Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero Review – Incredible anime action and beautiful visuals

thesixthaxis.com:

Anime fans of all ages, let it be known that another Dragon Ball game is upon us, and it’s a damn good one! That means it’s once again time to learn all about how Goku became the worst father of all-time. Wait, no. It’s time to find out how Gohan stopped being a whiny baby, became a badass teenager, and then became a whiny adult again. Wait no. It’s time to d-d-d-duel?

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is an interestingly placed Dragon Ball game. The last few games based off this long-running anime series have been an intensely competitive fighting game in Dragon Ball FighterZ, and a time-travelling constant What-If? scenario complete with co-op and custom characters in Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2. Those two games were inherently aimed at very different audiences in terms of raw gameplay, but ultimately, as a huge Dragon Ball fan, I’ve played a lot of both – as have a lot of people, I’d imagine. Also, there was a card game and a lot of mobile gacha games as well, but we’re not here for those.

Sparking! Zero sits more on the Xenoverse end of things than the FighterZ end, but really, it’s about throwing us back to the PlayStation 2-era Budokai Tenkaichi games. That means you get to transform in battle, you get to clash your beams against each other, and you get just so very many characters to mess around with. Sure, there are a lot of people who look like Goku here (or actually just are Goku), but to be fair to the game, that’s true to the source material.

The story is largely stuff we’ve all seen before, although the alternate takes on things are fun, especially as you get to make the conversational decisions yourself, and you’ll get to see a lot of What-If? stuff throughout the game, which is great. The key thing here though, is the combat. You’ll be mixing in melee strikes, ki blasts at range, and special skills as well. It’s standard Dragon Ball fighting stuff, but it’s the more granular things that help this feel like you’re playing an episode of the anime.

As long as you