I loved Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero when it launched in 2024 and felt like a near-perfect continuation of the Budokai Tenkaichi series. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of characters from the original Dragon Ball, as well as a couple of odd exclusions from the rest of the franchise, but the recently released NEO DLC set out to fix this while adding a bounty of nifty goodies to the game. And, brother/sister/sibling, did it ever. Bandai Namco offered us a code to check it out, and it’s completed the Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero package perfectly.
Right out the gate, over 30 new characters are part of Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero NEO, and they span most of the entire massive franchise – with a lovely ever-so-slight bias towards the original Dragon Ball. Classic fighters like Mercenary Tao, Spike the Devil Man, and Nam are all present and play exactly like you’d hope they would, though this also means you’re going to have a harder time competing against characters from later in the series who have far more ridiculous power sets. Beloved Z characters like Pikkon and Supreme Kai, GT icons like Super 17 and Nuova Shenron, missing Super fighters like Champa and Jaco, and even more obscure outliers like Chilled and Super Saiyan Bardock are all included, filling out the roster perfectly.
Every added character is a blast to use, and I’m glad such a wide variety of fighters were chosen. I can’t say I ever expected to play as Mighty Mask in Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero (it’s just Goten and Kid Trunks on each other’s shoulders while disguised as a tournament contestant), but I’ve had a lot of fun messing around with him and other similarly odd characters over the last couple of days – especially on the four diverse new stages that are part of this DLC. The roster feels truly complete now, and I hope the game just adds more fighters and stages as new series come out over the years, à la Xenoverse 2.
Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero NEO even adds a whole roguelike mode.
The other biggest addition in Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is Limit Breaker Journey – a run-based mode in which you pick a character and build up your stats through battles and events in order to take on a powerful final boss. It’s incredibly different from any of the other modes in the game, incorporating light story elements with some roguelike gameplay flair. I was surprised to see that pretty much every character has their own little intro and outro that coincide with the main concept (characters from across time and space are assembled by the Zenos to battle for fun), making each character’s run feel more unique.
I did a few runs as both base roster characters and as some of the new fighters included in Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero NEO, and had a delightful time for the most part. As you might expect from a roguelike mode, luck does factor in, so a couple of runs were extremely short, but the overall sensation of powering up your favorite characters in whatever way you like through different stat boosts is enjoyable in a way that is completely new to this game. Plus, there’s an in-depth in-game achievement system for just Limit Breaker Journey, which rewards you with plenty of goodies as you progress. I’m a sucker for bountiful progression systems, and I’m extremely glad this DLC came with another one.
As a massive Dragon Ball fan, and a similarly massive fan of Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero as a game, I feel no hesitation whatsoever in recommending Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero NEO. Pretty much every character I could ask for (outside of yet-to-be-adapted Super manga fighters, but I’m sure they’ll come as the anime adaptations do) is now present and accounted for, and the Limit Breaker Journey mode is a fantastic new mode. If you enjoyed Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero already and have a hankering for more, NEO will likely be as much of a treat to you as it was to me.
