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

[Koitsukai]

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.

This. This turning SS.

It's such an immersive mode, I can spend hours without even noticing it, I'm about to lose my family to this mode. You can actually create your own story mode, I've come up with the most faithful fights of each arc, much closer to the show than any other videogame ever did. So, yes, my own version trumps every other game and that's all thanks to that mode. And I haven't even touched upon non-Z characters so far, this mode can keep me entertained for months in a row, something the BT, RB or XV games never did.
If they could only tweak it a little bit like adding more stages to the mode, or allowing us to destroy Namek (or other stages) at will. And of course, completing the GT roster.

Maybe, the biggest sin of the game was to not take into account how lazy one can be, myself included at first, and rather creating their own scenarios, they prefer have it all cooked and served already. It sure took me a few months to go down that CUSTOM BATTLE mode rabbit hole.

[Scsigs]

I've gotta be completely honest. I don't give 2 shits about the mode where you can create your own what-if stories in this game. I played the minimum number of them needed to get the achievement (30) & don't plan on returning to it any time soon. It's fine for those who wanna spend the time going through it to create short stories, but it's not overly dazzling to me. It doesn't help that, at least in English, there are grammar mistakes because the game's sentence generator doesn't take that into account. In the ones made by the staff that I played, I saw a decent amount of typos that show the cracks of such a mode.

[Mr Baggins]

Custom Battle is easily my favorite thing to come out of any Dragon Ball game. The sheer number of tools it provides (even just for battle mechanics) is awesome, imperfections aside.

I don't think anyone would dispute that SZ has its rough edges, but "unfinished" or "rushed" are hardly words I would use to describe it.

[Rinsankajugin]

The more proper term to describe Sparking Zero is "unpolished". This is Spike's first DB game in over a decade, and they had to make it from scratch rather than using old assets like in previous games. Considering they worked on the game since 2018, that's almost SIX years of development, which definitely shows in terms of roster size. Though considering some of the assets that were datamined, it does make me wonder what at least one more year of development would've entailed.

• Every missing character and form from BT3 except for Arale
• Yamu
• Jaco
• Tagoma
• Mai (Probably Future Mai specifically)
• Champa
• Vados
• 1st Form Frost
• Zeno
• Zeno's Assistant
• Grand Priest
• Basil
• Lavender
• SS1 Caulifla
• Brianne de Chateau
• Sanka Ku
• Sous Roas
• Base (and probably SS) GT Vegeta
• SSB Kaioken Goku (as its own character)
• SSB Evolution Vegeta (as its own character)
• Gohan Black (since he has unique VS dialog against Goku)
• Kame House (currently in the main menu)
• Kami's Lookout (also currently in the main menu)
• Capsule Corp (ALSO in the main menu)
• Zeno's Palace (Main menu again)
• Raditz's Pod Landing Site (showed up in a cutscene)
• King Kai's Planet (showed up in a cutscene)
• Namek w/ Frieza's Ship (showed up in a cutscene)
• Rocky Land w/ Frieza's Ship (showed up in a cutscene)
• Destroyed Cell Games Arena (story mode-only)
• Gowasu's Planet (story mode-only)
• Normal and Completely Destroyed ToP Arena (story-mode only)
• Goku's House (not even sure where THIS location shows up in the game)

Also, apparently at one point in development, the game was going to have more of a Yamamuro-like art direction before going with the DBS Broly style.

[PhantomSaiyan]

I've only played Sparking Zero at my friend's house, but the create your own scenario mode seems pretty tedious, the idea itself is great and I'm sure that once you get into it it's a blast but it took so long to do anything, it definitely requires A LOT of patience from the player, creating things in it is not as easy as I had hoped

[Scsigs]

The more proper term to describe Sparking Zero is "unpolished". This is Spike's first DB game in over a decade, and they had to make it from scratch rather than using old assets like in previous games. Considering they worked on the game since 2018, that's almost SIX years of development, which definitely shows in terms of roster size. Though considering some of the assets that were datamined, it does make me wonder what at least one more year of development would've entailed.

Spoiler:

• Every missing character and form from BT3 except for Arale
• Yamu
• Jaco
• Tagoma
• Mai (Probably Future Mai specifically)
• Champa
• Vados
• 1st Form Frost
• Zeno
• Zeno's Assistant
• Grand Priest
• Basil
• Lavender
• SS1 Caulifla
• Brianne de Chateau
• Sanka Ku
• Sous Roas
• Base (and probably SS) GT Vegeta
• SSB Kaioken Goku (as its own character)
• SSB Evolution Vegeta (as its own character)
• Gohan Black (since he has unique VS dialog against Goku)
• Kame House (currently in the main menu)
• Kami's Lookout (also currently in the main menu)
• Capsule Corp (ALSO in the main menu)
• Zeno's Palace (Main menu again)
• Raditz's Pod Landing Site (showed up in a cutscene)
• King Kai's Planet (showed up in a cutscene)
• Namek w/ Frieza's Ship (showed up in a cutscene)
• Rocky Land w/ Frieza's Ship (showed up in a cutscene)
• Destroyed Cell Games Arena (story mode-only)
• Gowasu's Planet (story mode-only)
• Normal and Completely Destroyed ToP Arena (story-mode only)
• Goku's House (not even sure where THIS location shows up in the game)

Also, apparently at one point in development, the game was going to have more of a Yamamuro-like art direction before going with the DBS Broly style.

Spoiler:

I agree. 1 more year of development time so they can finish the rest of what they had planned for it & balance it better would've been nice.

Yeesh. Am I glad they didn't do that artstyle. Yamamuro's artstyle has degraded so much over the years. Xenoverse used it as a basis & the characters look like they've been dipped in oil, some have weird proportions in places (Goku's extra buff body, SS Goku having a weird extra long spike in the middle of his hair, Vegeta's face, etc), & animate weirdly at times.

[FPSSJ4_Goku]

The more proper term to describe Sparking Zero is "unpolished". This is Spike's first DB game in over a decade, and they had to make it from scratch rather than using old assets like in previous games. Considering they worked on the game since 2018, that's almost SIX years of development, which definitely shows in terms of roster size. Though considering some of the assets that were datamined, it does make me wonder what at least one more year of development would've entailed.

Spoiler:

• Every missing character and form from BT3 except for Arale
• Yamu
• Jaco
• Tagoma
• Mai (Probably Future Mai specifically)
• Champa
• Vados
• 1st Form Frost
• Zeno
• Zeno's Assistant
• Grand Priest
• Basil
• Lavender
• SS1 Caulifla
• Brianne de Chateau
• Sanka Ku
• Sous Roas
• Base (and probably SS) GT Vegeta
• SSB Kaioken Goku (as its own character)
• SSB Evolution Vegeta (as its own character)
• Gohan Black (since he has unique VS dialog against Goku)
• Kame House (currently in the main menu)
• Kami's Lookout (also currently in the main menu)
• Capsule Corp (ALSO in the main menu)
• Zeno's Palace (Main menu again)
• Raditz's Pod Landing Site (showed up in a cutscene)
• King Kai's Planet (showed up in a cutscene)
• Namek w/ Frieza's Ship (showed up in a cutscene)
• Rocky Land w/ Frieza's Ship (showed up in a cutscene)
• Destroyed Cell Games Arena (story mode-only)
• Gowasu's Planet (story mode-only)
• Normal and Completely Destroyed ToP Arena (story-mode only)
• Goku's House (not even sure where THIS location shows up in the game)

Also, apparently at one point in development, the game was going to have more of a Yamamuro-like art direction before going with the DBS Broly style.

Spoiler:

I agree. 1 more year of development time so they can finish the rest of what they had planned for it & balance it better would've been nice.

Yeesh. Am I glad they didn't do that artstyle. Yamamuro's artstyle has degraded so much over the years. Xenoverse used it as a basis & the characters look like they've been dipped in oil, some have weird proportions in places (Goku's extra buff body, SS Goku having a weird extra long spike in the middle of his hair, Vegeta's face, etc), & animate weirdly at times.

If someone were to make a DBSZ mod along the lines of DBXV2 Revamp, would you want to give it a go? Xenoverse 2 Revamp is, by and large, the best Xenoverse 2 mod I've ever seen, as it completely remakes every single character's models, adds new clothes, Expert Missions and quests, gives spiking transforming hair for every male and female hairstyle, new faces, new hairs, ANIMATED TAILS, and a hell of a lot more. It's like 10 DLCs packed into one free mod.

A shame that we have to rely on fans to make games better than the devs do.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

A shame that we have to rely on fans to make games better than the devs do.

We have to rely on fans to improve/fix the games, to provide us with an authentic version of the 80s & 90s series, to provide us with a more accurate translation of the manga, etc... Every time these companies half ass something, it's fans picking up the pieces and fixing the problems.

[Mr Baggins]

A shame that we have to rely on fans to make games better than the devs do.

I shouldn't have to explain why this is a profoundly ignorant statement.

Modders don't make games, they make mods. Developers work tirelessly to create and program all this shit from scratch. The former can change the decorations around all they want, but they often have neither the talent nor the resources to build the house. Everything you just described in your example is people tampering with an existing foundation to make "content".

Extremely poor comparison.

[MCDaveG]

Playing on console and seeing these mods makes me a bit sad

Yeah, but that's a thing. When I voice my concerns, many people on the internet step up to defend the developers etc.
I am and always will be on the side of customer, more so, when I worked in big companies and seen the shenanigans from the inside.
I feel as customers, we have right to step up and defend our "investments" into buying licenses to play half assed copies, or stuff that was done to meet deadlines and product was hurt in the process or "fully realized" in it's potential.
You go on the market, charge money for something, expect reviews and ratings from people that buy it or go under.

This is really painful on consoles, as you are pretty much locked-in with how things are released and pray to god for patches.
I don't take opinions like "but games take longer to develop nowadays"... then take more time, care and adjust pricing if it needs to be.
I will never attack developers and workers themselves, but the blame lies solely on the companies.

In case of Sparking!Zero, the game lacks hard in game content beside the roster. It's like Mortal Kombat 1, but thankfully without rudiculous microtransactions to unlock skins and character levels... but at least, it has the Invasions where you can still unlock levels pretty effectively and have tons of things to unlock, even tho it's boring and repetitive.
After you finish story mode in SZ, have one go at each tournament and custom battles, you are done. There is nothing else to do.
Custom Battle creator is great on paper, but the UX is insane and creating custom battles time consuming and tedious.
Feels like it got cobbled together for end user, which makes me personally not eager to use it after few tries.

Also, the customization option looks half-baked, like they did it for the game with accesories and costume slots, but didn't make accesories and costumes for it, besides few things. Wanting new story episodes is one thing and yeah, that can be hard on development side, but if they put it ton of content to discover and unlock for customization, then half the trouble with lacking content might be solved (I am left in shop with the voiceovers left... have no interest in them and they are rudiculously priced for what they are).
And I honestly have nothing in defense for this state of things.

The game is great in it's core, but you feel it's missing a lot.
More accesories and customization options, custom battle creator with better user experience and design, maybe even toss in survival and another fighting mode and the game would be fine.
Competitive online play doesn't make much sense to me with this kind of game, like it does with FighterZ.

[kemuri07]

A shame that we have to rely on fans to make games better than the devs do.

I shouldn't have to explain why this is a profoundly ignorant statement.

Modders don't make games, they make mods. Developers work tirelessly to create and program all this shit from scratch. The former can change the decorations around all they want, but they often have neither the talent nor the resources to build the house. Everything you just described in your example is people tampering with an existing foundation to make "content".

Extremely poor comparison.

Pretty much this. Modders have the time to devote themselves into passion projects or doing weird shit, which is cool! awesome! But it's not the same as building a game from the ground up, nor do they have to worry about deadlines or working or other projects. It's a fun way to enhance a thing you like, but it's certainly not the same thing as actual game development.

I feel as customers, we have right to step up and defend our "investments" into buying licenses to play half assed copies, or stuff that was done to meet deadlines and product was hurt in the process or "fully realized" in it's potential.

It's called doing your research, reading reviews and figuring out whether or not the product is worth your time and money. And investments? Please. You're buying a game to play, you're not investing shit.

sigh I swear this thread reminds me of how much I fucking hate gamers.

[Cold Skin]

I don't see many ways the custom battle creation could be made more simple.
It takes time when creating cutscenes, that's unavoidable but already the simplest it can be: choosing where the camera is, choosing how the characters are positionned, what animation they do, what facial expression they have, what the music is, what the subtitles say and same thing for the next shot.
How could it even be more simple except simply not featuring the option at all and not giving you a choice for the category?
Because right now, each of these options is "look at the list and check what suits you in the preview", there's no faster or simpler way to do it, there's just slowly taking the time to try things and find what you're looking for.

The only things really missing is a "search by words" function for dialogues (though the alphabetical order and various skips already make it much more manageable than before) and that setting gameplay effects lacks previews (for example you can preview musics everywhere else - cutscenes or stage music - but not when setting "change the music" or you can't preview special attacks to see what Blast 1, Blast 2 and Ultimate Blast are like).

The rest is programming or effect that can't be made easier than "when this happens [choose what "this" is] then that happens [choose what "that" is]". How are you supposed to make it more simple than stating what you want and when in a list?

Do some guys really think that they're supposed to be able to create a cutscene-riddled custom battle in 30 minutes tops?
Creating takes time, finding things, placing things, checking things, etc. It's like creating a Fortnite map or a Little Big Planet map, anything for any game having a creative mode: it will take days going through inventories and menus and linking events and causes and consequences. Or even weeks, for just one level/episode.
And there is nothing else to expect, nothing more simple, nothing faster.

Actually, yes, there is a "simple mode" that the game includes, and it goes just the way I said: the only thing to make it simpler is simply deleting options because those options themselves are already the most simple they can possibly be. So you end up having three quarters of everything taken away from you if you want to go fast and easy.

It's like a house. You want it perfectly how you want? Then you will take the time to build it from scratch, and choose where every wall is, and choose materials, and choose where the windows are, and choose furniture one by one from a catalog or from visits to various shops, slowly, over time.
You want it fast? Then you get a few pre-made fully furnished houses and you can just choose the painting of the walls - one unique color per room . Congratulations, that's how you get simple, but don't complain that you couldn't decide much.

So if some complain that it takes hours to create something in custom battle and navigate through a few menus, then they missed a point: it's supposed to be that way. Days and week of work, for a rewards that's worth more than anything else in the game: your own dream episode following a concept you decide, a unique opportunity (especially considering you can share it with the world).

[gokugambitoptimus]

I hope one day they will stop with the variants "system" (or at least variants would be limited to things like Kid Gohan, Teen Gohan, Adult Gohan and Future Gohan because all of them are very different)

After all of this years, the roster of the franchise has been expanded enormously so it's very annoying that characters like Super 17, Piccolo Daimao, Ganos (how is possible that the Universe 4 doesn't have any fighter in the game ?) and a lot of characters have been left out (some of them were in Tenkaichi 3 roster) because Spike Chunsoft & Namco Bandai thought 4 Goku base, 3 Super Saiyan Goku, 4 Vegeta base, 3 Super Saiyan Vegeta, 2 Freezers, 2 Super Saiyan Gogeta, etc are more important than unique characters and, obviously, they were wrong because players ignore a lot of these variants because they are very similar and doesn't allow funny things like Ultra Instintc Goku with Yardrat outfit. Even you can't transform into Ultra Instinct from any of the 4 Goku base, something ridiculous

Like others said, a deep customization system could be the best way to solve this problem and keep the game funny because the player has a lot of options to try and improve any character in the roster

They just need to perfect the system that was introduced in Raging Blast 2 and then we will get the best Budokai Tenkaichi

Of course, others things like a complete story mode, a lot of modes (either offline or online), a huge amount of skins and stages are important to get the best Dragon Ball game ever

[miguelnuva1]

I hope one day they will stop with the variants "system" (or at least variants would be limited to things like Kid Gohan, Teen Gohan, Adult Gohan and Future Gohan because all of them are very different)

After all of this years, the roster of the franchise has been expanded enormously so it's very annoying that characters like Super 17, Piccolo Daimao, Ganos (how is possible that the Universe 4 doesn't have any fighter in the game ?) and a lot of characters have been left out (some of them were in Tenkaichi 3 roster) because Spike Chunsoft & Namco Bandai thought 4 Goku base, 3 Super Saiyan Goku, 4 Vegeta base, 3 Super Saiyan Vegeta, 2 Freezers, 2 Super Saiyan Gogeta, etc are more important than unique characters and, obviously, they were wrong because players ignore a lot of these variants because they are very similar and doesn't allow funny things like Ultra Instintc Goku with Yardrat outfit. Even you can't transform into Ultra Instinct from any of the 4 Goku base, something ridiculous

Like others said, a deep customization system could be the best way to solve this problem and keep the game funny because the player has a lot of options to try and improve any character in the roster

They just need to perfect the system that was introduced in Raging Blast 2 and then we will get the best Budokai Tenkaichi

Of course, others things like a complete story mode, a lot of modes (either offline or online), a huge amount of skins and stages are important to get the best Dragon Ball game ever

The multiple Gokus and Vegeta's are not the reason the other characters were left out because it would take about the same amount of time to make costumes as it would to make variations the way we see them now unless you wanted less moves and less costumes for Goku and Vegeta overall.

That being said I do think Goku and Vegeta should be

Goku Db
Goku Z
Goku Super
Goku GT
Goku Daima

Vegeta scouter
Vegeta Z
Vegeta GT
Vegeta Daima

The adult Daima versions can be combined with the z versions.

[MCDaveG]

A shame that we have to rely on fans to make games better than the devs do.

I shouldn't have to explain why this is a profoundly ignorant statement.

Modders don't make games, they make mods. Developers work tirelessly to create and program all this shit from scratch. The former can change the decorations around all they want, but they often have neither the talent nor the resources to build the house. Everything you just described in your example is people tampering with an existing foundation to make "content".

Extremely poor comparison.

Pretty much this. Modders have the time to devote themselves into passion projects or doing weird shit, which is cool! awesome! But it's not the same as building a game from the ground up, nor do they have to worry about deadlines or working or other projects. It's a fun way to enhance a thing you like, but it's certainly not the same thing as actual game development.

I feel as customers, we have right to step up and defend our "investments" into buying licenses to play half assed copies, or stuff that was done to meet deadlines and product was hurt in the process or "fully realized" in it's potential.

It's called doing your research, reading reviews and figuring out whether or not the product is worth your time and money. And investments? Please. You're buying a game to play, you're not investing shit.

sigh I swear this thread reminds me of how much I fucking hate gamers.

Actually, I do. I support the developers with money, which in return give me more support into my beloved products and chance to get sequels and invest my time into playing the game. Take a chill pill, cowboy
You're probably not in a good mood and I neither am I interested in smartassery.

[Scsigs]

I hope one day they will stop with the variants "system" (or at least variants would be limited to things like Kid Gohan, Teen Gohan, Adult Gohan and Future Gohan because all of them are very different)

After all of this years, the roster of the franchise has been expanded enormously so it's very annoying that characters like Super 17, Piccolo Daimao, Ganos (how is possible that the Universe 4 doesn't have any fighter in the game ?) and a lot of characters have been left out (some of them were in Tenkaichi 3 roster) because Spike Chunsoft & Namco Bandai thought 4 Goku base, 3 Super Saiyan Goku, 4 Vegeta base, 3 Super Saiyan Vegeta, 2 Freezers, 2 Super Saiyan Gogeta, etc are more important than unique characters and, obviously, they were wrong because players ignore a lot of these variants because they are very similar and doesn't allow funny things like Ultra Instintc Goku with Yardrat outfit. Even you can't transform into Ultra Instinct from any of the 4 Goku base, something ridiculous

Like others said, a deep customization system could be the best way to solve this problem and keep the game funny because the player has a lot of options to try and improve any character in the roster

They just need to perfect the system that was introduced in Raging Blast 2 and then we will get the best Budokai Tenkaichi

Of course, others things like a complete story mode, a lot of modes (either offline or online), a huge amount of skins and stages are important to get the best Dragon Ball game ever

Like the other guy said, the multiple Gokus & Vegetas aren't the problem. Literally every variant of them (when they're adults) is the same character model with different ki attacks, but the same movement controls & physical combos. The only different things are the variants that end up as skins separate from the part of the story they're from. This is literally no different than making just 1 character model that you assign different movesets for what you want to fight with & giving them all of the alternate skins. It's literally a copy/paste job for the base character model & physical combos. While the abundance of alternate character models to fill up the roster is dumb, it's either 1 or the other & this complaint is just dumb at the end of the day. I argue that this system could use an overhaul & good additions (some I'm given to understand were done in the Raging Blast games), which they COULD introduce in future updates as the DLCs come out.

[WittyUsername]

I would definitely have preferred that they didn’t use up roster space on three different versions of Z Goku alone.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

I would definitely have preferred that they didn’t use up roster space on three different versions of Z Goku alone.

I don't know why they didn't expand on what Raging Blast did by having one base Goku/Vegeta that can have their supers, ultimates, and transformations customized.

[miguelnuva1]

I would definitely have preferred that they didn’t use up roster space on three different versions of Z Goku alone.

You wouldn't have gotten any more characters rather they were customers or separate eras they way they are now.

I would definitely have preferred that they didn’t use up roster space on three different versions of Z Goku alone.

I don't know why they didn't expand on what Raging Blast did by having one base Goku/Vegeta that can have their supers, ultimates, and transformations customized.

Because Tenkaichi separated them into eras as an easy way to up the character roster. In Tenkaichi 3 the 3 Gokus played differently enough there was actually a point to preferring one to the other. Goku mid was a beast in Tenkaichi 3 for example.

[MCDaveG]

I also remember the team attacks when you had chosen certain characters from Raging Blast, like Goku's nelson on opponent and Piccolo blasting them with Makkankosappo.
Or volleyball with Gotenks and Piccolo, or Androids doing that team attack they used on Future Gohan.
They were quite fun, when I discovered them in RB. Would be cool to have them in SZ.