Since Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi’s last mainline entry, a lot has changed in terms of video games and how we play them. Dragon Ball: Sparking has a certain charm because it is the first direct sequel since the PlayStation 2 era! Zero’s outdated presentation and design in comparison to other combat games available now. It is more resilient than Vegeta’s breast armor and exhibits an inconvenient yet correct lore imbalance. There are confusing menus and infrequent, sporadic, and occasionally useless training tips. However, each combat is designed only to give us control over the Dragon Ball fighting fantasy as it is shown in the anime.
When responsiveness problems do not interfere, the fast-paced ki-slinging, teleport kicking, and magical hair dying are a lot of fun. The small areas were dazzling! Zero makes a sincere effort to innovate; its create-your-own combat toolbox and branching story mode are particularly noteworthy. However, there are moments when playing this brawler feels just as much like a labor of love as the initial attempt to bring the series back to life.
Compared to their more conventional counterparts like Tekken or Street Fighter, arena fighters do not share many similarities. They trade technical intricacy for spatial strategy, pairing complete 3D movement in mostly open settings with streamlined novelists, rather than having the fight take place on a horizontal plane. Tenkaichi set itself apart from other games in the same genre as Power Stone by increasing the speed, substituting large, explorable environmental features for throwable objects, and constructing a vast, open sky for fighting in open spaces.
This style of arena fighting has been taken up by other Dragon Ball games, such as the Xenoverse series. However, Tenkaichi has always been the more intense experience because it lacks stamina bars and has an abundance of flair. Both games capture the energy of Dragon Ball media, from how quickly characters can switch between melee and ranged combat in these large, beautiful spaces, to how quickly characters can move from air to ground combat. dazzling! Without a doubt, Zero continues that heritage.
It is impossible to dispute how amazing characters and settings appear, at least in still images. Every character from Dragon Ball looks better than I recall, regardless of when they originally appeared. Things become a little more unpredictable when in motion; certain cinematic animations, for example, seem strangely rigid. Overall, the sound quality is also satisfactory. The thunderous whooshes of Z Fighters flying at great speeds and the boisterous ki explosions booms are right from vintage TV shows. Pitch-perfect recreations of the majority of the series’ iconic voices are also provided by the original voice actors, which is a crucial aspect of doing properly. (However, in certain instances, like Perfect Cell, even a returning cast member can alter the way a line is delivered.) I had to search quickly on Google to be sure that getting older had not erased from my memory.
The incredibly large roster was another victory for my inner kid. There are around 180 playable fighters, many of which must first be unlocked through the shop or story modes. These fighters are drawn from every corner of the series. I was left wondering why the extremely few people who did not cut were left off of the roster because there are so many people from television series and films that I have not seen in a long time—or at all, in some cases. Not all of these characters are just reskins, though many of them are repeated in one way or another—Goku, for instance, has 19 different iterations. Base Goku from the Saiyan Invasion days has a distinct set of skills and a much lower upside than Buu Saga or Super-era Goku, who can transform into numerous technicolor forms of Super Saiyan. This is because they can have different special techniques and transformation trees. These are unchangeable, although I could equip each fighter with the ability goods to increase attack power and health, for example. Still, I did not feel like I was getting any better at all.
It is not uncommon for opponents who are canonically strong to be equally unjust.
All characters use the same controls, although some characters on the roster use the conventional systems in somewhat different ways than others, which is a welcome distinction. For instance, massive characters like Janemba cannot be captured, while Android characters cannot actively regain their ki to fire blast attacks. dazzling! Zero does not try to make up for these disparities either; each time I had to battle a character in the manga or anime who was canonically stronger than mine, the opponent was exactly as oppressive in-game as I would have expected. Although I did not always enjoy it, I appreciate the dedication.
Regretfully, it is complicated and frustrating to perform the numerous techniques of its diversified cast. Overall, inputs are straightforward, although in the beginning, when combat accelerated, I frequently felt bewildered. I must admit that I played this series’ last installment quite fervently, but that was immediately following Barack Obama’s election. Sparking! Zero’s brisk pacing in comparison to Tenkaichi 3 combined with a shoddy instructional system easily disqualified my 17-year-old reaction speed. Beyond that, though, I was pleading with Shenron for pity over things like the timing of nailing teleporting defenses or the different ways to use some of the directional rush combo enders.
The attempt to add some flavor to stories that have been repeated endlessly impressed me.
This obvious option is far simpler to carry out than the other, more common technique you are offered to change the course of events, which typically entails winning fights in particular ways to affect their results. It is not clear up front what requirements must be fulfilled to unlock these alternate stories, aside from the fact that—I must stress again—these fights can be extremely difficult because strong characters can virtually become immune to your normal attacks and will always have the ideal defense to match your offense. These unique activities are very much an endgame activity, but you can lessen the difficulty on a fight-by-fight basis if you truly need to advance. However, I did truly value the attempt to add some flavor to tales that have been repeated endlessly.
A custom battle exists halfway in between the WWE game’s Universe Mode and Mario Maker. These battles may resemble more of a puzzle than simply assembling digital action figures in fantastical scenarios thanks to a toolbox full of unique modifiers that restrict what characters can and cannot do in a given scenario and some triggers that help program particular outcomes after conditions are met. The conversation is pieced together abysmally to add a narrative, but its greatest achievement is to establish the fictional stakes.
The developer Spike Chunsoft created a good number of unique battles, although they do not truly challenge players’ creativity all that much. Some of them feature unique battle situations and requirements for winning, such as Kid Goku facing off against a Master Roshi who can only be defeated by the Kamehameha. However, I have not yet encountered an “a-ha!” creation that truly demonstrates to me this mode’s potential.
At least Sparking! Zero appears to alleviate the Tenkaichi curse of genuinely terrible online multiplayer by offering some good network gameplay. On the live servers, I experienced very little latency and lag when connected up—at least not enough to be the reason for me missing a parry or dropping a combo. For those who would prefer to battle it out in person, there is a local split-screen option, although it is sadly restricted to just one stage: the empty white space of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. The best way to play Sparking! Zero is still, by far, with actual people you can hit with a powerful power-up scream or a dramatic one-liner.
The online modes are quite simple, however the most engaging gameplay option is the DP combat. It limits your teams to five players by giving each player on the roster a point value, allowing you to share a maximum of 15 points among them. Because stronger characters are more expensive, you can either hope that a complete roster of less expensive characters, like Krillin and Yamcha, can overwhelm the opposition, or you can keep your squad small and full of pricey heavy hitters, like the hairy SSJ4 Saiyans or the Kais.
The early discount came at the risk of getting beat down before I could get my power up to speed, but I appreciated starting with a character’s cheaper base form knowing that with good play I could change them into the stronger forms over time. That additional strategic angle is not found anywhere else in the genre, and it makes excellent use of the unbalanced nature of many of these characters.
Verdict
Dragon Ball: Electrifying! The last vestige of the past, Zero occasionally goes too far in this regard, as evidenced by its outdated menus and remedial training aids. Its Episode Battles frequently straddle the boundary between demanding and annoying since they have a reaction-heavy complexity that is uncommon in modern games. However, it is a pleasant experience to step back in time to a simpler era when games were not necessary to be balanced or competitive to be enjoyable, particularly since the action is so faithful to the original show. Reliving a childhood favorite that sounds and looks exactly as I remember it, with the option to change it in unexpected and sometimes dramatic ways, is a clever idea. If a community can figure out how to make the most of the tools provided, the experiment could be elevated even further.
