Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO review for PS5, Xbox Series X, PC

I was beyond excited for Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO when it was announced. A return to the old Budokai Tenkaichi style of Dragon Ball game was something I had pined for, and my wish was finally coming true! After diving into the game and seeing all it had to offer, I find myself wondering if my wish was better left unfulfilled.

Sparking! ZERO is Budokai Tenkaichi 4, for better or for worse. Video games have changed a lot in the 17 years between entries, and what was groundbreaking and innovative back then is clunky and stale now. At the base level, Sparking! ZERO is an arena-based 3-D fighting game, with an absolutely massive roster of Dragon Ball characters from across the years available to you. Each fighter has their own unique skills and power moves, but the base combat remains the same no matter who you are playing, and that base combat is a tedious mess.

Sparking! ZERO does not have the combo depth of other fighters like Mortal Kombat or Tekken, it doesn’t require frame-perfect input strings or even very directionally specific moves like those other games. It keeps things simple with physical attacks set to square, Ki attacks set to triangle, and all of their expanded uses coming into play with combinations of bumper or trigger presses at the right time. The issue is that each bumper and trigger press ALSO does something else. If you want to dash rush your opponent, R2+X sends you shooting through the air. Just as often, though, the input doesn’t register appropriately, and you are left charging your Ki (R2) or simply dashing forward a bit (X). You spend the entirety of combat one micro-input away from unintentionally changing the flow of what you are trying to do, which is exhaustingly frustrating.

To make matters worse, the moves needed to engage in this combat are not particularly easy to chain together or execute on their own, so more often than not, combat is just a frustrating, drawn-out back and forth that becomes so boring so quickly that even executing flashy finishing moves does little to liven up the experience.

The main storyline in Sparking! ZERO is the same story that every Dragon Ball fan will be familiar with, but it is told in one of the least exciting formats ever. The story beats between fights are given primarily through still images and occasionally narration, with a cutscene here and there. While I do not need yet another frame-for-frame re-telling of the entire Dragon Ball story thus far, a slightly more robust story mode would have been welcome. It does introduce a “what-if” mechanic at times that allows you to choose between an A and B choice, one of which matches the canon and one that doesn’t. Choosing the non-canon option gives you an additional fight or two before looping you back into the main storyline. This is not robust enough to alter the feel of the game or the main story, but is a fun addition.

There is also a custom game mode that allows you to create your own missions and battles, pitting different characters from throughout the Dragon Ball canon against each other. Want to see how Base Goku would fare against Ultra Instinct Goku? Give it a go! These custom fights can be saved and presented to others to tackle, but you must be able to complete the level yourself first. This is an interesting addition, albeit one that I do not see getting much playtime outside of a few devoted fans.

Visually, Sparking! ZERO is excellent. Aside from a few performance issues that felt like they were PS5 based, the game gives me everything I could want from a Dragon Ball game. The arenas all shine and bring environments from the anime to life once again. The audio shines alongside those visuals, transporting me back to the late ’90s/early 2000s watching Dragon Ball Z on Toonami. There are a lot of little moments in Sparking! ZERO that elicit that feeling, and when it does, it works. Still, so much of the game feels bogged down in the tedium of the minute-to-minute gameplay and lack of appreciable content to sink your teeth into past the main story.

At the end of the day, your mileage with Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO will vary. I found myself bored as often as I was excited and frustrated as often as I was exhilarated. For fans who simply want to relive the glory of their childhood with Budokai Tenkaichi, there might be enough here to draw them in. For folks looking for a continuation of the depth that FighterZ added or the beat-em-up fun of a Kakarot or Xenoverse style game, I do not see Sparking! ZERO scratching that itch for you.

Note: Bandai Namco provided us with a Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO PS5 code for review purposes.