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

[Scsigs]

I can't speak for anyone else, I'll just speak for me.

The second I saw the trailer interview which talked about Sparking!'s Single Player modes, I should have listened to my gut and cancel my preorder.

This game has the same 'problem' that FighterZ had for me. There is almost zero single player content once you beat the mediocre story modes. Sure, there is some fun to be had at a what-if Frieza protag mode in FighterZ, but at the end of the day, I was spoiled by single player modes that gave you something to do and grind with ... with EVERY single character. There are some fighting games which do that, like the Universe mode in Raging Blast 2, or the single player Towers in Mortal Kombat 11. It's not a story mode, but those games gave me a TON of arcade ladders with goals and rewards for every character in the roster.

In Sparking! Zero? If you do not care about multiplayer like me, you play the six / seven 'story' modes and then all you get is basically Vs mode or a 'DIY Vs Mode' with some slideshows on the side. Basically, it's Spike telling me, 'Bro, I spent ALL of the development time in giving you the biggest roster in history, I didn't have time to do anything else, how about you do it for you?'

This game feels like Budokai 2 on the PS2 - polished gameplay, zero SP content. Except that this time there was never a Budokai 1 before it, and we have no idea if a sequel will come out.

Personally, instead of giving me Daima characters who feel completely out of place when put next to Z/Super characters, I would prefer to see DLC which gives me grindable SP content for every single character. Would gladly pay (for something I feel that should have been in the game day one).

Otherwise, I don't see myself bothering with this game, despite pre-ordering it.

I hate to break it to you, but a LOT of Dragon Ball games suffer from this problem. The only ones I can think of that don't are the Legacy of Goku trilogy, the Xenoverse duology, Kakarot, & any of the games that are like them, which ain't a ton. The first 3 games in this series were also like this. The only difference is the addition of online play. It's like complaining that Call of Duty functions on its multiplayer first & campaign modes second.
Also, I disagree with the Budokai 2 comparison. Budokai 2's story mode was actually pretty fun, even if it doesn't exactly follow the story of the show or manga 100%. Me & my brother had a lot of fun playing that game 20 years ago. Hell, some fans have reappraised the game in recent years as being a lot better than they thought years ago.
Now, I agree that SZ doesn't have a lot of single player content after the story modes are done, but I don't know why you didn't expect that.

Sparking Zero is a party game more so than a single player game. You pick almost any character you want and fight it out against other players.

Going off Budokai and Tenkaichi I'm glad Sparking is back but I'm also waiting for the sequel and Budokai and Sparking before both put out decent first games, better sequels and then by the third game is arguably the best in the franchise.

I don't know if SZ will get a sequel. I'd sooner expect just a few years of content updates & DLCs, tbh. I'd also expect a Budokai 0 beforehand. Maybe even a Xenoverse 3. We'll see, though.

[Nickolaidas]

Sparking Zero is a party game more so than a single player game.

How many characters a player controls is irrelevant to how many players the game is meant to be played with.

[Nickolaidas]

I hate to break it to you, but a LOT of Dragon Ball games suffer from this problem. The only ones I can think of that don't are the Legacy of Goku trilogy, the Xenoverse duology, Kakarot, & any of the games that are like them, which ain't a ton. The first 3 games in this series were also like this. The only difference is the addition of online play. It's like complaining that Call of Duty functions on its multiplayer first & campaign modes second.

Now, I agree that SZ doesn't have a lot of single player content after the story modes are done, but I don't know why you didn't expect that.

Because I compare this game to other modern fighting games. I think the 'previous DB games didn't have a lot of SP content as well' is a bad excuse to cover for the developers. Sparking! Zero doesn't live in a bubble and it's not simply in competition with its past iterations - it's also in competition with other modern fighting games in terms of content, visuals and fun. And even if you compare SZ with RB2 in terms of content, SZ is lacking in a few spots.

I don't need to be a fly in the wall at Spike's HQ to know where the developers placed their resources with the time that they had. And kudos to those who just want to play Vs matches with other people. Personally, I expected more for the single players, I expected to get at the bare minimum the game modes we got with Raging Blast 2, and I didn't get that. Hence, my disappointment.

Also, I disagree with the Budokai 2 comparison. Budokai 2's story mode was actually pretty fun, even if it doesn't exactly follow the story of the show or manga 100%. Me & my brother had a lot of fun playing that game 20 years ago. Hell, some fans have reappraised the game in recent years as being a lot better than they thought years ago.

I didn't mind the fact that B2's 'story' mode didn't follow the canon storyline (though to this day I still do not know how Goku left Earth to go to Namek and came back a few days later to find Adult Gohan). I am saying that it was a rushed mode which felt very inferior to the Story Mode of Budokai 1 and it was evident that Budokai 2 was a stepping stone between Budokai 1 and Budokai 3 - which actually felt like a true sequel. I mean, Frieza and Cell didn't even have forms in B2 for crying out loud. The game was obviously rushed.

[WittyUsername]

I think a lot of the problems this game has could’ve been fixed or at least improved upon if they hadn’t rushed it out to coincide with the release of Daima and the franchise’s 40th anniversary.

[miguelnuva1]

I think a lot of the problems this game has could’ve been fixed or at least improved upon if they hadn’t rushed it out to coincide with the release of Daima and the franchise’s 40th anniversary.

We don't know Sparking Zero was rushed and according to developers it was worked on for years.

[Bardock God of Time]

I hope we get more Story content that isn't Bonus battles in a future DLC

Like OG DB and GT deserve storymodes

[WittyUsername]

I think a lot of the problems this game has could’ve been fixed or at least improved upon if they hadn’t rushed it out to coincide with the release of Daima and the franchise’s 40th anniversary.

We don't know Sparking Zero was rushed and according to developers it was worked on for years.

How many years though?

[kemuri07]

I don't get the impression that Sparking Zero was rushed. For this type of game a 4 to 5 year development time seems pretty typical. Odds are they're probably following most modern day AAA examples of releasing a "base game" and then supplementing it with DLC content down the road. That's better than simply allowing a game to be in development hell for a number of years, especially since "more time doesn't necessarily equate to more content." At some point you do have to release the game in order to effectively support it.

It's also important to note Bandai Namco is a big ass company with a number of projects that its working on, so resource allocation is a thing to keep in mind to. So more than likely the version of Sparking Zero that we got was always the plan, or the version that would allow them to release the game. I doubt it was anything dramatic as "we gotta put this out before Daima!!!"

[Vegeta th3 4th]

How many years though?

One of the producers said it was in development for a little over 4 years.

[kemuri07]

How many years though?

One of the producers said it was in development for a little over 4 years.

5 years according to its producer.

https://www.thegamer.com/dragon-ball-sp ... r-5-years/

[Scsigs]

We don't know Sparking Zero was rushed and according to developers it was worked on for years.

Look at the game at launch & even now & tell me with a straight face that it doesn't seem like it's unfinished & they left out things that were in the previous games in the Sparking series so they could meet their release date? There aren't any major game-breaking bugs or glitches, but the base game feels incomplete. The unfinished story modes for some characters (Vegeta, Trunks, Piccolo), the fact that Super Broly & Gogeta are in the game, but don't have story missions for at least Goku, the UI getting a post-launch update that condenses it similarly to BT3, the bad balancing, the weird thing where the online battle search doesn't save your preferences for searching for matches when backing out to the main menu, the fact that if you leave an online room, you're booted back to the main menu for some reason rather than back to the room search, the fact that the room search doesn't update in real time, Super 17 not being in the game for no reason, etc. The game has a BUNCH of unfinished bits that let you know that they were fast approaching on their release date (if not the release date changing entirely to come out during the 40th anniversary year of DB & to coincide with Daima, which didn't even come out in October anyways).

A company can work on a game for years & the end product can still come out rushed. Look at Spider-Man 2. That game was rushed as FUCK. A fuckton of bugs & glitches at launch (some of which got fixed, others are still in the game), an incomplete story (not that the story doesn't have a beginning middle, or end, just that it's missing essential chunks that connect certain plot points & character beats to make them make more sense), NG+ not being in the game at launch, bugged or incomplete suits from the first game that got fixed in patches (&, even then, the MCU Iron Spider's eyes are still borked for some reason), certain DLC suits taking too long to come out, etc. Then the cancellation of its DLC. Hell, only a small fragment of the dialogue Tony Todd recorded as Venom got used, Peter only had the Symbiote suit for a few hours of playtime, etc. It also ran over budget somehow & Sony wanted to get it out to try to recoup as much money as possible. And the game otherwise has a more expansive NYC than the first game or Miles Morales as well as a very substantial upgrade to the graphics from the PS4 ones. I wouldn't be surprised if 5-10 years from now if a dev or 1 of the actors, or a writer on the game comes out & tells us exactly what was planned for the version of the game we got that wasn't in it because they didn't have the time or money to add or finish them. This game was made over the course of about 3 years after Miles Morales entered post production whereas the 2018 game & Miles Morales were made in about 2 & came out pretty well (though miles Morales & the remaster of the 2018 game had a few bugs that got ironed out in patches).

Even though it's a bit extreme, I used this as an example, but I think you get where I'm going with it. Never take how much time a game was in development for as a sign parts of it couldn't have been rushed if they feel like they were.

[kemuri07]

none of that proves that it was rushed though. That's just a story that you sort of made up.


If we're talking about a game being unfinished then we're talking about a game being unplayable or a game being broken. Sonic 06 is an example of what you're talking about. A game that had barely a year of development that was rushed to stores to coincide with an anniversary date. But "Why doesn't this game have the thing I want or a character I want" is hardly indicative of a game being "rushed."

[Vegeta th3 4th]

Look at the game at launch & even now & tell me with a straight face that it doesn't seem like it's unfinished & they left out things that were in the previous games in the Sparking series so they could meet their release date?

I think some fans just can't accept that the long awaited Tenkaichi 4 is anything but perfect. It also doesn't help that it's taking forever to get updates and DLC. It seems like they just gave up and moved on.

none of that proves that it was rushed though. That's just a story that you sort of made up.

I don't know how you can play this game and say it's complete. Everything about it feels unfinished.

[kemuri07]

Look at the game at launch & even now & tell me with a straight face that it doesn't seem like it's unfinished & they left out things that were in the previous games in the Sparking series so they could meet their release date?

I think some fans just can't accept that the long awaited Tenkaichi 4 is anything but perfect. It also doesn't help that it's taking forever to get updates and DLC. It seems like they just gave up and moved on.

none of that proves that it was rushed though. That's just a story that you sort of made up.

I don't know how you can play this game and say it's complete. Everything about it feels unfinished.

Based on what standard? This plays and has the content like every other arena fighter that I've ever played. Like I said before, just because it doesn't have a thing you want doesn't mean it's "unfinished." I've played games that are "unfinished"--this ain't one of them.


You did point out something that I do think is interesting and the fact is is that this game was never going to meet the level of hype that the internet had for this thing. Seriously people were acting like this was going to be the greatest game of all time when all they made was another anime arena fighter. And I think the drop off of players once people realized that this wasn't going to be some forever game that they were going to play for hundreds of hours is proof of that.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

I think the drop off of players once people realized that this wasn't going to be some forever game that they were going to play for hundreds of hours is proof of that.

Tenkaichi 3, which was released back in 2007, is still played to this very day. Doesn't the fact that people are going back to a game from 2007 prove that they dropped the ball with this game ? Sparking Zero is by no means a bad DB game, it's just a lackluster one.

[Scsigs]

none of that proves that it was rushed though. That's just a story that you sort of made up.

If we're talking about a game being unfinished then we're talking about a game being unplayable or a game being broken. Sonic 06 is an example of what you're talking about. A game that had barely a year of development that was rushed to stores to coincide with an anniversary date. But "Why doesn't this game have the thing I want or a character I want" is hardly indicative of a game being "rushed."

Nothing about Spider-Man 2 there was made up. You can fact check the majority of it & I have multiple playthroughs on my gaming YouTube channel that shows a good amount of the bugs, as well as the cutscenes so you can analyze the story, & you can find others that also show them. I've played through that game 3 different times.

As for Sparking Zero, have you actually played the game? I have. While it's not fundamentally broken & riddled with bugs (which is good), it's missing things from the previous games (features, characters, etc) &, while having better gameplay (for the most part) than the previous games in the series, it doesn't feel like the game was properly balanced. I've played the game for all it's worth with its available content. You think I can't tell by now if it was unfinished or not.

Let me give you another example. Kingdom Hearts 3. Had 5 years in development. However, more close to 4 because they switched from Luminous Engine to Unreal Engine 4 a year in & couldn't use most of what they'd already made on Luminous. It functions properly & looks good. However, I'd hardly call it not rushed. The gameplay is poorly balanced in every difficulty mode (either too easy, or too bullshit, no in-between), the story is barely there, & it felt like the devs were more caught up trying to redo things from KH2 than make the game feel like a complete experience.

Based on what standard? This plays and has the content like every other arena fighter that I've ever played. Like I said before, just because it doesn't have a thing you want doesn't mean it's "unfinished." I've played games that are "unfinished"--this ain't one of them.

You did point out something that I do think is interesting and the fact is is that this game was never going to meet the level of hype that the internet had for this thing. Seriously people were acting like this was going to be the greatest game of all time when all they made was another anime arena fighter. And I think the drop off of players once people realized that this wasn't going to be some forever game that they were going to play for hundreds of hours is proof of that.

You have a narrow idea of "unfinished" & "rushed" when it comes to video games. No Man's Sky was originally released in a playable state & technically had content 9 years ago, but you wouldn't not have called THAT game rushed or unfinished at the time.

When a sequel (even 1 made years later & a fighting game at that, of which the main focus is literally about the modes & character roster) is missing characters from previous entries you'd expect to return & it's missing modes & features from previous installments with no obvious replacements or signs of coming back, as well as missing stuff that you'd think would've been there (like story mode levels for certain characters, or adapting certain story arcs or movies like the previous games did), I think it's fine to call a game a bit rushed or unfinished, especially when they had 4-5 years of development time. They had to patch the game to apply some basic balance changes & change some things up in terms of the UI & they even put out a survey of things fans wanted in the game, as well as delayed DLC pack 2 a bit (seemingly so they could do things for the game that people wanted & weren't there before, but that's to be seen). The game feels more like a foundation for future things as opposed to being a complete in box experience.

The most the game has is story modes, tournament modes, VS modes, & online modes. And it feels like the most polished one is the story modes, despite the fact that I argue it's missing things that should be there & would be if this were ~20 years ago. Like, I'm fully expecting them to announce in the near future the return of certain characters as DLC & possibly even an expansion pass for new/returning modes to give it more single player &/or online multiplayer content. Other games have done this (including Dragon Ball games), so this wouldn't be surprising. The game made a shit ton of money in its first week alone in sales, so I hope it's priced effectively, or some of it's given to us for free.

Put simply, when I say the game feels unfinished, I mean what I've said already, but also that they were coming up on their deadline to get the game ready for its release date & scrapped what was left to be included in the game that they had on their list of features & focused on finishing what they had left.

I think some fans just can't accept that the long awaited Tenkaichi 4 is anything but perfect. It also doesn't help that it's taking forever to get updates and DLC. It seems like they just gave up and moved on.

I don't think it's that. I think it's more of just having a more narrow definition of what it means for a game to be rushed or unfinished, or that they just don't see what we mean.

[Cold Skin]

It's nothing new or unexpected. Actually, pretty much ALL games are rushed and unfinished with devs having to select what to keep or not and keep on track quickly and link together two bits when something in the middle was cut.
Unused and unfinished elements are often found with the obvious reason being "didn't have time to finish it before the release date, so it was just left there out of reach in the data". Hence the existence of The Cutting Room Floor.

Even masterpiece games that have become GOTY are riddled with "we didn't have time to create this and it will never be done now".
It even comes as bonuses on remasters and such, "check out the unfinished stuff we couldn't do in time because devs are always in a rush to meet the release year/date".

Sparking! ZERO's main advantage is already here: the custom battle mode.
The series was always about "so many characters that you can come up with the dream stories you want".
So it's not about the story mode that you complete just once with all what-ifs. It's not about the online game as this series is not meant to be balanced (the presence of a so-called "ranked mode" in the game is already astonishing).
It's about "meet the awesome possibilities, after all those years, to create infinite episodes and concepts with cutscenes with that extended roster that automatically includes some of your favorite characters which can now strike impressive poses and animations to be the most stylish they've ever been".

You will see Gogeta and Vegetto being friends and smiling at each other if you want to.
You will see Beerus kneeling in desperation facing Chaozu if you want to.
You will see a slow-motion shot of Ultra Instinct Goku turning around with his hair flowing to the wind after a victory if you want to.
And all of this while setting battle rules way beyond what you can already set.
And while finding thousands of battles and cutscenes and rules already made by thousands of players to keep you always surprised.

So Bandai Namco must be thinking "sheesh, why do they want us to balance things or make more main stories? This isn't the plan, THEY are supposed to make extra stories and we are just supposed to toss in extra characters with gorgeous special animations a few times in a year - which already takes us MONTHS of works for each batch when focusing on just that - for players to make more stories than they already can!"

[kemuri07]

Using No Man Sky is a poor example because it misunderstands why it caught shit in the first place. The reason why people were unhappy with No Man Sky is because the marketing surrounding the game made promises about what kind of game it was. It was going to be the ultimate space game in which you can traverse the galaxy and visit billions of unique planets. And what was release was decidedly not that. And even then I'd argue that it's less a case of it being unfinished and more that the realities of game development reared its ugly head, and what they were selling wasn't what they were able to achieve.


That's not even remotely what's going on with Sparking Zero. And yes I have played the game--dumped 50 hours into it actually and not once have I thought boy this feels unfinished. Instead it feels exactly what it says on the tin: An anime fighter wtih a number of game modes featuring characters throughout the franchise. I'm getting my money's worth. Now then, can there be an argument over whether the older games are better than this new one? Sure. I don' t have a dog in that race, but that's not the same as claiming that the development team rushed this out based on.....nothing? Feelings that they should have certain things that you wanted? It's okay to be disappointed by the end product, but it's not the same thing as claiming that there was a problem with the development cycle or claiming a scenario that they rushed it to meet some pretend deadline. It's nothing but stories that you're inventing to justify your own disappointment in the game.

The game feels more like a foundation for future things as opposed to being a complete in box experience.

I mean this is literally what I said. And have you not seen most games that have been released in the last 10 or so years. Have you not seen how Bandai made Kakarot or the Xenoverse games? This has been game development methodology for awhile: put out a base game that you can support with future content. I mean, you guys do realize that game development has drastically shifted since 2007 right? Where making games is a far more expensive resource than it was 15 year ago? We're no longer in an period in which AAA studios can greenlight a sequel immediately after the release of the first game and then get it out the door in two years time. Never mind the fact that we're talking a "sequel--which lets be honest, this is a reboot/refresh intended to appeal not just to veterans of the older Tenkaichi games but intended to be a starting point for newbies. I mean it's there in the "Sparking Zero" name" --that is three console generations removed from the last sequel, being built from the ground up on brand new spanking hardware and expecting it to have all of that content? That isn't happening. Particuarly for the reasons I just mentioned. I get it, we're all playing armchair game developer here. But sometimes the easiest answer is also the correct one. That the version of Sparking Zero was always the intended version. And we can argue or not whether the game is good or not, but there's no reason to belive that it's unfinished.

it doesn't feel like the game was properly balanced.

I mean. Duh. It's an anime arena fighter. This was never going to be considered competitive. It was always about "watching the super Saiyans go brrrrrrr" The fun is supposed to be that these games are not all that well balanced.

It's nothing new or unexpected. Actually, pretty much ALL games are rushed and unfinished with devs having to select what to keep or not and keep on track quickly and link together two bits when something in the middle was cut.
Unused and unfinished elements are often found with the obvious reason being "didn't have time to finish it before the release date, so it was just left there out of reach in the data". Hence the existence of The Cutting Room Floor.

I wouldn't call it "rushed or unfinished"--it's just proper planning. Think about it this way: Any product being made (and not just video games) has to go through a series of steps from idea to product. So you workshop a bunch of things that you would like to have in the end product. A good project manager can then look at all these things and figure out "okay what is actually feasible within the timeline that you have" and then you go from there. Because all games have content that's left on the cutting room floor, but that's not a bad thing.

[Nickolaidas]

Using No Man Sky is a poor example because it misunderstands why it caught shit in the first place. The reason why people were unhappy with No Man Sky is because the marketing surrounding the game made promises about what kind of game it was. It was going to be the ultimate space game in which you can traverse the galaxy and visit billions of unique planets. And what was release was decidedly not that. And even then I'd argue that it's less a case of it being unfinished and more that the realities of game development reared its ugly head, and what they were selling wasn't what they were able to achieve.


That's not even remotely what's going on with Sparking Zero. And yes I have played the game--dumped 50 hours into it actually and not once have I thought boy this feels unfinished. Instead it feels exactly what it says on the tin: An anime fighter wtih a number of game modes featuring characters throughout the franchise. I'm getting my money's worth. Now then, can there be an argument over whether the older games are better than this new one? Sure. I don' t have a dog in that race, but that's not the same as claiming that the development team rushed this out based on.....nothing? Feelings that they should have certain things that you wanted? It's okay to be disappointed by the end product, but it's not the same thing as claiming that there was a problem with the development cycle or claiming a scenario that they rushed it to meet some pretend deadline. It's nothing but stories that you're inventing to justify your own disappointment in the game.

The game feels more like a foundation for future things as opposed to being a complete in box experience.

I mean this is literally what I said. And have you not seen most games that have been released in the last 10 or so years. Have you not seen how Bandai made Kakarot or the Xenoverse games? This has been game development methodology for awhile: put out a base game that you can support with future content. I mean, you guys do realize that game development has drastically shifted since 2007 right? Where making games is a far more expensive resource than it was 15 year ago? We're no longer in an period in which AAA studios can greenlight a sequel immediately after the release of the first game and then get it out the door in two years time. Never mind the fact that we're talking a "sequel--which lets be honest, this is a reboot/refresh intended to appeal not just to veterans of the older Tenkaichi games but intended to be a starting point for newbies. I mean it's there in the "Sparking Zero" name" --that is three console generations removed from the last sequel, being built from the ground up on brand new spanking hardware and expecting it to have all of that content? That isn't happening. Particuarly for the reasons I just mentioned. I get it, we're all playing armchair game developer here. But sometimes the easiest answer is also the correct one. That the version of Sparking Zero was always the intended version. And we can argue or not whether the game is good or not, but there's no reason to belive that it's unfinished.

it doesn't feel like the game was properly balanced.

I mean. Duh. It's an anime arena fighter. This was never going to be considered competitive. It was always about "watching the super Saiyans go brrrrrrr" The fun is supposed to be that these games are not all that well balanced.

It's nothing new or unexpected. Actually, pretty much ALL games are rushed and unfinished with devs having to select what to keep or not and keep on track quickly and link together two bits when something in the middle was cut.
Unused and unfinished elements are often found with the obvious reason being "didn't have time to finish it before the release date, so it was just left there out of reach in the data". Hence the existence of The Cutting Room Floor.

I wouldn't call it "rushed or unfinished"--it's just proper planning. Think about it this way: Any product being made (and not just video games) has to go through a series of steps from idea to product. So you workshop a bunch of things that you would like to have in the end product. A good project manager can then look at all these things and figure out "okay what is actually feasible within the timeline that you have" and then you go from there. Because all games have content that's left on the cutting room floor, but that's not a bad thing.

Sparking! Zero was rushed in terms of modes content. This was the price we had to pay for a gigantic roster. You can't seriously look at the game's modes and think this feels complete in this day and age. A bare story mode which is an overglorified slideshow, a Vs mode with a couple of variations and that's it.

I mean - Christ, the developers knew how barebones their modes were, they basically gave YOU a toolset to make content.

Don't think of 'rushed' as just 'unfinished gameplay mechanics'. The game could've benefitted from one more year of development in order to give you stuff to do.

[miguelnuva1]

Using No Man Sky is a poor example because it misunderstands why it caught shit in the first place. The reason why people were unhappy with No Man Sky is because the marketing surrounding the game made promises about what kind of game it was. It was going to be the ultimate space game in which you can traverse the galaxy and visit billions of unique planets. And what was release was decidedly not that. And even then I'd argue that it's less a case of it being unfinished and more that the realities of game development reared its ugly head, and what they were selling wasn't what they were able to achieve.


That's not even remotely what's going on with Sparking Zero. And yes I have played the game--dumped 50 hours into it actually and not once have I thought boy this feels unfinished. Instead it feels exactly what it says on the tin: An anime fighter wtih a number of game modes featuring characters throughout the franchise. I'm getting my money's worth. Now then, can there be an argument over whether the older games are better than this new one? Sure. I don' t have a dog in that race, but that's not the same as claiming that the development team rushed this out based on.....nothing? Feelings that they should have certain things that you wanted? It's okay to be disappointed by the end product, but it's not the same thing as claiming that there was a problem with the development cycle or claiming a scenario that they rushed it to meet some pretend deadline. It's nothing but stories that you're inventing to justify your own disappointment in the game.

The game feels more like a foundation for future things as opposed to being a complete in box experience.

I mean this is literally what I said. And have you not seen most games that have been released in the last 10 or so years. Have you not seen how Bandai made Kakarot or the Xenoverse games? This has been game development methodology for awhile: put out a base game that you can support with future content. I mean, you guys do realize that game development has drastically shifted since 2007 right? Where making games is a far more expensive resource than it was 15 year ago? We're no longer in an period in which AAA studios can greenlight a sequel immediately after the release of the first game and then get it out the door in two years time. Never mind the fact that we're talking a "sequel--which lets be honest, this is a reboot/refresh intended to appeal not just to veterans of the older Tenkaichi games but intended to be a starting point for newbies. I mean it's there in the "Sparking Zero" name" --that is three console generations removed from the last sequel, being built from the ground up on brand new spanking hardware and expecting it to have all of that content? That isn't happening. Particuarly for the reasons I just mentioned. I get it, we're all playing armchair game developer here. But sometimes the easiest answer is also the correct one. That the version of Sparking Zero was always the intended version. And we can argue or not whether the game is good or not, but there's no reason to belive that it's unfinished.

it doesn't feel like the game was properly balanced.

I mean. Duh. It's an anime arena fighter. This was never going to be considered competitive. It was always about "watching the super Saiyans go brrrrrrr" The fun is supposed to be that these games are not all that well balanced.

It's nothing new or unexpected. Actually, pretty much ALL games are rushed and unfinished with devs having to select what to keep or not and keep on track quickly and link together two bits when something in the middle was cut.
Unused and unfinished elements are often found with the obvious reason being "didn't have time to finish it before the release date, so it was just left there out of reach in the data". Hence the existence of The Cutting Room Floor.

I wouldn't call it "rushed or unfinished"--it's just proper planning. Think about it this way: Any product being made (and not just video games) has to go through a series of steps from idea to product. So you workshop a bunch of things that you would like to have in the end product. A good project manager can then look at all these things and figure out "okay what is actually feasible within the timeline that you have" and then you go from there. Because all games have content that's left on the cutting room floor, but that's not a bad thing.

Sparking! Zero was rushed in terms of modes content. This was the price we had to pay for a gigantic roster. You can't seriously look at the game's modes and think this feels complete in this day and age. A bare story mode which is an overglorified slideshow, a Vs mode with a couple of variations and that's it.

I mean - Christ, the developers knew how barebones their modes were, they basically gave YOU a toolset to make content.

Don't think of 'rushed' as just 'unfinished gameplay mechanics'. The game could've benefitted from one more year of development in order to give you stuff to do.

Rushed and barbies are two different things. Sparking's main drawn is a gigantic roster that you fight other players with. Stroy mode is something secondary.

I wish it had more single player content but I play mostly couch co-op so the game is still fun to me for time to time as a multiplier party game. I would call it rushes as much as I would say the argument is its barebones.