Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero review

As someone who grew up with the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai trilogy and merely dabbled in the later Budokai Tenkaichi games, I'll admit that I was bitter when I first heard about Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. In my eyes the inferior trilogy of PS2 games was being brought back, and all I could do was sit and watch. And watch I did, as Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero soared in on a flying nimbus straight to the top of the Dragon Ball game totem pole. 

What is it? A new entry in the Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi arena fighter series
Expect To Pay? £55 | $70
Developer: Spike Chunsoft
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Reviewed on: RTX 3060Ti, AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer? Yes
Steam Deck: Unknown
Link: Steam

While Dragon Ball games were mainly 2D fighters up through Budokai,  Tenkaichi (aka Sparking in Japan) was the first game to really depict the fights like the anime series, turning the arena into an open zone rather than a typical fighting game side-on view. This meant there was an entire new layer to the combat as you flew around dealing with altitude and fully 3D movement, positioning, and a lot of punching each other through mountains

In the 17 years since Tenkaichi 3, countless Dragon Ball games have attempted to recapture this same essence. None of them have. They've ranged from okay to terrible. Thankfully, Sparking! Zero this isn't a Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 moment; it nails the feeling of those PS2 classics. I felt right at home playing it all day, like I was 12 again and only taking breaks to watch a Vegeta x Papa Roach Last Resort AMV on YouTube. 

The combat is as bonkers as it's ever been. While not deep in the way of Street Fighter or Tekken—you won't be memorising lengthy combo inputs or attack frame data and will mostly be mashing square and triangle—it is mechanically complex. As you fight you'll need to deal with movement, teleporting, charging up your ki, and triggering transformations. Once I got into that flow it was hard to resist getting hyped up as I smacked around