Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero's gameplay is a dream come true

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is going to be the biggest fighting game of the decade, I can already tell.

It’s been a great year for Dragon Ball fans, largely in part to the return of the beloved Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi series, which is being continued with a fourth game called Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero.

Check out the explosive trailer for the new Dragon Ball game below

As GAMINGbible’s resident Dragon Ball fan, I’ve been waiting to get my hands on this game ever since the initial announcement, and after playing a few matches as some of my favourite characters, I’m just itching to play more.

If you’ve logged hundreds of hours in the previous Budokai Tenkaichi games like I have, you’ll be pleased to hear the gameplay has been left largely unchanged, but improved upon in several ways.

Combat feels faster than ever before, matching the pace of the anime with snappy vanishes, high-velocity ki blasts and light-speed punches, providing a competitive gameplay loop that’s easy to learn but hard to master. Graphically this is one of the cleanest games in the Dragon Ball series, and seeing Vegeta’s hair flip around depending on what direction he’s going in, before unleashing a devastating Galick Gun felt like it was straight out of the anime.

Bandai Namco

Also returning are multi-stage transformations, with multiple variants of characters having different transformations depending on what time period they’re from. For example, early-Dragon Ball Z Goku can’t go Super Saiyan (normally, more on that later) but Goku from Dragon Ball Super can transform to Super Saiyan, then Super Saiyan God, and finally Super Saiyan Blue.

The AI will also transform, and I got a bit giddy when I transformed to Super Saiyan Blue Gogeta only to see Broly match my advantage by transforming into his Legendary Super Saiyan form.

The rest is exactly what you’d want from another Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi game, like beam classes, over 160 characters, stages from early DBZ all the way up to DBS, and of course some of the most iconic moves in the series.

Bandai Namco

However that doesn’t mean there isn’t new content. While my demo only allowed us to play in the VS mode, which you’ll be able to play online and locally, there’s a story mode that follows multiple characters like Dragon Ball Budokai 3. While you can play the story exactly how it plays out in the show, Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero will give you the option to craft your own Dragon Ball story through What-If? Style choices.

This includes fighting Raditz without the aid of Piccolo, and as we saw in the most recent trailer, a choice that results in Goku going Super Saiyan during his first battle with Vegata rather than his fight with Frieza.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero will release later this year on 11 October for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 and PC, and mark my words it’s going to be one of the greatest fighting games ever made.