The best Dragon Ball fighting game since the last one!
Just look at those amazing graphics and impressive gameplay. There’s even a story mode with What If scenarios. As a long time Dragon Ball fan who’s only played Dragon Ball Fighterz for five minutes during a free trail, I’m so excited to one-day play this game for at least an hour before deleting it out of frustration over losing every online match to fighting game experts with months of gameplay experience and high cholesterol under their belt.
At least I was until I found one glaring problem with this otherwise fantastic game:
Where are all the characters?!
Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero currently hosts a measly 182 character roster. Are you kidding me? Where’s Super 17 from Dragon Ball GT? The Farmer from the first episode of Dragon Ball Z? Mr. Popo? Jaco? Android 8? Dende? Grand Elder Guru? Gine? Dr. Briefs? How could Bandai Namco forget about them?!
Also, why are there so few Goku alternate characters? Where’s Heart Disease Goku and Recovering In Medical Pod On Namek Goku? What about Pink Shirt Vegeta, Baseball Star Yamcha, Cell Egg, Mildly Depressed Tien, and Pregnant Videl? They’re all nowhere to be found. What the hell’s going on here?!
And you can just forget about playing as a guest character. No Arale from Dr. Slump, Beelzebub from Sand Land, Mihawk from One Piece, or Sailor Uranus from Sailor Moon. Ghostface from the Scream franchise was such an obvious pick I’m flabbergasted he still hasn’t been announced at the time of this review. Even freakin’ Superman from DC Comics is nowhere to be seen.
I can only hope these characters and more will become available in future DLC. Although, it’s a shame another video game developer has potentially gatekept hundreds of fan-favorite characters just to make an extra buck.
Shame on you, Bandai Namco. Grow some dragon balls and stop giving in to corporate greed.
Mammoth Base Opera Castle 