After 14 years, fighting game fans and Dragon Ball fans finally get to see the return of the beloved Budokai Tenkaichi series with the next installment in the franchise, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. Before its official launch in October, we had the opportunity to go hands-on with the game again.

If anyone is familiar with the series, Sparking! Zero will feel right at home. The biggest difference between this title and the previous ones is the extremely fresh coat of paint that Sparking! Zero has. Everything pops in a way that captures the visceral nature of Dragon Ball’s action as players fly all over the battlefield going back and forth in the series’ signature style. That was one of the main goals that the developers wanted to achieve with this game, make it feel like you’re there in the fight with wind blowing the leaves in the trees, powering up picking up the debris up from the ground, and everything breaking as it gets impacted from a ki blast, signature attack like the Kamehameha, or someone getting flown throughout the arena.

It’s authentically Dragon Ball through and through.

As someone new to the game but a fan of the show as a kid, it was easy to get acquainted with how to play the game. Action in the franchise can be boiled down to three main pillars, attack, power up, and unleash. That simplicity lends itself very well to newcomers of the series but the complexity comes from managing everything until the opportune moment.

The game features various game modes in addition to just picking characters and getting into a fight. We had the chance to try three different Episode battles, Goku, Frieza, and Goku Black. Each Episode battle focuses on a distinct character and goes through some of the different battles that they went through throughout the series. We also had the opportunity to mess with Custom battles which are battles that players can make and share to the community.

You can get very deep into creating custom battles as you can choose between the game’s huge roster of characters and edit little things like the character’s entrance and exit. Players also the opportunity to create their own little story by choosing what characters to get to say. The developers put in a lot of words to choose from. Alongside being able to create battles, there are Bonus battles that the developers themselves created for players to go through.

After playing the game and seeing all of the things that the game has to offer, I came to the conclusion that what makes this title different from the others in the series is that Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is a celebration of the franchise which is appropriate following the passing of Akira Toriyama earlier this year.

The gameplay is authentically Dragon Ball in the way that made the other games so popular with a roster that spans every era of Dragon Ball that you can think of and with the ability to create any battle you can think of and create bits and pieces of any story you can think of, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is every Dragon Ball fan’s dream come true.

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero launches on October 11, 2024, for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.