Recent reviews by Sir Vanté Lovill

If you were a fan of the series back in the PS2 era, this game is for you. This isn't a perfect game but the soul of the franchise is still burning bright with a few returning mechanics from other entries like Budokai and Raging Blast. For those who never played the old games but are interested here is some quick details about this game. Dragon Ball Sparking Zero is an 3D arena fighter with the story spanning from Dragon Ball Z to Dragon Ball Super.

What I liked about the game for one is the roster with almost 200 characters at your disposal, more than there has ever been in a Dragon Ball game and more coming down the line. I found it cool that each character is customizeable whether it's their outfit, emote, accessories etc. The combat mechanics has been reworked from the ground up, making each character feels and fights different compared to how they did before. The game does take skill and will make a difference in a fight. Just because you play as Ultra Instinct Goku doesn't mean the fight is a guaranteed win. Mechanics like blocking, countering and even picking out when to attack, is all integral to successful fight both offline and online. The what if's are amazing in this game as the developers really put effort into weaving an alternative story. Without going into spoilers, you will have get a chance to have characters in arcs they were never in before and it all works perfectly. Another new addition, were Custom Battles. I didn't have much experience with creating my own but it was really fun playing custom battles that other players made. There were crazy battles that had you fight all the strongest villains as Goten, until time ran out and battles that took inspiration from the movies. There's also the return of the encyclopedia, unique interactions between characters even unique finishers depending on what character is being defeated. Developers really did a great job adding little details that made the game feel like a love letter to Dragon Ball fans.


Starting with parts I disliked, the way the storytelling was handled, is not great. Taking inspiration from Budokai 3, the story, now called Episode Battle, will have players take over various heroes and villains from the series, allowing them to experience each arc in their perspective. Unfortunately the story was trimmed by a lot and when I mean a lot, I mean the game either skipped certain fights or arcs were be passed over entirely and maybe covered in a slide show cut scene. Making the story bare bones. It made me question why we had such a large roster if a good portion were not going to show up in the Episode Battle. I don't know if the developers were on a time crunch and had to cut content but it felt incomplete nonetheless. What frustrated me the most, were the requirements to trigger Sparking Episodes and alt cut scenes. Players will have a secondary objective in order to trigger and break canon. This will take the form of beating a character that was never beaten in story or not using a certain move as a finisher. All of that sounds simple, until you get objectives such as beating a character quickly or beating a character without doing xyz. Objectives like this almost killed the game for me as there was no clear indication of how long you have or what you need to look out for, leaving myself when I saw the same cut scene over and over again. Whether this is by design, I think the game should add a patch to give context or at least a timer to make it less ambiguous. Speaking of design, the UI, particularly the character select is a mess. I don't know why they split every character up by transformation but it causes a lot of issues when it comes to online battle. If you're a new player, I suggest reviewing the select menu and look up their DP points because you are given less than 60 seconds. As a PC player the easy solution would be a simple mod but gamers should not have to rely on that when this could've designed to make the menu concise.

I won't comment on the online, because experience may vary but I had a lot of fun fighting other players. Don't expect this game to be like FighterZ in terms of competition. I'm not sure if this is just my experience but there is some slight input lag where the buttons don't register and I will find myself constantly missing a timed Ult. I hope there will be a patch for this considering how fast this game is, laggy gameplay will hurt player experience.

Nevertheless, Dragon Ball Sparking Zero is not a perfect game but to me it still manages to take everything that made the franchise successful and build it from there, making players feel like their favorite character in the show. I'm hoping the issues mentioned can be ironed out in patches in future dlc updates, however I'm going to keep playing this fun game until my fingers hurt.

Good Dragon Ball game. Okay RPG.
If you’re no stranger to DBZ then you know what to expect with the story of Goku. Dragon Ball Kakarot tells the same story, with some new scenes that are nice touch. The gameplay is pretty enjoyable but can get stale after a while of playing. This by no means is Dragon Ball Sagas, but you will grind to get ingredients or the orbs to progress your character. The world is incredibly faithful to the show and as you explore, you run into a lot of characters from Goku’s past which is really neat for veteran fans. You can fly, drive cars, or even run like Sonic. Combat is decent for what it is. There’s this illusion that you can string combos together as you fight but a lot of the times you’re pressing B or circle until you decide to do a super/ultimate attack. Content wise it’s a mixed bag. This game is the most faithful adaptation to DBZ so far but misses a lot of key details that contradict the canonicity to the manga. New fans might not get it but the folks who’s been there since the Toonami days will. Overall if you haven’t played the game and you love Dragon Ball or if somehow new to the series, I’d recommend the base game at its current price.

So far this game is very fun to play with friends and gaming group. The art style is nice to look at and the different characters add variety to the game.

I played this on xbox got bored with it now i have it on PC and i logged in 80 hours in total so much to do and highly recommend.