How Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero Breaks the Mold

More than ever, video games have become a medium to be taken seriously. Critically acclaimed games, such as The Last of Us, are taking on cinematic transformations. Newer entries, like Baldur's Gate 3, fly under the radar and completely shift the video gaming landscape by breaking the mold of what can be expected by that genre. Many game enthusiasts feel that we’re in a golden age of video games, and fighting games are not exempt.

On October 11th, 2024, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, the newest entry in the Dragon Ball: Budokai Tenkaichi series, was released worldwide. Fans of the prior entries waited with bated breath to see if the fourth entry could match the high-speed, fluid action of its seventeen-year-old sibling. Spoiler alert, it did! Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero not only modernized the then-revolutionary three-dimensional arena fighting series, but it built on it with its massive one-hundred-and-eighty-two character roster, eight-character point of view (POV) story mode, which plumbs the depths of the series from early Dragon Ball Z to the recent Tournament of Power arc in the Dragon Ball Super anime. If that were not enough, there is also a Custom Battle Mode which allows creators to format their custom fight scenes for others to play online, essentially granting a near-infinite amount of replayability in the game.

Last, but not least, players can test their mettle in the games' Ranked and World Tournament Modes, adding a competitive edge to a game that boasts so many different ways to maneuver and fight. Needless to say, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero proves to be a game that offers a little bit of something to everyone, whether its casual gaming with friends or a more competitive experience that you seek. If that is not enough to satisfy you, why not make a bombastic fight for others to try their hand at?