"Sparking! ZERO" Official Announcement, Pre-, & Post-Release Discussion Thread

[MisteryOne]

The Daima DLC could release at anytime now, right?

I did not like that the previous update removed the recovery of health after transforming. Not only it ruins the experience, it's not what we've seen on the show. Goku was barely standing after the Genkidama and then bam, with SS he was reborn.

What? Every time Goku did the Spirit Bomb, he was almost out of energy. Vegeta? Almost out & his body was worn down from the Kaioken. Freeza? Almost out of energy & body worn down. Buu? Body worn down & almost all out of energy. When he went Super Saiyan against Freeza, that was more of a second wind & his body getting more durable due to the sudden power up giving him said second wind & with Buu, he got his energy restored through a wish on Porunga. After Goku defeated Freeza, made it off Namek, & crash landed on Yardrat, he's shown in the anime to be physically worn out from all the fighting he just did. It's like when you play a sport, you get tired, so you sit out for a little bit & catch your breath, then get back in the game. Or when you get a rush of adrenaline while playing.

The video games using health bars to represent a transformation giving someone more durability when they first unlock them to represent a step up in the difficulty or challenge. The only times you COULD say a transformation added back to a character's health is with Freeza, Cell, or Buu, but Freeza was established as being very strong & barely breaking a sweat when he was goaded into transforming by Vegeta, then transformed twice more. The most damage they did to him physically was Krillin cutting off part of his tail before Goku fought him.Cell, he wasn't even hurt when he absorbed 17, but WAS when he absorbed 18, but his transformation was more than going Super Saiyan & required absorbing another person. The same with Buu, where even though he was hurt & being beaten down, when he absorbed someone, that also healed him, which you could reason being because he's sapping life from his victims since he was also absorbing energy & knowledge from them to add to his own.

Point is, I can see why they removed gaining health back from transformations like Super Saiyan.

Literally the second half of the Tournament of Power in the anime format, which the game follows, involves Goku getting his strength back up by continously fighting and transforming into higher forms until he reaches UI again. The characters literally mention it. Goku literally accepts fighting Caulifla and Kale to get his strength back.

Is it stupid? Yes. Does it mean it never happened? No.

[Scsigs]

Some things I don't understand about this game the more I play it.

1. Why aren't things like Halos & Scouters equippable to everyone possible? The only characters that get halos are the specific ones who've been dead & the only ones who get scouters are the ones who had them. Accessories like these should really be equippable to everyone. I'd love to have Super Goku with a halo & scouter, for instance.

2. I really wish that every outfit currently in the game was available for every future variant of every character. I really don't understand why we can't do "what-if" variants of characters, like Super Goku in the Saiyan armor going SS God & Blue, or even Ultra Instinct. Same with adult Gohan in the Saiyan armor, or maybe even Goten or kid Trunks in it. And going with the first point, equipping Super Goku in the Saiyan armor with a scouter & maybe a halo would legit go so hard. They gave us SOME of these types of things, like how you can have SS2 & 3 Goku with the Saiyan armor, but I don't understand why not the other variants of Goku, but outside of these few things, nothing. I certainly hope they do an update in the future that changes this. I assume there are PC mods that allow you to do these things, but these should be available officially in the game & on consoles too. Part of the fun with Budokai 3 HD was being able to play as Goku with a halo in Super Saiyan 4, or Vegeta with his Saiyan Arc armor variant with Babidi's Mind Control turning him into Majin Vegeta. That game did those in 2004 with the Japanese release (which the HD version used as its base for the remaster), so there's no reason that a game made 20 years later where the name of the game is fanservice can't do those & more.

3. Why is it easier to get the alternate routes than the canon ones at points? I've gotten several of them by complete accident & some of the routes, even on the normal difficulty, feel a bit too easy to get the alternate routes. Like, I accidentally got the alternate route where you defeat Jeice & so Burter's the one to get Ginyu instead by complete accident & had to go out of my way to get the canon path. And then there's the complete opposite where some of the routes legit feel impossible to get for no reason. I'm currently stuck on the Future Trunks mission where you need to beat Vegeta, Piccolo, & Gohan in a certain amount of time to get the route for Trunks to compete in the Tournament of Power. I've tried a good what feels like a dozen times to get it fairly, but haven't because the time window is unclear, but feels overly strict compared to other routes. I've since resolved to grinding the Dragon Balls in the VS mode to get an orb so I can beat it & progress, but that feels so defeating because with every other alternate route so far, I was able to get them with enough tries. It goes beyond the game being naturally a bit difficult to bullshit for no reason. I hope they address that in a future patch. They've fixed & adjusted other things so far for the better.

[miguelnuva1]

Preview trailer dropped showing Vegeta mini Glorio and Goku mini turning SS.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

Here's the Daima teaser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA6Suw9XeiY

It shows Mini Base and Ssj2 Vegeta, Mini Ssj Goku, and Glorio. What it doesn't show is new stages, but hopefully that changes in the full trailer whenever that's released.

[Koitsukai]

Yeah, it might be too soon to complain about the DLC, but if no new stages are added, this is going to be a shame. I feel we won't get any, though.

XV1 for PS3 had more stages than a PS5 game.

[gokugambitoptimus]

2. I really wish that every outfit currently in the game was available for every future variant of every character. I really don't understand why we can't do "what-if" variants of characters, like Super Goku in the Saiyan armor going SS God & Blue, or even Ultra Instinct. Same with adult Gohan in the Saiyan armor, or maybe even Goten or kid Trunks in it. And going with the first point, equipping Super Goku in the Saiyan armor with a scouter & maybe a halo would legit go so hard. They gave us SOME of these types of things, like how you can have SS2 & 3 Goku with the Saiyan armor, but I don't understand why not the other variants of Goku, but outside of these few things, nothing. I certainly hope they do an update in the future that changes this. I assume there are PC mods that allow you to do these things, but these should be available officially in the game & on consoles too. Part of the fun with Budokai 3 HD was being able to play as Goku with a halo in Super Saiyan 4, or Vegeta with his Saiyan Arc armor variant with Babidi's Mind Control turning him into Majin Vegeta. That game did those in 2004 with the Japanese release (which the HD version used as its base for the remaster), so there's no reason that a game made 20 years later where the name of the game is fanservice can't do those & more.

That is another problem with the unnecesary variants, they don't allow fun things like Gohan Beast with Great Saiyaman suit (I still don't understand how is possible that in a film called Super Hero, Gohan didn't use his super hero suit), specially when the game allow the players create their own custom stories/battles

Even some unique characters were sacrificed to add more Gokus, Vegetas, etc that nobody use

[FPSSJ4_Goku]

Someone is working on a new DBSZ mod that gives characters "smooth shaders", made to resemble DB Raging Blast 2. Do you think the cast would look better this way?

[Vegeta th3 4th]

Someone is working on a new DBSZ mod that gives characters "smooth shaders", made to resemble DB Raging Blast 2. Do you think the cast would look better this way?

I was never a fan of RB2's models; they looked too plastic like to me.

[Scsigs]

Ok, so I'm almost done with the story modes. On Jiren's & I only have his what-ifs to do. Something I don't understand with the story modes I already brought up in my previous post are here very much. That being that some parts of the story are really hard for no reason & it seems impossible to get some of the alternate routes normally. Hell, for Jiren's second fight with Goku where he goes Ultra Instinct Sign, then the full UI transformation, Goku's AI genuinely seems programmed to frustrate the fuck out of you. He kept relentlessly doing combo strings on me so much that I had to lower the difficulty so that he either wouldn't be as tough, or at least do less damage. And even then, I think it took me way more tries than it should've. This is on the level of Trunks' last what-if where he stays in the past, then joins the Tournament of Power where I had to farm the Dragon Balls to get an orb so I could get passed it because the timing was for some reason really strict & the player genuinely has no idea what they're doing wrong to not get the alternate route. I honestly don't think the devs play tested these specific parts of the game at all, whether it be due to time or negligence before shipping the game out. If they did, they would've known to increase the time for Trunks & tone down Goku's AI so he doesn't infinite combo string you. Having the player either not know what they're doing wrong so they can't progress, or the AI being bullshit hard & spamming infinite combo strings in the story modes isn't legitimate challenge. It's artificial difficulty at best & just bullshit negligence/game balancing at worst. I usually give this game a lot of props for not being that easy compared to other DB games that, quite frankly, are, but this is too much.

Also, I don't really care for how Jiren handles. For no reason with his physical special move in his normal form, it's way too easy to wiff it & his physical combos for no reason at times. Also, I ran into an issue of really bad input lag where I was pressing the buttons to either charge, or do combos, but the game wasn't responding for some reason & so Jiren wasn't doing shit. It's so dumb.

That is another problem with the unnecessary variants, they don't allow fun things like Gohan Beast with Great Saiyaman suit (I still don't understand how is possible that in a film called Super Hero, Gohan didn't use his super hero suit), specially when the game allow the players create their own custom stories/battles.

Even some unique characters were sacrificed to add more Gokus, Vegetas, etc that nobody uses.

I mean, I'm fine with the different variants of the characters, tbh. However, I think that it'd be better to have 1 variant of each character with multiple outfits & you just pick a pre-made moveset as well as can create your own. That's something I don't care for much in Sparking Zero, tbh. It was kind of annoying in the older games in the series, but I accepted that as the devs wanting to set themselves apart from the previous Budokai games that preceded them. However, here in 2025, I think it'd be fine if we had BOTH, where there's pre-made movesets & we can create our own movesets in these games. The game even has mechanics that support something like that baked in, so they could easily patch it in. Especially since it doesn't seem like we're gonna get a new Budokai because Dimps seems too busy supporting Xenoverse 2 & Breakers, it'd be a great way to innovate on the usual Sparking formula.

I think 1 thing as well that we SHOULD be getting with these DLCs is more story mode content. This game was obviously rushed out to meet the release date & I don't think there's any arguing that. How we don't have Vegeta's story content from Super & Trunks' Z story content as a part of their story modes, but we got unnecessary & redundant ones like Goku Black's, Freeza's (though, admittedly, his what-if for the Tournament of Power was pretty fun), & Jiren's, I have no proper idea. Budokai Tenkaichi 3 had the entire story from Z, GT, some of the specials, OG DB, & most of the movies on top of multiple what-if stories. And, granted, it was the 3rd entry in a series that already had 2 games, so they just innovated & added on to what was already in the previous 2 games' story modes, but they had enough time to add all of Goku's story mode for Z & Super (minus Battle of Gods for some reason, iirc, & the Universe 6 Tournament even though they have a battle arena for the Tournament of Power they could've altered to use & most of the important characters from it) & a lot of what-ifs that were pretty good. It baffles me why Vegeta, who has just as much story content, only got the Z portion. They even had most of his contributions to Super's story represented in the other story modes with cutscenes & dialogue, so why not? We didn't need Goku Black or Jiren's stories represented as their own playable sections. It's weird too because Vegeta says to Belmod in Jiren's story that they pushed themselves passed their previous limits during the Tournament of Power which is odd because they didn't show Vegeta going passed Super Saiyan Blue to its Evolved state. We only saw Goku going Ultra Instinct, Toppo being made a God of Destruction, & Jiren powering up. Hardly punctuating Vegeta's point. You need to have watched Super for any of what he was saying to make sense & that's a problem. Especially when Gohan had an excellent what-if story that rewrote the Future Trunks Arc of Super so that Zamasu stole HIS body rather than Goku's because he started training earlier & competed in the U6 Tournament, thus letting Zamasu know about him & his latent power, I'm really shocked that we didn't get more stuff for Vegeta. Hell, I'm shocked that they didn't do an entire what-if path where HE becomes the Super Saiyan instead of Goku to take Freeza down on Namek as well. That's ripe for exploration.

And then there's the fact that we don't have any story content for anyone after the Tournament of Power. I don't expect the manga arcs to be adapted until they're adapted into an anime form, but not having a Broly story path added in Goku's story mode with the first DLC is really disappointing, as is not having a story path based on Super Hero for Piccolo & Gohan. Just getting characters isn't enough, especially if they're charging the prices they are for the DLCs. At least Xenoverse gives you story missions, PQs, & the characters for your money. This DLC is more akin to FighterZ's. And even then, the first DLC was mostly Gohans, Piccolos, & Cell Max, which just reuse the earlier character models with small alterations &/or gives them new transformations & moves. Kinda boring, tbh. Glad to have them. It's just too little for what's there.

Someone is working on a new DBSZ mod that gives characters "smooth shaders", made to resemble DB Raging Blast 2. Do you think the cast would look better this way?

Looks interesting. Kinda reminds me of Super Hero's look. However, I'm glad they didn't do that & just had normal cel shading. Raging Blast's artstyle was way too bland-looking. Like the character models were action figures come to life. 1 of the reasons I never got into Raging Blast is because I didn't care for how it looked.

[Mr Baggins]

Someone is working on a new DBSZ mod that gives characters "smooth shaders", made to resemble DB Raging Blast 2. Do you think the cast would look better this way?

It looks neat, but better? Nah. The noses are off in some shots because the models were obviously designed with the game's cel-shaded style in mind.

Anyway, DLCs 2 and 3 were slated for Q1 and Q2 respectively and now they've delayed both of them to the next quarter. That better mean they're adding more than the bare minimum, otherwise it's clear this game isn't getting the post-launch support it needs.

[Yuji]

I agree, it looks "neat."

Nostalgia is a hell of a thing because I vividly remember everyone hating Raging Blast 2's art style both during release and for almost a decade after it, for deviating from Raging Blast 1's near perfect cell shading. I'd even argue that when it comes to colours and fidelity to the anime, Raging Blast 1's art style is more authentic than Sparking Zero today. I especially love the detail that Super Saiyan hair becomes muted/vibrant depending on aura intensity, just like the anime. Or how Goku’s Namek era SS hair is fluffier to account for Toriyama's art style at the time. Or how Goku's Gi becomes lighter with each SS form.

[MCDaveG]

I did like RB2 for what it was back in the day, but I am actually super happy with the look of OG Zero

Anyways, I am not hoping for any new stages at this point, as the additions to the core are quite lackluster so far,
but that Mini Goku SSJ transformation looks really neat and would love to have more touch ups with others, than just switching models
Unless it is intro animation to just SSJ Goku... which would suck a bit

[Jord]

Yeah, it might be too soon to complain about the DLC, but if no new stages are added, this is going to be a shame. I feel we won't get any, though.

XV1 for PS3 had more stages than a PS5 game.

I think that this is an side effect of this game's stages being more destructible. If that's a pay off that's worth it is up to you.
To me, it's a bit weird that we've had 3 games running since the Broly movie and none of them featured an ice stage.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

I think that this is an effect of this game's stages being more destructible. If that's a pay off that's worth it is up to you.

It's definitely not for me. I understood the base game not having as many as I would've liked, but we can't even get any with the DLC packs ? That's an odd decision.

[MCDaveG]

If the date is true, we should get the first Daima DLC on 24th April.
Not hoping for stages, as we didn't got any peek in the teaser trailer either.
Hope it's at least more characters than Super Hero.

[Koitsukai]

From a devs POV, how hard could it be do allow us to select more than one stage in Custom Battle? I'd like to visit two stages in the same battle, for instance Namek and Destroyed Namek. Or Islands and Open Field.

Since the game has stage scarcity, the very least they could do, if not add more, would be to let us enjoy more than one in the same battle.

[WittyUsername]

Would it be controversial at this point to say that RB2 is more polished than this game? To be honest, as much as I’ve always had a soft spot for BT3, I do think SZ might’ve been better suited if it took more cues from the RB games.

[budokaifanatic007]

Would it be controversial at this point to say that RB2 is more polished than this game? To be honest, as much as I’ve always had a soft spot for BT3, I do think SZ might’ve been better suited if it took more cues from the RB games.

No, I agree. Sparking Zero feels like a game that should’ve been released Oct 2025 instead of Oct 2024. There are mods that have already expanded way more than what we might get for this games lifespan. I also feel like this game won’t get support past a year tops.

[WittyUsername]

Would it be controversial at this point to say that RB2 is more polished than this game? To be honest, as much as I’ve always had a soft spot for BT3, I do think SZ might’ve been better suited if it took more cues from the RB games.

No, I agree. Sparking Zero feels like a game that should’ve been released Oct 2025 instead of Oct 2024. There are mods that have already expanded way more than what we might get for this games lifespan. I also feel like this game won’t get support past a year tops.

I definitely can’t imagine this sustaining a decade’s worth of updates like Xenoverse 2. Now that the novelty of “BT4” is gone, it definitely seems like the initial excitement over this game has fizzled out.

[budokaifanatic007]

Would it be controversial at this point to say that RB2 is more polished than this game? To be honest, as much as I’ve always had a soft spot for BT3, I do think SZ might’ve been better suited if it took more cues from the RB games.

No, I agree. Sparking Zero feels like a game that should’ve been released Oct 2025 instead of Oct 2024. There are mods that have already expanded way more than what we might get for this games lifespan. I also feel like this game won’t get support past a year tops.

I definitely can’t imagine this sustaining a decade’s worth of updates like Xenoverse 2. Now that the novelty of “BT4” is gone, it definitely seems like the initial excitement over this game has fizzled out.

Yup, I really hope this doesn’t lessen the chances of a Budokai 4. When that happens my childhood will be complete….