Fans may differ on which Dragon Ball game most embodies the spirit of the iconic long-running anime and manga series, but the Budokai Tenkachi series -- 3D fighting games showcasing high-octane action across big arenas -- is beloved despite not having an entry in 15 years. At last, the upcoming Dragon Ball Sparking Zero is ending that drought when it comes out on Oct. 11 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X, and I got an early preview at Summer Game Fest.
Fifteen years is a long time between games, and we've seen more seasons of Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super anime and films in the interim, giving Bandai Namco's Dragon Ball Sparking Zero plenty of fodder to include. The game has over 160 playable characters at launch, and though many are versions of the same character -- 24 slots are reserved for Goku and Vegeta alone -- there's a good reason for all those "copies" to be side-by-side in the game: They help you recreate iconic battles.
Recreating very specific match-ups is the soul of Dragon Ball Sparking Zero. In the preview, we saw a live demonstration of the Episode Battle mode, a sort of story campaign of eight very specific fights in the long history of Dragon Ball. For our demonstration, a hearty Bandai Namco employee loaded up one of these fights, the iconic first big fight in Dragon Ball Z between Goku and invading Saiyan Raditz.
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Each fight in Episode Battle is preceded and followed by a cutscene which will give players choices that can veer the confrontation outside canon -- like when Piccolo asks Goku if he wants help to fight Raditz, you can say no. Our preview followed expected events, leading to the duo's historic first team-up, but only after Goku either defeated or outlasted Raditz's attack.
Old fans know what happens next: Goku grabs the invading Saiyan and begs Piccolo to fire his special beam attack through them both -- and in Sparking Zero, you watch the cutscene but can switch to first-person view if you truly want to see that moment from a new, brutal perspective.
What's old and new in Sparking Zero
The battle system is as fans remember from the previous Budokai Tenkaichi games. You can dash or fly around the arenas (which seem larger than in earlier games), attack quickly with one button, fire ki blasts with another, charge up ki levels and use character-specific special moves, destroy things when you or your opponent get pounded through the environment, see battle damage on your character as the fight progresses and more.
What's new? Most importantly, you can make your own team of up to five heroes and villains to have at your opponent, whether they're CPU or another player. And yes, there's local (couch) multiplayer.
You'll need to boost your ki to the most powerful level -- a second Sparking bar -- to use your character's ultimate ability. Each character also has another pair of abilities that refresh on their own timer, like Vegeta blasting opponents away from him, but most of these are temporary passive strength or ability buffs.
You can also manually transform into more powerful versions of your character, e.g. the Saiyans can go Super Saiyan, but they can only reach higher Saiyan levels depending on the version of the character (e.g. early Goku can't reach any Saiyan levels).
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Fighting across Dragon Ball generations
I got around half an hour with Dragon Ball Sparking Zero, and I had a fun time. Let's get this out of the way: I've only played a handful of Dragon Ball games, so this won't be a comprehensive preview with knowledgeable comparisons to earlier titles in the Budokai Tenkaichi series. But as a Dragon Ball Z fan in my formative years, I have a lot of positive things to say about the new game.
First, it's fun to boost around arenas and tag in your team members (we were limited to three-character rosters in the demo) for epic showdowns against rival squads. After a legally required first matchup between Goku and Vegeta, I loaded up my favorite badass normals of Krillin, Yamcha and Tien to take on a grab bag of villains like Frieza and Majin Buu to see if the humans could have a go this time. Yes, it was rad to power up Krillin to full Sparking meter and unleash his ultimate Destructo Disk. My inner 12-year-old was singing.
There were some hiccups while playing. As in previous Budokai Tenkaichi games, it can take some effort to close distance with your foes, and sometimes the computer-controlled enemy would randomly lose track of my character and start punching away (we only played solo in the demo and couldn't simulate couch cross-play). And it was a bit tough to figure out the minor differences between all 11 Gokus and 13 Vegetas (except for, of course, the massive Great Ape Vegeta, who's choosable as his own character).
But that roster's depth is less about ability difference and more about chronology, allowing players to pick specific iterations of Dragon Ball Z, GT and Super characters in matches -- for me, that was selecting the first of several Super Saiyan Gokus to go against Frieza on the Destroyed Namek stage. I wanted to recreate that specific moment I remember from watching the anime as a kid.
But Bandai Namco didn't just open the door for players to make their own matchups -- Custom Battles can be shared with others, too. With a flurry of conditions to tweak like HP, stage selection and on-screen text, developers and players can craft their own fun scenarios, from classic battles of the anime to wild What If fights. They can even set unique victory conditions and have cutscenes.
That means Sparking Zero has more in store for longtime Dragon Ball fans than more casual players, but even novices to the legendary anime, manga and games will have a good time blasting enemies in deep-bench brawls with iconic heroes.
Dragon Ball Sparking Zero is out on Oct. 11 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X.
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