Y’know, I’m often amazed at how Bandai Namco always manages to get me hyped for a new Dragon Ball game when, in essence, they’ve done everything the franchise can offer over and over again. We are back at yet another game featuring a ton of overdramatic battles, the same damn sagas, Yamcha’s dying pose, a ton of beams and screams… and I had a great time with it, once again. Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero is an odd game because it doesn’t do anything new at all with franchise. In fact, it actually feels a bit more dated than some of its predecessors. And that’s on purpose. I feel like that was the intention from the getgo, and it just works.

Are you over the age of 27? Do you remember the Budokai Tenkaichi subseries of Dragon Ball games? They were over-the-shoulder fighting games which tried to convey a more “realistic” depiction of Dragon Ball fights with all that chaotic, teleport-based and flight-heavy combat, a tremendous assault to the senses that simply captured the overall feeling of the anime like basically no other game before or since. Sure, Kakarot and Xenoverse were more polished takes on the Budokai Tenkaichi foundations, but they were action RPGs, not pseudo-fighters. Meanwhile, FighterZ is too much of a traditional (and balaced) fighter to even dare to aim for that utter nonsense that Budokai Tenkaichi used to provide. Sparking! Zero doesn’t care about that. It simply wants to be Budokai Tenkaichi.

This is simultaneously the best and most worrying aspect about Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero. It’s not trying to be a balanced or fair fighting game experience. Oh no. It might look like a gorgeous Dragon Ball experience in an Unreal Engine 5 coat of paint (basically the benchmark for how cel shaded visuals should look like in the engine), but this is a Playstation 2 game at heart, in all the good and bad ways. It forgoes character balancing, a deep story mode, or even a comprehensive tutorial to teach all of its actually complicated mechanics, all in favor of pure, unadulterated content, fan service, and mindless fun.

Budokai Tenkaichi games were famous for their stupidly immense character rosters, and Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero follows that tradition. In an era where you can easily see Arc System Works release a game with like twelve characters, and then sell you more than double the roster size in DLC format (you know I’m only half joking), this game just throws like 160 characters at you, at once. Or even more. I seriously lost count.

Better yet, you gotta unlock them, in-game, by either buying them with in-game currency or actually completing chapters in the story mode. Again, none of that “having everything unlocked at launch because of online balancing concerns” crap. Think of it as a PS2 game. Bandai Namco wants you to work for those unlocks. If you want to play as a freaking Saibaman or Garlic Jr., for some incomprehensible reason, you better spend your Zeni on them. The game showers you with so much in-game currency that unlocking your favorite C-tier character won’t be an issue at all.

Now, let me be clear that, sure, the roster is gigantic, but there should be some asterisks next to that number. This is just like how a Gran Turismo game from the PS2 era used to boast about its car roster size; there are tons of duplicates. There are more than fifteen variations of Goku, ranging from his kid self from Dragon Ball up to whatever convoluted new form was introduced in Dragon Ball Super (Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan is easily the stupidest name for anything in anime history, I swear). Still, everyone else you can imagine is here. Piccolo, Nappa, the entire freaking Ginyu Force, Majin Buu, Uub, Janemba from that one movie. There are even lots of Dragon Ball GT characters, which warmed my nostalgic heart.

Granted, those are all canon characters. Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission featured a wider (albeit non-playable) roster, but a good chunk of it was comprised of “what if” characters, such as a SSJ4 version of Gohan. It also looked ugly as hell, using the same engine from the original Budokai games. Every single character in Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero is canon, looks great, and sounds just like the dub. It doesn’t matter the character; a lot of effort was put into each and every single one of them. And yes, I just called GT canon. Deal with it.

Again, balancing is not something you should expect from this game. If you want to play as, say, Yamcha, you better know you will get pounded by Broly, Vegeta, or anyone introduced after the Frieza saga. But that isn’t an issue during a regular tournament mode. There are also many one-off scenarios created by the devs where you’re told to play as a specific character, fighting against another foe under specific situations. You can also create a scenario of your own, and post it online. You can add bits of dialogue, and even a Dragon Ball Z-esque episode title card to add some extra flair.

Now, if you want to tackle the many full-fledged story modes at your disposal, you will notice some other balancing issues, but not in a fun way. I wouldn’t even say that the game features difficulty spikes; it’s more of a difficulty rollercoaster. For instance, I thought that the fight against Vegeta on Earth was exponentially more difficult than anything in the Frieza or Cell sagas. The AI gets aggro as hell from out of nowhere at times. Considering that the game does a really poor job at teaching you its main defensive mechanics, you will basically learn how to play Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero the Saiyan way: getting beaten to near-death, and basically getting better at combat out of sheer anger.

The odd thing about these inconsistent spikes in the main story mode is that, sure, I got angry at some of them at times, but I felt so much “in the zone” whilst playing these missions, that I didn’t care THAT MUCH about them. Yeah, sure, I felt frustrated at times, and I was angry at the fact I was missing out on some specific “what if” completion requirements, but all I did was briefly dial back on the difficulty and then get rid of a certain roadblock. It’s an odd feeling. Like the kind of brief glimpse of frustration you’d have with a game back in your teen years, but you’d quickly get over it and still have fun regardless. Like if this was just a PS2 game with a really freaking pretty coat of paint.

It’s almost odd that one of the best things about Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero is the fact it’s not trying to be the most technically sound or balanced fighting game in the franchise. Yes, it’s inconsistent and occasionally frustrating, but the sheer amount of stuff to do, and characters to play as, all culminated in me feeling like I was just playing an incredibly pretty PS2 game from back in the day, back when developers would try to fit in a DVD with as much content and fanservice as possible, balancing be damned. If you are looking for a new EVO contender, forget about it; stick with FighterZ. Now, if what you want is a Spirit Bomb-sized amount of content and fan service, Sparking! Zero is the game you’ve been looking for. Have fun with it!

Graphics: 9.5 A brand new showcase of how cel-shaded visuals will look like in Unreal Engine 5. Amazing lighting effects, fluid animations, usage of color, and so on.	Gameplay: 7.5 Have you ever played a Budokai Tenkaichi game? It’s the same old mess, but with slightly more precise controls. I still think the tutorials do a terrible job explaining all of the game’s mechanics, however. The AI is also inconsistent.
Sound: 8.0 It contains the original voice actors for the vast majority of characters in the franchise, with a ton of brand new material recorded just for this game. I really appreciate that, even if I wish there were a few more tunes taken straight from the anime, just like how Xenoverse and Kakarot did.	Fun Factor: 8.0 What I like about Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero is that it’s not trying to be the most technically sound and competitive fighting game in the series. It just wants to offer truly ludicrous amounts of fanservice to its fans. Whilst I think some of its modes are half-baked, and its roster is plastered with duplicates, this is indeed a full buffet for Dragon Ball fans.
Final Verdict: 8.5

Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero is available now on PS5, Xbox Series S/X and PC.

Reviewed on PS5.