I love Dragon Ball Z. I grew up watching the show with my cousin and we played all the games together. I had every single one, all the Budokais, all the Budokai Tenkaichis, the Gameboy games, the whole works. Later on I played both Xenoverse games, FighterZ and Kakarot. And while I'm not the most engaged with Super, I like that too. So when Sparking! Zero came out to rave reviews I had to break my policy of not really buying games on launch and pick it up,So far, it's great. It looks great and the character roster is gigantic (though I'm a bit disappointed in the lack of OG Dragon Ball content since I've been working my way through the manga. Maybe it'll be DLC.). The story mode is really meaty, and they've broken up the monotony of playing the same story 20 times by introducing some what-if scenarios that led to some surprisingly long diversions.

I like the fact that not all characters are unlocked from the get-go and have to be earned through play. It's a nice throwback to an earlier era.

The game is quite deep mechanically, far more than expected, and the AI is pretty tough even on normal difficulty. Several fights took me more than a couple tries. I don't want the game to be a cakewalk, but at times it did seem a little unfair, like the AI wasn't following the same rules I am. I expect it to be tuned a bit in the day one patch later this week.

Another nice mode is the Custom Battles mode. Here you can take bits and pieces of dialogue and cutscenes and create battle scenarios, like using young Goku in a fight with Master Roshi, mimicking his original training arc. There are a few dozen of these created by the devs, and I expect it to go crazy once the game opens up.

Also available are your standard tournament and battle modes. The addition of a custom tournament mode where you can set your own rules is a nice touch.

I do have a few gripes, minor though they are. The menus are oddly laggy and unresponsive. The story mode cutscenes are mostly unvoiced and told in a comic book panel format, which I felt was a little lazy and uninspired for a game that obviously has a high budget. I only touched online for a few minutes, but they've gone with this weird lobby system instead of just doing regular instant matchmaking. I'm not sure why anime games always do this but it's kind of annoying and tedious. No crossplay is also a weird choice.

All in all, I'm having a ton of fun with the game so far. There seems to be a lot of content and the Custom Battle mode will grow with more players. It's a real love letter to DBZ.

Verdict: Endless

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