Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero review: as meaningful a send-up to the source material as one could hope for
A sweet drink that'll quench the thirst of any and all Dragon Ball fans.
I don't think there's an IP out there as experienced in celebrating itself as Dragon Ball. We've seen game after game look back fondly at the Frieza Saga, the Cell Saga... We've seen recreation after recreation, retelling after retelling. I will admit that it got tiring after a while, and I was worried at first that Sparking! Zero would amount to the same. I was, it seems, quite wrong. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is less of a narrow nostalgia trap, and more of a festival dedicated to the series' earliest moments and recent climaxes.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is the latest in a glorious line of 3D arena fighters from Bandai Namco, which you may remember had a thriving fanbase of its own back in the day with the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series. This game is less of a spiritual successor to that series as it is a muscle-bound relative found years later on a distant planet. It's got the same foundations, but releasing in 2024 with all the graphical quality and online infrastructure the year provides.
As such, the core gameplay of Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is as fun and outrageous as you'd expect. Animations seemingly perfectly recreating anime scenes or manga panels. Super moves are turned up to 11, practically glowing off your screen with heaps of special lighting effects and dedicated animations attached to them. Sparking! Zero understands the most fundamental lesson of the great Dragon Ball games of the past: you can't just look powerful, you must feel powerful.
The character list is massive, bordering on silly. But each character is made with attention to detail and care so clear it stuck out from my monitor like braille - you can feel it! It's an unbalanced affair, which you'd think would be a negative quality right? But, the reverence for the source material is paramount. Don't expect Mr. Satan to hold his own against Broly. You can try though, and with everything being so well-made, it'll be a laugh if nothing else. Holding up balance at the altar of some vague, competitive future for Sparking! Zero would have been daft, and I'm glad Bandai Namco put entertainment first.
The meat of the game comes from a selection of single player journeys through the Dragon Ball story, told from the perspective of different characters - like Goku and Vegeta - from throughout the entire history of Dragon Ball. What's special about this game, aside from its vast scope, is alternate outcomes you can unlock through narrative choices or impressive performance in combat. There's a lot to play through here, and while the majority of players tend not to replay games these days, Sparking! Zero gives you a tantalizing reason to do so. It was damn exciting digging through old levels, choosing different paths for the characters and seeing how things play out.
It's a smart gimmick for Sparking! Zero. For decades now, the imagination of Dragon Ball fans has been an endless stream. 'Could this character beat this one?' 'What if Goku told Piccolo to kick rocks early on?' Tapping into the fanbase's love for power level speculation and what-ifs fits the Dragon Ball IP perfectly. I think that perhaps the creators of Dragon Ball games have struggled to give long-time fans something to sink their teeth into aside from retrospectives of greater quality over the years. This twist is refreshing, and something Dragon Ball fans should love.
Once you're done, there's online matchmaking with pretty decent netcode from what I tested (although, I didn't get a chance to play across the Atlantic, so it might fall apart in that scenario) which is a recipe for a good time. I could play Trunks online, with a six pack of practically any drink, and have an excellent evening.
As for downsides... I think the game needed to have a more comprehensive tutorial right at the start. It throws the controls and a bunch of defensive mechanics at you, but players aren't taught much about how the game actually works. For example, when an opponent is blocking it teaches you that slow, easily punishable charged attacks can break through. But grabs also do that, and the game doesn't even mention them in its opening moments. You've just gotta figure it out. Also, the camera can sometimes be a hindrance, especially when up close. Sparking! Zero, at its worst moments, can be a mess of audio/visual noise as your eyes scramble to figure out what is going on.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is a lot of fun, and as meaningful a send-up to the source material as one could hope for. I spent time in training mode, popping supers and comparing them to old anime episodes, and smiled to myself when it matched up perfectly. But in stepping away from what did happen in Dragon Ball to what could have happened, this game manages to make the original narrative all the sweeter. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is a festival in Goku's honour, and a must buy for age-old lovers of Akira Toriyama's work.
This game was reviewed on the PS5 with a code provided by the publisher. It's available on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC on October 11