The Dragonball Budokai Tenkaiichi games were staples back in the Playstation 2 era. Huge rosters of characters and a story mode that would span across the entire series plus some "what if" scenarios, world tournament modes, tons of extras and goodies.
Then the series went radio silent for almost 20 years. Only to now reappear under it's original Japanese name Sparking Zero. People went crazy at the announcement as their childhoods lit up with joy.
After spending 20 hours with SZ, I am convinced my childhood self was a fucking idiot, because Sparking Zero is bad. It's real bad.
Let's start with the story mode, instead of a massive journey through the Dragonball saga in which you jump from fighter to fighter to relive the battles throughout the show, you instead just pick a single character and the story jumps to only relevant fights featuring whomever you picked. This makes you bounce around the story in a very poorly abridged style that doesn't really make sense. If this was your first Dragonball game you'd be really fucking confused about anything that's happening.
Secondly there is really a lack of game modes, there is a section to make your own "what if" battles that have a few pre-made examples for you to try, but it's exceptionally poorly presented with no voice acting or anything really interesting behind it. The online battle modes are fucking boring, there is no real world tournament style,...uh...tournament. It just seems to really be lacking in terms of the variety of gameplay options.
Speaking of gameplay, the fighting fucking sucks. The lock on seems janky and loses focus on your opponent for no reason, attacks whiff incredibly easily, all the fucking super moves look the same besides a couple of standouts. The defensive options also seem broken and unresponsive, supposedly there is a parry but the timing is so tight and characters teleporting around you will throw you off of any sense of pulling off a parry against anything other than the lowest of difficulty cpu's/players. Not to mention there is such a reliance on Ki for everything in combat, that there is no reason to try anything but power up in the beginning of a fight, you can't dodge attacks, you can't teleport, you can't break combos, use supers, transform, you can't do shit without Ki, and building Ki through successful combos is far too slow to matter.
Everything about the gameplay feels put together exceptionally sloppily in my opinion. Things don't register they way they should, and while the combat seems to have a lot of depth, it's very user unfriendly to get a hold of. The exceptional repetitiveness of having 17 Goku's in the game to pad out the roster also seems like a waste of time considering how lack luster the presentation and move variety is throughout the whole package.
Sparking Zero is a poor effort to bring back a beloved fighting game series. Avoid this at all cost. Even if you are a die-hard DBZ fan, it's just a waste of time.
Then the series went radio silent for almost 20 years. Only to now reappear under it's original Japanese name Sparking Zero. People went crazy at the announcement as their childhoods lit up with joy.
After spending 20 hours with SZ, I am convinced my childhood self was a fucking idiot, because Sparking Zero is bad. It's real bad.
Let's start with the story mode, instead of a massive journey through the Dragonball saga in which you jump from fighter to fighter to relive the battles throughout the show, you instead just pick a single character and the story jumps to only relevant fights featuring whomever you picked. This makes you bounce around the story in a very poorly abridged style that doesn't really make sense. If this was your first Dragonball game you'd be really fucking confused about anything that's happening.
Secondly there is really a lack of game modes, there is a section to make your own "what if" battles that have a few pre-made examples for you to try, but it's exceptionally poorly presented with no voice acting or anything really interesting behind it. The online battle modes are fucking boring, there is no real world tournament style,...uh...tournament. It just seems to really be lacking in terms of the variety of gameplay options.
Speaking of gameplay, the fighting fucking sucks. The lock on seems janky and loses focus on your opponent for no reason, attacks whiff incredibly easily, all the fucking super moves look the same besides a couple of standouts. The defensive options also seem broken and unresponsive, supposedly there is a parry but the timing is so tight and characters teleporting around you will throw you off of any sense of pulling off a parry against anything other than the lowest of difficulty cpu's/players. Not to mention there is such a reliance on Ki for everything in combat, that there is no reason to try anything but power up in the beginning of a fight, you can't dodge attacks, you can't teleport, you can't break combos, use supers, transform, you can't do shit without Ki, and building Ki through successful combos is far too slow to matter.
Everything about the gameplay feels put together exceptionally sloppily in my opinion. Things don't register they way they should, and while the combat seems to have a lot of depth, it's very user unfriendly to get a hold of. The exceptional repetitiveness of having 17 Goku's in the game to pad out the roster also seems like a waste of time considering how lack luster the presentation and move variety is throughout the whole package.
Sparking Zero is a poor effort to bring back a beloved fighting game series. Avoid this at all cost. Even if you are a die-hard DBZ fan, it's just a waste of time.
