The Dragon Ball Tenkaichi series is one that meant a lot to me as a teenager and young adult – which was about the peak of my obsession with Dragon Ball Z – but it’s also one that I haven’t really thought about or touched in the last 15 or so years. Fast forward to the present, and after about three hours of hands-on time with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, it felt like I was hit with a spirit bomb of nostalgia as I once again got back in there, chaining together rapid movement teleports, bouncing my foes like ping pong balls between multiple vanishing attacks, and kicking them away with so much force that they destroy mountains. It was like reuniting with a dear old friend, and yet, Dragon Ball Sparking Zero feels like much more than just a nostalgia play.
It’s packed with new mechanics, a brand new approach to story mode, and a host of other exciting features that I only got a taste of, but I’m excited to dig more into once it comes out next month. The first two hours of my hands-on time was spent on freeplay. I used a large chunk of this time to refamiliarize myself with the Tenkaichi style of gameplay by hitting up Sparking Zero’s exhaustive tutorial mode, which covers all of the many many mechanics present here.
There are Vanishing Assaults, Vanishing Attacks, Lightning Attacks, Burst Smashes, Dragon Smashes, high guards, low guards, high speed evasion counters, perception counters, super counters, z-counters, and so on. It’s a lot to take in for sure, but .