up through Budokai,  Tenkaichi (aka Sparking in Japan) was the first game to really depict the fights like the anime series, turning the arena into an open zone rather than a typical fighting game side-on view. This meant there was an entire new layer to the combat as you flew around dealing with altitude and fully 3D movement, positioning, and a lot of punching each other through mountains

In the 17 years since Tenkaichi 3, countless Dragon Ball games have attempted to recapture this same essence. None of them have. They've ranged from okay to terrible. Thankfully, Sparking! Zero this isn't a Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 moment; it nails the feeling of those PS2 classics. I felt right at home playing it all day, like I was 12 again and only taking breaks to watch a Vegeta x Papa Roach Last Resort AMV on YouTube. 

The combat is as bonkers as it's ever been. While not deep in the way of Street Fighter or Tekken—you won't be memorising lengthy combo inputs or attack frame data and will mostly be mashing square and triangle—it is mechanically complex. As you fight you'll need to deal with movement, teleporting, charging up your ki, and triggering transformations. Once I got into that flow it was hard to resist getting hyped up as I smacked around series villain Frieza and blasted him to bits with the kind of ultimate move that rewarded me with a flashy, over-the-top animation.

It's a lot to take in, sometimes even overwhelming, and Sparking! Zero's tutorial isn't the most intuitive.  There is a menu full of deeper training scenarios, but using it is a pain as you need to manually exit each lesson and navigate to the next. All the info is in there, but it could've been presented in a far more engaging way that didn't add tedium to an already steep learning curve. Menu navigation in general is a bit rough. While the main menu's animations—which see Goku fly about to visit groups of characters—are a cute detail, they add a delay between transitions.And the character select screen can be a nightmare to navigate. 

The biggest draw of the Budokai Tenkaichi games was always the gigantic roster; If you want to have afro-headed human comic relief Mr. Satan face off against Goku's dad or the literal God of Destruction, you totally could. And Sparking! Zero's roster of 182 lives up to that. There are a lot of shared movesets (29 character slots are Goku-adjacent), but the voice lines and special abilities are unique to each character. That number includes a lot of specific forms, so while Goku (Super) can transform into Super Saiyan Blue Goku, it still counts as one of the 182 on its own. But there are still great, unexpected picks and rarely seen characters from the movies like Turles (basically Evil Goku), anime filler-arc fighters like Garlic Jr., and even reps from the unloved non-canon sequel GT like Baby, a  parasitic alien who takes over Vegeta's body for a hot minute. 

The story mode lets you follow one of eight fighters through Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super (covering the main four arcs and canon films from Z, and only the later Future Trunks / Tournament of Power Arcs from Super). Outside of Goku these aren't all-encompassing (Gohan starts at the Cell saga and others only appear for some arcs). You know what to expect if you've seen the show or played the games before, but Sparking! Zero's take shine with the inclusion of what-if scenarios instead of staid retellings. 

If you deviate from the main story (let's say by having Goku defeat his brother Raditz without dying), you will be thrust into a 'Sparking Episode' which tells an alternate storyline, like one where Goku awakens to his Super Saiyan powers while fighting Vegeta instead of later. A highlight has Gohan defeating Super-era Golden Frieza, which leads to major villain Zamasu becoming Gohan Black instead of Goku Black (another version of Evil Goku) in Trunks' future. For those just joining us, just know I've had 20+ years of games telling the same storylines, so being able to make an impact on them this time around is a big plus. These deviations turn it from a solid recreation of the saga to a must-play mode for Dragon Ball fans. Plus, there are short 'oh hey, you won' cutscenes variants when you win a fight you're not meant to that serve as little alternate timeline snacks.

Bonus episodes allow you to take on curated challenges like Mr. Satan taking on all the (canonically vastly more powerful) Z Fighters. There are 30 pre-made ones, but you're able to go in and create your own scenarios and post them online. While there are limitations, like being relegated to slotting words into pre-written sentences instead of writing your own dialogue, it's a cool little system whose full potential won't be seen for a while. 

Despite these fun narrative side stories, Sparking! Zero does fall into the same pitfall every Dragon Ball game does in that it's too focused on Dragon Ball Z. Obviously Z is the most popular, but given Dragon Ball Super and multiple movies happened in the time since the last entry, it would've been nice if it leaned more contemporary. And the original Dragon Ball series is relegated to Kid Goku only, which is a massive shame, as it would've been fun to see the likes of mercenary Tao Pai Pai (who was bested by a child Goku) come to terms with 30 years of anime power scaling and take on someone like Super's ultimate antagonist Jiren. 

Despite the frenetic pace of battles,  and the large arenas, the game ran perfectly at 1440p/60fps on high settings for me and feels extremely well optimised. Although I haven't been able to get the game to launch on Steam Deck at all, hopefully something that gets sorted with the day one patch. I've also only been able to test the online very briefly, but so far it seems to hold up well in the same region, although it did struggle at times. 

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is the new benchmark for Dragon Ball games. It captures the magic of the original Tenkaichi games perfectly, while the fresh approach to the well-worn story and its deep roster of characters serve as the ultimate celebration of Akira Toriyama's classic (at least for now). When it's the pure Dragon Ball millions know and love, it's great; when it dabbles in what ifs with the Sparking Episodes, Zero really excels.