Plus it looks like Supreme Kai is confirmed now too
Dragon Ball fighting games have been a staple in the West for over 20 years now since at least the first Dragon Ball Z Budokai, and the next in line is almost here.
Bandai Namco dropped a new trailer for Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero today unveiling the game’s Battle and Tournament Modes for a more competitive flair with some interesting options.
The upcoming Budokai Tenkaichi entry will indeed feature ranked online matches and a leaderboard where players can set their specific conditions including connection quality, disconnection rate, comparative rank and battle style.
There’s also casual online player matches as well as offline versus matches, which were previously confirmed to be limited to only the Hyperbolic Time Chamber stage.
World Tournament Mode was a staple of the PlayStation 2-era games to pit random characters against each other to see if you, a friend or a random computer would come out on top, and it’s nice to see it back for the new game.
Online and offline tournaments will be available in Sparking Zero where players can compete under special rules including the ability to turn off flying, make ring outs a win condition and limit the type of characters that can be used.
On top of being able to set your own rules, specific options for the World Tournament, Cell Games, Other World Tournament, Tournament of Destroyers, Tournament of Power and Yamcha games are available too.
Since Sparking Zero’s developers are aiming to have character strength reflective of their canon power levels and skills, this does sound odd to talk about the game in a competitive sense, but they have accounted for that.
Yamcha’s going to struggle trying to take down Super Saiyan Blue Gogeta of course though there’s more to it when it comes to matches.
Sparking’s Producer recently revealed their balance approach for the game by assigning each character has a cost associated to their strength, and team matches can be limited to a cap similar to Marvel vs. Capcom’s ratio style of team building except more official.
Bamco states here that ranked matches can be filtered by cost to hopefully create a more even playing field as well as the rules that can be put in place for tournaments.
Will this be enough to generate a dedicated competitive scene for Sparking Zero? Normally, we’d say no since it’s more of an arena fighting game, but this is Dragon Ball we’re talking about.
Many players are probably at least going to test the waters with it, and that will also depend on how the developers handle the game post-release with updates and potential balance adjustments.
We don’t expect to see DBSZ get its own pro circuit like the Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour or be on the Evo mainstage, but there is some potential there.
There’s still a lot of players going in on Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 after like 17 years, so people will dedicate themselves if they can find some nuggets of goodness.
It will also be funny to see the random upsets that appear in tournaments again too like a Saibaman taking down Perfect Cell.
Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is set to release on October 11 for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and PC sporting 164 playable characters including transformations — and a lot of different versions of Goku and Vegeta.
Friends become rivals in Battle and Tournament Mode!
Rise up the leaderboards in ranked and become the champion of your own tournament! #DBSZ
connection + rank filters
online + offline tournaments
spectator mode pic.twitter.com/Dv8iFfywX9— Bandai Namco US (@BandaiNamcoUS) September 3, 2024