As someone who grew up with the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai trilogy and only superficially played the later Budokai Tenkaichi games, I’ll admit I was disappointed when I first heard about Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. In my eyes, a weaker PS2 trilogy was returning, and I could only watch. And so I watched as Sparking! Zero arrived straight to the top of Dragon Ball gaming, as if on a flying nimbus.
While Dragon Ball games until the Budokai series were mostly 2D fighters, Tenkaichi (known as Sparking in Japan) was the first to truly portray battles like in the anime – with the arena as an open zone rather than a typical side view. This new combat format brought an extra dimension as you flew, fought with height, moved in 3D space, and knocked enemies through mountains.
It has been 17 years since Tenkaichi 3, and many Dragon Ball games have tried to capture the same spirit. However, none succeeded. The results ranged from average to poor. Fortunately, Sparking! Zero isn't like Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 – it manages to capture the feeling of those old PS2 classics. While playing it all day, I felt like I was 12 again, with occasional breaks to watch a Vegeta x Papa Roach Last Resort AMV on YouTube.
Combat and mechanics
The combat is still spectacular. Although it isn't as deep as in Street Fighter or Tekken – you won't be learning long combos or frame data for attacks, but mostly mashing square and triangle – the combat is technically complex. During a fight, you need to pay attention to movement, teleporting, charging ki energy, and transformations. When you get into that rhythm, it's hard not to feel the excitement while beating Frieza and finishing him with a grandiose, spectacular attack.
The game is quite demanding, sometimes too much so, and the Sparking! Zero tutorial isn't very intuitive. There is a menu with extra training, but it’s tedious because you have to manually exit each lesson and look for the next one. All the information is there, but it could have been presented in a more interesting way that doesn't add fatigue to an already steep learning curve. Navigating the menus can also be exhausting. Although the main menu animations – where Goku flies and visits groups of characters – are a nice detail, they add lag to the transitions. The character selection screen can be a real nightmare to navigate.
The massive roster and story modes
The biggest asset of the Budokai Tenkaichi games was always the huge number of characters; if you want the afro-comedian Mr. Satan to measure strengths with Goku’s father or a God of Destruction, you can do it. And Sparking! Zero, with a roster of 182 characters, meets those expectations. There are many similar moves (29 slots are similar to Goku's), but each character has unique voice lines and special abilities. That number includes many specific forms, so even though Goku (Super) can turn into Super Saiyan Blue Goku, it still counts as one of the 182 options. Still, there are great, unexpected choices and rarely seen characters from the movies, like Turles (essentially Evil Goku), fighters from anime filler episodes like Garlic Jr., and even characters from the non-canon GT sequel like Baby, a parasitic alien who temporarily takes over Vegeta's body.
The Story mode allows you to follow eight fighters through Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super (covering the main four sagas and canon movies from Z, and only the later sagas from Super like Future Trunks and the Tournament of Power). Aside from Goku, not all are fully represented (Gohan starts from the Cell saga, and some appear only in certain sagas). But Sparking! Zero delights by including "what if" scenarios instead of a standard retelling.
If you veer off the main story (e.g., if Goku defeats his brother Raditz without dying), a "Sparking Episode" opens up that tells an alternative version of the story, like when Goku becomes a Super Saiyan while fighting Vegeta. There is a special scene where Gohan defeats Frieza from the Super era, leading to the villain Zamasu becoming Gohan Black instead of Goku Black in Trunks' future. After more than 20 years of the same stories, the ability to influence the story is a big plus. These deviations make the mode a must-play experience for Dragon Ball fans. There are also short "hey, you won" scenes when you defeat an opponent you shouldn't, adding small alternative realities.
Bonus episodes allow you to take on challenges such as Mr. Satan against all the (much stronger) Z fighters. There are 30 pre-created ones, but you can also create your own scenarios and share them online. There are some limitations, such as choosing words from predefined sentences instead of writing your own dialogue, but it is an interesting system whose potential is yet to be fully realized.
Technical performance and conclusion
Despite these fun stories, Sparking! Zero falls into the same problem as all Dragon Ball games – the focus is too much on Dragon Ball Z. Although Z is the most popular, considering that Dragon Ball Super and several movies have come out since then, it would have been nice if more contemporary content had been added. The original Dragon Ball series is reduced to Kid Goku, which is a shame because it would be fun to see Tao Pai Pai face 30 years of anime power and fight Jiren, the main villain from Super.
Despite the frenetic pace of the fights and the large arenas, the game ran perfectly at 1440p/60fps on high settings and is noticeably optimized. However, I wasn't able to run the game on the Steam Deck, which I hope they will fix with a day-one patch. I briefly tested the online mode, and so far it seems stable within the same region, but there are occasional problems.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is the new standard for Dragon Ball games. It perfectly captures the magic of the original Tenkaichi games, while the new approach to a well-known story and the deep roster of characters represent the ultimate celebration of Akira Toriyama's classic creation (at least for now). When it comes to pure Dragon Ball that everyone loves, the game is great; when it ventures into the "what if" Sparking episodes, that’s when it truly shines.
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