Forget Great Ape Vegeta, this is Dragon Ball Sparking Zero’s most frustrating feature

Like many Dragon Ball Sparking Zero players, I struggled in taking down Great Ape Vegeta – but there’s a far more frustrating part of the game that Bandai needs to address.

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero has already proven to be a massive hit with fans before its official release. We at Dexerto praised it as a perfect return for the Budokai series, and while that’s true, there’s a Great Ape-sized elephant in the room that’s driving me up the wall.

So far, much of the discussion about the game’s difficulty has revolved around Great Ape Vegeta, a relatively early boss character that even Bandai joked about on X, telling players to switch difficulties.

Once you know what you’re doing, the fight isn’t that frustrating, and even if you don’t, you can just keep on trying over and over by pressing the “retry” button.

Here’s the thing, though. The big selling point of Sparking Zero is the unique “what if” scenarios that play out by completing special objectives. These often require players to beat a certain foe extremely quickly.

The problem? Unlike dying during the Great Ape Vegeta fight, you can’t retry right away. If you aren’t fast enough, the story will progress as intended. But if you want a second chance to unlock that “what if” moment or Sparking Episode, you need to exit out of the next cutscene, go back to the map, reload the mission you just played, skip the cinematic and then, at long last, you can try again.

This is tedious as hell. Yes, if you fall behind on time while you’re fighting, you can just pause and retry right then and there, but if you’re cutting it close and think you have a chance and don’t succeed, you’re going to need to follow the above steps again and again.

I found there’s only one saving grace, and that’s that certain voice lines will play once you’re no longer able to complete the extra objective, giving a fraction of time to pause and retry before you need to spend precious time reloading the mission.

Dexerto/Bandai Namco

Sparking Zero has many “what if” possibilities.

To make matters worse, you can’t lower the difficulty to get these special endings. Plus, there’s no timer on how long you have to beat your opponent(s). I get that a timer might break the immersion of the battle a bit, but it should at least be an option.

I literally spent two full hours trying to beat Goku, Krillin, Gohan and Piccolo as Frieza before running out of time. I had a lot of fun during each attempt, don’t get me wrong… But I’d rather not have to spend so much time going through menus to get another shot.

Sparking Zero would really benefit from having a “retry last mission” button. It would really, really make things less cumbersome.

Unlike Hit, I don’t have a real-life Time Skip ability. Bandai, I haven’t collected the Dragon Balls and I know you’re not Shenron, but can you please grant me this wish?