Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is the anime sandbox of your dreams

digitaltrends.com:

This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

Some of the best licensed video games of all time feel like sandboxes for their respective franchises. My favorite game of all time is 2005’s Star Wars: Battlefront II because it becomes just that for George Lucas’ vast sci-fi universe. For fans ofDragon Ball, the Budokai Tenkaichi games accomplished that with their large cast of characters and destructive 3D brawls. Now, that series is making its grand return later this year with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero.

I went hands-on with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero during Summer Game Fest, and I think it’s going to be the perfect sandbox tool for hardcore Dragon Ball fans. It’s got a story mode that covers the manga’s iconic narrative, a vast cast of characters to use in satisfyingly bombastic brawls, and a Custom Battle mode that will let players create the battle scenarios of their dreams.

Dream sandbox

The Budokai Tenkaichi games are 3D fighters where players face off against each other in massive Dragon Ball environments. Although the combat isn’t as intricately refined as something like Arc System Works’ Dragon Ball FighterZ, these games more than make up for that in spectacle thanks to flashy animations and environmental destruction during battles. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is no different and ups the ante even more. There is something simple and satisfying to see Goku go Super Saiyan, charge a Kamehameha, and then send that blast right into Vegeta, who crashes through some buildings in a city. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero has not lost any of the charm that made Budokai Tenkaichi so beloved in the first place.

That core gameplay is what players will actually be doing in the sandbox, but Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero also provides all the tools that go around them. There are competitive matches where two players can face off with teams of up to five Dragon Ball characters. They all have unique interactions with each other; a fight I did between Android 18 and