The Rise and Fall of Sparking Zero

Comments · 3.6K

• TV

  @tvgg0_10 · 1 year ago

  The thing that killed it for me was no cross play and the lack of maps

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• GI

  @giovannipaszkowski · 1 year ago

  The lack of cutscene during the storyline is something crazy

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• JM

  @JMESIX · 1 year ago

  It’s the lack of single player content. Dragon Ball Tenkaichi series has ALWAYS been a single player game. The focus and love from single player game modes is what carried the games. Sparking Zero unfortunately relies on online way too much. When your entire game focuses on online which is plagued in spammers, cheeses and disconnects it’s not surprise a lot of us quit. I hope they reconsider their plans for DLC and add game MODES instead of just characters

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• JA

  @jaythomas468 · 1 year ago

  Man, 5-6 months ago, everyone was talking about this game like it was one of the BEST DBZ game adaptations EVER.

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• MA

  @MarblesMadness · 10 months ago

  I think part of it is, genuinely, how we aren't kids anymore. We aren't stuck with just a few games; we can have as many as we want. Especially with the advent of freemium forever games like Fortnight. Budokai Tenkaichi 3 wouldn't have fared much better if it was released in present day, present time, because the world that allowed its success no longer exists.

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• KI

  @Kirbo710 · 1 year ago

  Its honestly so sad to see this game fall off...its been 17 years since the last one and it just...falls off in less than a year

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• RH

  @rhymestyle · 1 year ago

  This is my thoughts on the game, now that we&apos;re this many months into it&apos;s life span. I&apos;ll even break it down the way you did too. As a core DB game, I think its very good and very well made, but it&apos;s missing a lot of those elements that other DB games have had in the past to make it JUST RIGHT (if that makes sense). Anyways here&apos;s my thoughts. Warning: this will be a MLA format essay at this point because I got a lot to say.<br><br>Story: never touched it. I saw enough online to know I dont care for it. I do think they didnt wanna compete with Kakarot, but they should&apos;ve just purely focused on What-If like they promised. The fact that Gohan Black is really the only good What-If scenario shows you that they knew what they had to do, but didnt wanna do it. Also slideshows in 2025 is insane. Give us cutscenes, the shit that made us JUMP when we saw games like Storm. You create a whole what-if story mode and it&apos;ll be a banger mode. Heart was in the right place, but execution was whatever. Plus for me personally, its just NOT fun to play against CPUs. What sets BT3 (and BT4) aside from previous games is how good the AI is and how challenging it can be. Then you have this game where the AI is just buns regardless of what settings u give them. Whats even funnier is THERE IS AI PROGRAMMED IN THE GAME TO BE GODLY, but we cant really access it as an enemy setting. So with that said, story is a fumble.<br><br>Gameplay: For the most part, gameplay is actually good and very well made, HOWEVER, they implemented unnecessary mechanics that literally took away the tenkaichi aspects of the game. If they bar for bar took what we had in BT3 and that was what we got here, I think the game would be fine, but they chose to add dumb shit that just doesnt scale in the long run. As kids, we almost never Z countered (because the window was soo small) and vanishing took very precise timing. When the game came out, u can do these mechanics upon just opening the game, which made combat trash. The avg fighting game features a set up where IF YOU MESS UP, U GET COMBO&apos;D. It&apos;s simple. If I attack you and drop the combo, it is now my opponents turn. However, in SZ they upgraded Z Counters (into what they called super counters, not to be confused with vanishing in this game), and this led to you never truly having a turn. At any moment, anyone can mash up square and take their turn back. Super counters was the first big mechanic that none of us could see in early access or the first month of the game for the problem that it was. Vanishing was another issue that we saw day 1 of the game being out and how u can enter these endless vanish wars until someone runs out of ki. There was nothing that made u lose interest faster in a fight than seeing this vanish war every 2 min. Now I will say both of these mechanics got fixed and work better now, but still it took way too long and a lot of ppl still lost interest. They also changed a lot of mechanics for no reason. The revenge counter in BT3 was accessible by mashing ur shoulder buttons when getting combo&apos;d and by giving up a health bar, u can push someone back to neutral and take ur turn back. In SZ, they made this into a mechanic that u spend 2 bars for but only can stop a combo from the front. Most combos you aim for locks ur opponent from the back so this mechanic dead ass becomes useless in fights against competent players. KI SICKNESS. DO I EVEN NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS? You can still just cheese fights online by using ur buff abilities that give u no downside AT ALL for using. In BT, if u activate instaspark, the ki sickness likely will get u killed if u dont win. It made it a very DO OR DIE situation when u used those moves in BT3. In sZ? you can do it for free and then again and again and again. I can go on for hours with all the shit thats actually NOT good in the long run of the game here, but these are the basics that made a lot of us tired of the game.<br><br>Balance: Im adding this as a separate section because its important to discuss since a lot of people never understood &quot;THE GAME AINT MEANT TO BE BALANCED&quot; argument. In BT3, picking SSJ4 Gogeta and fighting krillin, always put the fusion in an advantage, however, it didnt mean it was an unwinnable situation. The advantages you had in the old game was doing a bit more damage on supers, having certain abilities, etc. Thats what &quot;the game aint meant to be balanced&quot; means. In SZ, a lot of people saw these cheese tactics that were available in the beginning and assumed THAT was what should be unbalanced, but thats not the case. They added too much that shouldnt have been there. In BT3, you had only 2 unblockable moves (from what I remember off tops) and that was FAther Son Kamehameha and super spirit bomb with EoZ Goku. In this game, it felt like EVERY OTHER CHARACTER had an unblockable for no reason at all. While yes, you can vanish if u time correctly, it didnt turn into a fun mechanic having to vanish for ur life every 3 knockbacks. Tbh, a game like SZ shouldnt have unblockables period because with proper set up, every ultimate can be pulled off. In SZ, mistiming a vanish means you die to ultimates. A Big one that I seen people discuss here and there is the damage. In BT, an ultimate did roughly about a bar/bar and a half of damage. This means, you can get combo&apos;d, get ulted, and still get up and fight. In Sz, for no reason at all, if u get hit with an ult, u lose 2 bars. A game where most characters have 3-4 bars, thats devastating. The damage should&apos;ve been the same as BT. This way you would get reward more for throwing hands than just sparking once and catching up to ur opponent immediately, or straight up winning off a hail mary ultimate. I mentioned it at the top, but theres no drawbacks to certain characters because ki sickness isnt in the game. While the core of the game had tenkaichi vibes, in all reality, the game didnt have it at all. <br><br>Custom Battles: Its NOT bad, just too complicated. 99% of people just make a custom battle be an endless fight where you have to find the hidden scenario to win. The 1% are true artists who can make some really good quests, but even then, its still pretty limited playing solo. Custom battles are only fun if you do it three idiots style where everyone controls a character. Adding a simple co-op option to this makes the game 100000% more fun. As it stands, the mode sucks and they def made it out to seem like an infinite content mode, but in all reality, there is no content. I pointed this out the very first time I saw it. I have zero hopes that they will ever address it unless they do a sequel. <br><br>Online: man oh man. This was something none of us could really see UNTIL we spent a few weeks online. With every anime game, you never know where the game will go once it is released and goes online. We seen this for over a decade now with anime fighters and every time its the same situation. Game drops -&gt; something cheesy discovered -&gt; it is everywhere online until fixed. People just eventually will stop playing the game and by the time its fixed, thats THAT MANY PEOPLE that are now gone. Some may come back, but others will just move on with their life. Being matched with an opponent who just wants to play vs one who&apos;s entire reputation seems to be connected to whether or not they win is insane. The players who jsut wanna play, you will have the best fights and the most fun. whether you win or lose, these games were dead ass the best. The players who just want to use every little exploit, well you just turn the game off for the day and play less and less every time u run into them. You can play this game for hours and the second you run into THAT ONE PLAYER, you&apos;re done for the day lmao. Also you only had one option at first, ranked. Who the hell do we get a game that had no casual option until recently? Creating a room, prior to casual mode, usually left u in an empty room, so that mode wasnt usable. This is the one thing Bleach did correctly by waiting to release ranked until the bullshit is all fixed. Dont even get me started on tournament mode because they didnt even do that correctly. In BT games, you were left floating over the grass, so if u got a hard knock down, youre out. In here, the second u step out the arena, you touch grass. HOW DID THEY PLAY BT AND THEN MAKE SPARKING ZERO? I genuinely feel like the dev team never actually played BT when they made this.<br><br>There is a lot to be said about this game. I dont think it is a bad game, it just has flaws that makes the game not as great as previous title and with the lack of things to do, its understandable why people stopped playing it as much as they did day one. First week was amazing. Tenkaichi felt like it was back. Then with every little flaw that came up, you ultimately began to accept that the shoes were just TOO LARGE to fill.

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• BO

  @BoyWonder1914 · 1 year ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n17yabSmRM&amp;t=447">7:27</a> I strongly disagree. As an adult who gets off work and wants to just play my game without being bothered, Story Mode and game content that doesn’t rely on being online or playing against other people is the main thing I want. I don’t care to play games like this competitively unless it’s with friends I have over my place. I hate that they did this to sports games like NBA 2K, and I’m not enjoying them doing it to fighting games.

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• CY

  @cy4n_knight_q8 · 1 year ago

  Bandai is the master of killing games using their favorite weapon: greed

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• TM

  @tmbfreak_16 · 1 year ago

  I was prepared to buy it exclusively for the story mode. Then I saw that it was a slideshow and all interest was lost

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• VO

  @vonnstevens2502 · 1 year ago

  I honestly blame ranked matches and rage quitting in online for this games downfall. People nowadays be playing ranked as their full time job and act like they’re getting paid from it

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• PI

  @piomb0819 · 1 year ago

  Short answer: there&apos;s no Arale.

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