The brand-new entry in the popular Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series has taken the gaming world by storm – selling over three million copies in its first 24 hours. The arena fighter has garnered an immediate casual and competitive community with nearly 300,000 concurrent players.
“Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero” hosts one of the largest rosters in fighting game history spanning four animated shows and 182 separate characters with more on the way in the form of paid DLC. The story of the game retells the most important events from the Dragon Ball TV show. There are small variations called “What If’s” if you manage to meet certain conditions, like beating a boss within a time limit or at a certain difficulty. There are also stages made by the community in the custom battle mode. These can be played online or downloaded for offline use.
The controls have been completely revamped for modern consoles, making use of every button for precise and fast-paced gameplay. Each character’s moveset includes a standard melee attack controlled by the square button (on PlayStation), and a ranged “Ki Blast” attack controlled by the triangle button. There are also three special moves used by holding down the right trigger and pressing the corresponding button on the ultimate attack menu. Each character also has special “skills” that can be used to regain health, give themselves a power boost, or dodge incoming attacks by consuming a designated amount of skill points.
However things are not all sunshines and rainbows as the game does have a fair amount of negative aspects. The most glaring problem is the model clipping – when a 3D model in a game seems to get stuck within obstacles in the environment. This can interrupt the flow of the game and cause a match to be restarted, which is very annoying in the case of ranked online matches. There is also the abysmal loading times in between menus, which can bog down the experience when you want to get to a certain mode and have to wait near minutes for the game to catch up with your inputs. Lastly, there is the lack of character customization with most only having one or two alternate costumes. That is a big disappointment for fans of previous entries in the series as they were known for extensive personalization. All of these problems can, of course, be rectified by future updates. Considering the game is so new, I would imagine players wouldn’t have to wait long for quality improvement patches.
The game is a relatively steep $70, which may seem too much for a fighting game. However, for the swaths of content studio and community made accessible with this title I’d say it is more than worth the price tag. And with the holiday season around the corner, it may be on sale soon. I give Bandai Namco’s Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero a solid 9 out of 10 and a raving recommendation for all Dragon Ball or fighting game fans.
