3.5/5 ★ – peacebrendanp's review of DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO.

I never would have thought that we would ever get another entry in the Budokai-Tenkaichi series (known as the "Sparking" series in Japan), but here we are. I don't play every Dragon Ball game, simply due to the fact that the market feels almost saturated with the amount of games that there are, and it's impossible to keep up with every single one. This is one that caught my interest though; my brothers and I used to play the hell out of the original Budokai games, and I wanted back in. In some ways, this game is a dream come-true. In other ways, it's a bit of a disappointment with some of it's launch features. However, the game shows long-term promise if patches and updates continue to come. I'll hit on my negatives first. The story mode is the biggest sore-point here for me. My expectations were not high at all, and even then, they disappointed. The story mode is presented with Powerpoint-like slides, and cutscenes that are rarely animated. When an animated cutscene does play, it looks great, for the most part. This stilted campaign makes it a slog to play through. The story beats feel rushed, and it makes the whole story of each character feel messy and borderline incoherent. My lowest points of the game were during this campaign. The story moments don't feel worthwhile to see-through, even the "what-if?" story lines; while there are some cool fan-servicey plots, it just doesn't feel super satisfying to go through this mode. I wish it could get re-worked, but that's very unlikely to happen. I did get the Platinum trophy for this game, despite questioning if I really wanted to. After about 60 hours of game-time, I popped the Platinum. The biggest deterrent to this Platinum is achieving all of the "what-if?" trophies, which have unapparent clear conditions at times, or conditions that are extremely difficult to achieve without a dragon orb (an item that makes alternate clear conditions easier). The other trophy, that in hindsight wasn't terrible, but made me question if I really wanted to achieve it, was the Porunga-summon trophy. To obtain all seven Porunga dragon balls, you have to just grind out "1P vs. CPU" mode against a "Super" level CPU. It probably took me a combined total of 1-and-1/2-hours to get all seven, but that was over the course of a couple of different play-sessions, due to how boring it was. Again, not terrible, but not the most engaging trophy. There is also a "Custom Battles" mode. The architecture of this mode feels like what the campaign should have been. There are increasingly harder battles, with different clear conditions (which, again, are not super clear), and you switch to a different character every battle. It feels way more fun to grind through compared to the campaign. The downside to this mode is the pre-made battles they offer. The pre-made dialogue they crafted is absurd, and sometimes just reads like broken English. While it is funny, I was surprised at how little some of the dialogue options made any sense. Okay, now for the main meat-and-potatoes here: the online/versus mode. Pre-patch, this mode offered some of the highest peaks, as well as the lowest valleys during gameplay. There was massive latency and input-delay, an insane amount of players choosing cheese-characters, and copious amounts of disconnects. Now, post-patch, the input-delay seems to be mostly resolved, characters have been re-balanced, and there is now a penalty to disconnecting from a ranked-match. It has resulted in a mostly fun and exhilarating experience to duke it out with folks online, while still offering annoyances with getting into matches with people that just spam abilities. I'm not the best player, but I'm fairly competent, so when you get into a battle with a player that just spams a move that is un-blockable, it can feel somewhat frustrating. There are some other small things that I wish made a comeback from previous entries in the series. Such as, entire arena destruction (currently only really available on the Namek stage), some characters from series past, and customization options for characters that aren't Goku or Vegeta. These aren't big issues, but I definitely kind of noticed their absence in this entry. Also, the game has a pretty big learning curve, and a very poor tutorial. For a game in 2024 that has a decent number of mechanics, it was disappointing to see them poorly explained and explained in a very archaic manner (this might be the norm for fighting games, but still annoying nonetheless). Despite all of those issues, I really like the game. It's fun and flashy. Arena's can be destroyed and singed, and by the end of a battle, you can really admire how authentic fights feel and look to the series. Your character will get bruises throughout the battles, and if applicable, will even get cut's and clothing destroyed. It really adds to the cinematics of the fights. There is an addicting element to facing an opponent that is well-matched against your skill level, and trying to beat them, whether it be in the best-of-three ranked mode, or a casual king-of-the-hill style player room. Sometimes, the game starts to feel like a series of repeatable input-patterns, which can make it start to feel monotonous, but switching up characters and playing different folks online often can re-invigorate how the game feels. The gameplay carries the game here, which should be the norm for all games, but almost every other facet of the game brings it down. It's menus are flashy and basic to understand, but feel slow to navigate. The story mode is messy and boring. And, at launch, there was too much broken with very basic elements, like inputs, not functioning properly. After putting in so many hours, I am ready to put the game down, at least for now. I really hope that future DLC and patches help evolve the game into something deeper than what it currently is. The game is broad, there's a lot of modes and options in place for certain mechanics, but those don't exist yet (i.e. accessories and costumes). It just kind of feels like they launched a game as an early access experience, and are working to get the rest of content out over the next year. I bought this game around launch, which is against my personal rule: wait a year when a game releases, then buy. I have this rule in place so that when I pick-up a game, I can play it feature-complete. This game reminded me of that rule. Either way, looking forward to seeing how the game evolves over time. Console Played On: PS5 Game Played Prior to Reviewing: 11/2024 - 12/2024 Review Written and Published: 12/19/2024