He was supposed to be a conspicuously bad character, initially, but wound up being ridiculously strong, surprisingly, and now has been regulated back down to being bad, hopefully. That’s the story of Yajirobe thus far in Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, a game that’s been out for a few weeks now and just received its first patch update.
Despite rolling the patch out early Thursday morning, developers at Bandai Namco haven’t shared any official list of patch notes. The community, however, has already figured out how the sword wielding warrior has been hindered.
Though he did help out a crucial juncture or two, Yajirobe has traditionally been an onlooker from the sidelines whose pride ushers him toward being overly confident and thus a bit of a joke fighter next to the likes of Goku and Vegeta. As such, he wasn’t meant to be all that powerful in Sparking Zero, but wound up with way more juice than intended.
It wasn’t that Yajirobe had abilities that were lopping off more damage than a fully powered up Spirit Bomb or an Ultra Instinct Kamehameha, but instead was insanely efficient. As a very inexpensive, 2-Destruction Point character, Yajirobe enjoyed perk of starting fights with 2 skill points already stocked, which made gaining access to his 5 Skill Sensu Bean maneuver quite feasible.
Sensu Beans instantly and famously heal characters in the Dragon Ball universe, and allow Yajirobe to fully restore his health bars. This proved to be way more effective than developers though as online players quickly started abusing this ability and scoring more wins that you’d expect with such a low tier hero.
Thanks to the information from LotusAsukara on X, we can see that the character has been nerfed from a few angles. Sensu Bean now costs an additional skill point to use, he begins the match with 0 skill points, and his health has been reduced by half of a bar:
Yajirobe’s Senzu Beans skill now costs 6 Skill Count instead of 5. Also, he now starts a match with 0 skill count instead of 2. His health has also been reduced from 3 Health Bars to 2 and 1/2. #DragonBallSparkingZero pic.twitter.com/dNQv1qpBrm
— ~Lotus (@LotusAsakura) October 24, 2024
The patch also aimed to rectify issues regarding buggy online controls, difficulty levels in Episode Battles, and operational stability. Without notes we have to simply wait and see if these issues have been fully fixed, but it seems Bandai isn’t quite done tidying Sparking Zero up on this initial pass:
The patch is now live!
Also, we are aware of some remaining issues and are investigating:
-Character rank reset to 0
-Connection errors & online matching issues
-Corrupted save data
We apologize to all affected players and thank you for your patience.— Dragon Ball Games (@dragonballgames) October 24, 2024
This update is live on all platforms including PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam, but be aware that replay data will be deleted, so you’ll want to back any saved battles up if you want to hang onto them.