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- Dragon Ball Sparking Zero’s first major patch has come with a myriad of fixes.
- It improves core gameplay mechanics, brings quality-of-life changes, and more.
- More changes are needed, but the future looks more promising than ever.
In the build-up to Dragon Ball Sparking Zero’s release, Spike Chunsoft seemingly had an infallible arena fighter on its hand. I’ll be the first to admit that I was a bit too quick to praise the game’s strengths and completely ignored its shortcomings.
A month later, the same sentiment did not hold true. Between the endless vanish wars, insta-spark spam, unblockable ultimates, and everything else, it didn’t take long to see that Sparking Zero was a flawed albeit incredibly fun and exciting Dragon Ball gaming adaptation.
Much to my surprise, Spike Chunsoft has been quick to address many of these concerns, showing immense potential for the future. If nothing else, this first patch is just one of many steps toward the team’s ambitions to make Sparking Zero the best Dragon Ball game of all time.
Why it matters: Like past Bandai Namco titles, Sparking Zero can easily live on for many years. Spike Chunsoft’s willingness to listen to the community is a huge green flag and teases the promise of better things for this arena fighter.
Aiming For Perfection
Unlike Cell, Sparking Zero has yet to achieve perfection, but it’s getting there. Spike Chunsoft’s first major patch has addressed practically all the glaring issues with the game, leaving all types of fans excited.
After spending close to 100 hours with online battles, I quickly grew tired of the unskippable intro cutscenes at the beginning of each match. These are great to watch initially, but they get really old during long sets, particularly for characters like Ultra Instinct Goku.
Fortunately, the game now allows you to skip through these intros at the press of a button. The character select screen is also more organized following the patch, harkening back to the classic style of condensed character icons from Tenkaichi 3.
These quality-of-life changes are small but make a notable impact on the end-user experience. Moving on to the gameplay, Spike Chunsoft has finally fixed the monotonous vanish wars.
This mechanic is actually exciting and intense now since each subsequent vanish is sped up, rewarding careful timing instead of killing the entire pace of a match. Unblockable ultimates have also been nerfed in numerous ways, with attacks like Broly and Gohan’s most powerful blasts being significantly slower now.
Instant spark is still there and remains a powerful mechanic, but its skill cost has been raised by one point. This, combined with the changes to vanishing, means that instant spark doesn’t show up nearly as frequently online.
Elsewhere, you can finally move while deflecting ki blasts, eliminating guaranteed setups into unblockable ultimates. Another annoying element, the lock-on mechanic, has been fine-tuned to near perfection.
Characters no longer lose sight of swapped opponents, and they are generally much quicker to find enemies upon losing track of them. Rage-quitters are also being punished now, something that even fighting games like Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6 have struggled with.
A Greater Focus On Melee Combat
Ultimately, these changes have moved the game closer to the melee combat of Dragon Ball. Where players would previously abuse instant spark and spam blasts from afar, they are now encouraged to engage in close-range combat.
This makes for frenetic fights that constantly go back and forth. Players can no longer rely on get-out-of-jail-free cards like Afterimage Strike, either, allowing the core combat to shine on its own.
This is also where Spike Chunsoft’s new damage scaling comes in. I was always of the opinion that characters died too quickly in Sparking Zero, but the combination of these changes means that this is no longer as big of a concern.
Melee combos are now scaled more harshly, super and ultimate extensions at the end of combos don’t do nearly as much damage, and the lack of insta spark spam makes it rare to see ultimate over and over again.
Moreover, players can no longer pick Android 19 or 20 and just run away for an entire match. All of this has positively impacted the game’s community, and I’ve noticed more and more people rapidly improving at the core combat this past week. At this rate, Sparking Zero will soon reach its full potential.
Break Through The Limit
As I said earlier, this patch isn’t perfect. In fact, it introduced a few new problems to Sparking Zero, somewhat diminishing the excitement.
For a while, DP battles were plagued with a bug that restored characters to full health when they were swapped in during the last minute of gameplay. Thankfully, this major problem has already been addressed in a follow-up patch launched on December 20, but there are still problems to be fixed.
Players have noted a tangible sense of delay to melee combo inputs after the patch. The changes to Z Burst Dash have also garnered mixed reactions, making it a bit tricky to close the distance from afar.
This is far from everything that deserves Spike’s attention, but these issues aren’t nearly as problematic as the core problems of Sparking Zero.
By and large, the first patch has pushed the game to greater heights, and things will only get better from here. If this first patch is any indication, Dragon Ball fans are in for a treat.
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[News Reporter]
Avinash is currently pursuing a Business degree in Australia. For more than three years, he has been working as a gaming journalist, utilizing his writing skills and love for gaming to report on the latest updates in the industry. Avinash loves to play action games like Devil May Cry and has also been mentioned on highly regarded websites, such as IGN, GamesRadar, GameRant, Dualshockers, CBR, and Gamespot.
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