The game was provided by Bandai Namco for review. Thank you!
Of every single Dragon Ball game that was released, there was always one series that was consistently my favorite: Budokai Tenkaichi. I enjoyed the original Budokai series, but when they stepped into the 3D realm with Tenkaichi, I was blown away. Being able to run and fly around the courses, dodging ki blasts, and executing Kamehameha was just so awesome to experience this way. So, when Bandai Namco announced that Sparking Zero, which is releasing almost 14 years after the last entry (counting Tenkaichi Tag Team), I was overjoyed, and for the most part, I was very satisfied.
I have always seen the series as a sort of celebration for the Dragon Ball franchise, and Sparking Zero continues that trend. The game features a whopping 182 characters, spanning Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, and Dragon Ball Super, with iconic locations as stages and music that we have listened to across all generations. It's a great mashup of the entirety of Dragon Ball, and while there are some missing characters (especially from the original Dragon Ball), it still features a lot of overlooked characters like Bojack, Spopovich, and Lord Slug, while now including the newest characters from Super.
Combat is relatively similar to the Budokai Tenkaichi series, which is just wonderful. You will run and fly around a 3D, destructible environment fighting against your enemies, with each of you in teams of up to 5 fighters. On the surface, combat is pretty basic with 1 melee attack, 1 ki blast, 2 attack and 2 support abilities, and a way to dash, fly, and charge your ki, but there is a lot of depth underneath with different rush attacks, counter techniques, follow-up attacks when dashing towards an enemy, and the different impacts (for example, when two Kamehameha clash) that can happen. It's easy to get the basics, and you can fight that way, but it gets much more interesting and exciting to be able to combine all the knowledge to create epic combos that blow your enemy away.
On top of that, you have Sparking mode and transformations. Sparking Mode occurs when you overcharge your Ki, and it gives you access to some extra devastating moves and the ultimate ability to keep your combos going. With some characters, you can transform into their other powered-up forms. For example, if you play as Goku, you will be able to transform into your Super Saiyan form mid-battle. You can also swap out with other characters on your team to ensure your fighters don't die.
It all comes together in an addicting loop that brought me right back to the good old days. There is a revamped control scheme to make playing a bit easier than it used to be, which I appreciated. One thing I am especially pleased with is actually how cinematic it has become. All the ultimate abilities and some normal skills have certain camera angles to make what is happening more cinematic, but if you press "B" during some attacks, you can counter enemies when they are attacking and lock into certain camera angles to deflect them in epic fashion.
I love the combat and could find myself playing around with it and putting together different fights for hours. My only two complaints are some camera angles and randomly not locking onto opponents. Some camera angles make it very hard to see the opponent, while locking off can be frustrating. Locking off usually happened to me when opponents swapped out, but there were a couple of times I accidentally triggered it.
There is no general story in Sparking Zero, and we have multiple game modes. We have character episodes, which allow us to play through different character’s battles throughout the Dragon Ball sagas in the game. You will also get some story behind each one, which is nice to relive and is told with a combination of pictures and text/voiceovers, semi-animated cutscenes, and fully animated cutscenes. The fully animated cutscenes are a bit special, though, since they allow you to view the scene normally with different camera angles to capture everybody, or you can view the scene through the eyes of the character you’re playing.
You will also sometimes have the option to choose what you will do next in some scenarios, playing through parts of the story differently from how they happened. For example, when you go to battle Raditz as Goku, you can choose whether to take Piccolo with you, which plays the scene out differently.
There is also a tournament mode to either create your own or take part in predetermined tourneys, online ranked or unranked battles, online tournaments, and custom battles. However, the best mode is easily the custom battles. Here, you can not only take part in one-off battles that are based on the series, but you can also create your custom battles. This includes creating your own cutscenes and events that can happen mid-battle. You can do a simple edit or go ham and choose whatever characters, places, events, and story are created in this battle. I wish you could do more and customize the text instead of choosing from pre-determined prompts, but I love what it gives you in the end.
Other than the online and custom battle modes, Sparking Zero has a shop and customization feature that allows you to modify your characters with aesthetics and alter stats for offline play. At the shop, you can buy these abilities: new music, voiceovers, outfits, and even new characters. Some of these you can unlock while playing the episodes and tournaments, but you will also acquire Zenny to directly buy some of them from the shop. I actually really appreciate that the game still has you unlocking characters, as it's something I tend to enjoy.
To keep you coming back, you also have a Player Card you can customize and level up, missions to complete for extra titles and Zenny, and a proficiency rating for each character. None of it feels forced, but it is nice to have some features to motivate me to come back to play even after I have effectively completed the single-player content.
The visuals and effects themselves are extremely pleasing in battle, and it really made the game feel even more epic. Even something as simple as charging up Ki was such a pleasure as watching all the particles and energy surrounding our character leave marks on the ground. Speaking of the characters, each one was a pleasure to look at, and even on a lower resolution scale, they all still looked great.
However, I really disliked the menus and UI. Selecting characters and stages felt more like a list than anything enjoyable to look at, while navigating from different sections of the main menu was a bit obnoxious since we had to watch Goku fly or teleport from one area to another just to access the shop for a moment, then fly back to another area to access tournaments. I found it to be unnecessary and just a waste of time. I am not sure how they could have handled a character screen with 182 different individuals, but separating creating your team and the character selection is also a bit cumbersome.
Overall, I do love the game, but I wish Steam Deck performance was just as good.
I love Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, but I wish I was able to love it just as much on the Steam Deck. The game can be very demanding and quite tough to play, purely because it needs to be played at 60 FPS. The game is hard-coded to run at 60, so if it slips any lower than 60, the game will slow to a crawl. This means we can't try to set the framerate lower due to the game really slowing down, and boy, do we get drops.
Even at the lowest possible settings at a forced resolution of 800x500, the game will still find pockets that can drop to 45 FPS or slightly lower. With the game tied to framerate, it can really feel like everything is slowing down if you go anywhere below 60 FPS. This appears to be a CPU issue since the CPU usage and battery drain are quite high, while GPU usage never fully hits 99%. And unfortunately, there isn't much we can do to work around this.
So, the most we can do is mitigate any GPU issues that we could encounter, and there are some we can encounter when trying to play the game at higher quality settings. The good thing here is that this is an anime game, so it still looks pretty decent, even with lower visuals. I wasn't phased as much by them in battle, but the characters in the menus were a bit brutal to look at.
With most settings on low, the game is technically playable and sticks to 55 - 60 FPS for the bulk of battles. There are some more intense moments that can drop it to the 40s, which happens enough to be noticeable, but the slowdown is what really makes it bad. I won't say it is unplayable since I was able to get through a lot of battles without too much hassle, but it's definitely annoying and not something I would want for online or competitive play against friends.
We do have a dedicated accessibility menu for Sparking Zero! We can control some guarding, recovery, dashes, and combos have some assists, turn on left handed mode, and toggle the hint window and rival notifications. We can also rebind keys and invert the camera, change sound bars, and choose between different text and audio languages (only Japanese and English for audio).
The game does support 16:10 resolutions, so there are no black bars around, and we do have cloud saves and controller support. There is HDR support here and it recognizes the Steam Deck screen.
Even with some issues that I found a bit obnoxious, Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is by far my favorite Dragon Ball game. It modernizes the Budokai Tenkaichi gameplay into something more accessible, cinematic, and downright beautiful. The gameplay is addicting while being deep once you get into the nitty-gritty of the moves you can use, and I adore the custom battles you can make. I do wish the UI and menus were less tedious, and the camera angles in some instances during battle can get in the way, but the sheer fun I had actually battling outweighed it all.
I do wish performance on the Steam Deck matched the amount of fun I really had with the game, and I do hope it will get better with some patches, but it is technically playable, as long as you can deal with the drops and slowdowns that could occur.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is my favorite Dragon Ball game I have ever played, but it doesn't hold up as nicely on the Steam Deck.
