Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero - Switch 2 Review
"A Final Flash to the past, sometimes to a fault"
We’re getting nostalgic with this one, folks. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is the first new release of the Dragon Ball: Budokai Tenkaichi series (aka Dragon Ball: Sparking in Japan) since 2007! Wow, I was still in high school then. Oh, how time flies. Now this game has been out on other consoles for about a year now but this is its debut on the Switch 2, so let’s see how it compares, shall we?
The Good
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero’s main mode is its Episode Battles; it’s pretty much a typical fighting game story mode where you experience the plot of Dragon Ball from the perspective of your selected character. What makes Episode Battles special, though, is if you manage to fulfil certain requirements during some select fights, you can alter the timeline and experience “What if…” scenarios. The first couple I found were what if Goku didn’t have to sacrifice himself to defeat Raditz and what if Piccolo and Goku defeated Cell before he absorbed Androids 17 and 18? These what-if scenarios help add some extra life into what would’ve been just another retelling of Dragon Ball’s plot.
Speaking of What If scenarios, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero allows you to make your own scenarios from scratch. You can set up who is fighting, their individual power levels and available move sets; heck, you even have a cutscene editor! This is the kind of thing that people would’ve gone crazy for back in the mid-2000s, and it's so cool to see here.
The Dragon Ball: Budokai Tenkaichi series was always known for having exceptionally large rosters of characters but Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero may have taken it to a whole new level. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero has a playable roster of over 180 characters! While the usual suspects are there (sometimes multiple times as different forms), you also have some of the more obscure characters from the series. Heck, some of the playable characters don’t even have names! I’m looking at you, Frieza Foot Soldier. With a character roster like this, I’m sure you’ll never be bored playing this game.
TL;DR
- Episode Battles and what-if scenarios are paced well and a fun challenge
- Creating your own stories, fights and cutscenes is an ambitious idea
- A staggeringly large roster of playable characters
The Bad
Fights in Dragon Ball are known to be very fast-paced and visually busy; fights in Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero are no exception. While the game tries its hardest to let you see what is going on, it's not perfect. How can you when your characters are flying around at high speeds, teleporting everywhere and shooting lasers at each other all the time? I appreciate the attempt but it isn’t enough most of the time, especially when there's at least one giant character in play.
Speaking of battles, I’ll admit that my first impressions of the battle system weren’t the best; that's because I chose to use the default control scheme instead of classic. I don’t know what they were thinking with the button mapping for default controls because they felt so unnatural. The worst offender was how they mapped the counter button, which is a button you’ll be pressing a lot during fights. With the classic control scheme, the counter button is mapped to L, not the best place to put it but when all the face buttons are occupied, it’ll have to do. With the default control scheme, however, it was mapped to CLICKING IN THE RIGHT STICK!!! Default controls felt so bad that after my first play session I didn’t want to touch the game for days; I didn’t know it was possible to get PTSD from a controller layout.
After switching to the objectively correct control scheme, I wanted to check out the training mode to get accustomed to the classic control scheme; it has been over 20 years since the last time I played one of these games, after all. Unfortunately the training mode is pretty lacklustre; it's very basic and omits a lot of mechanics you need to use in fights. I’d go and fight someone in Episode Battles only to see them do something I’ve never seen before, back out and go into training and not see a tutorial for that ability anywhere. This happened way more than it should and really it shouldn’t be happening at all.
TL;DR
- Battles can get very visually busy
- Default control scheme feels unnatural
- Lackluster training mode
- Character customisation feels like an afterthought
Final Score: 6/10
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is a Final Flash to the past, sometimes to a fault. It's a game that presents itself well but once you get your hands on it, you quickly find a lot of things that will irk you. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is very clearly a game built for its already existing fanbase; if you’re not a fan or someone with only a passing knowledge of the franchise like myself, then this may not be the game for you.
Thank you for checking out our Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero Switch review, thank you to Bandai Namco for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:
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