There’s a lot to love about Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO, but as with any game, there’s also room for improvement with Bandai Namco and Spike Chunsoft’s arena fighter. And as often tends to be the case, even in these early days after the game’s release, the modding community has stepped up and started delivering solid mods that improve the Sparking! ZERO experience in a variety of ways, both big and small. Here, we’re going to go over a few such mods that you can find for the game on NexusMods.
CHOOSE YOUR OWN MAPS
Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO boasts a staggeringly massive roster of playable characters, but where its maps and arenas are concerned, options become a bit more limited. To remedy that, there’s the Let’s Fight Somewhere Else mod by NexusMods user Sora101Ven. As the mod’s name suggests, it lets you access any and all custom maps that the game normally doesn’t let you play in, including maps from cutscenes and the main menu. Though the mod’s primary purpose is to make more arenas available for players who wish to play local 1v1 matches, it can also be used in story mode.
CHOOSE YOUR OWN CAPSULES
Capsules are a crucial progression element in Sparking! ZERO, allowing players to customize characters, enhance skills, and more- though you don’t have the freedom to use them exactly as you would want. If, however, you apply the Custom Battle Capsules in Battle Mode mod by Hinkii- well, the name pretty much explains it. With this mod, capsules that are otherwise available exclusively in Custom Mode alsl become useable in Battle Mode.
LONGER BATTLES
Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO does an incredibly job of capturing the epic scale and utter, over the top carnage that fights in the Dragon Ball universe have always been known for, but what if you wanted it to take things even further? Well, there’s a way to make fights last longer, at the very least. The mod titled Characters HP X2 on NexusMods by Gantz79 does exactly what it says on the tin, and doubles the max HP of almost every character in the game, as a result of which fights end up lasting significantly longer.
REVAMPED CHARACTER SELECTION
Let’s move beyond mods that can have an impact on the gameplay experience and touch on some that are instead focused on tweaking the visual experience. For instance, there’s the Character Selection Screen Revamped mod by NexusMods user lilcino, which takes the low resolution character portraits in the game’s character selection screen, throws them out the window, and instead replaces them with high quality official artwork for every single character. Why that artwork wasn’t used for those purposes in the game to begin with is anyone’s guess, but hey- at least we have the modders to fall back on, right?
UNLOCKED FRAME RATE
The quest for better performance and platform-specific optimization is one that the games industry is never going to stop chasing, and unfortunately, for all of its strengths, Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO does have some issues on that front on PC. For instance, its performance can be a bit choppy, while its 60 FPS cap is also something that many have taken issue with. However, the game’s Performance Enhancer mod by ChemBoy1 not only removes that frame rate cap, it also enables temporal upscaling and disables chromatic aberration, while also adding an option to disable bloom. The end result is noticeable improvements on the performance side of things.
DBZ SHADER
Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO is a really good looking game, and a lot of that is obviously down to how well it captures the look and aesthetic of the Dragon Ball universe. However, for fans of the Dragon Ball Z anime in particular, the game maybe doesn’t exactly capture that visual style. If you want to move it a little bit further in that direction, you can DBZ Inspired Reshade mod by zoretnak to make the game look a little bit more like Dragon Ball Z.
ANIME GRAPHICS
Here’s another option to consider for players who are looking to make Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO look more like the anime. The Anime Graphics mod by Tacto1 applies a new coat to the game, slightly altering its visuals just a tad so that it retains its core look while also capturing the anima look a little more accurately. No, it’s not a huge difference, but it’s not a negligible one either.
VISUAL ENHANCEMENTS
The Clarity and Color Accuracy Preset mod by NexusMods user Jupa124 is definitely worth looking into, given the very noticeable technical and visual improvements it brings to the table. Again, Sparking! ZERO is a solid enough looking game in and of itself, but the differences with this mod applied are plainly visible, from improved lighting, a greater level of detail, sharper image quality, better draw distances, and more.
HUD TOGGLE
There’s a lot to keep track of during fights in Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO, which, of course, means a pretty busy HUD, especially when fights get particularly hectic. And while the importance of that is easy to understand, especially in a fighting game, it’s also undeniable, that for many, a cluttered HUD can impact the immersion factor significantly. Thankfully, though Sparking! ZERO doesn’t have an option to turn off its HUD, you can do so with the press of a button NexusMods user LeviGary’s HUD Toggle mod. Having the option to turn off the game’s HUD whenever you want so you can more thoroughly immerse yourself in its explosive battles is definitely a nice bonus, and one that Bandai Namco will hopefully officially add into the game at some point down the line.
BUDOKAI TENKAICHI 4
Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO is, of course, the long awaited fourth instalment in the beloved Budokai Tenkaichi series, but unlike past instalments, this time around, Bandai Namco chose to launch the game with an officially translated title, rather then the localization of the original trilogy. It is, of course, only a name at the end of the day, and not something that impacts the experience in any way, but if you do want to change that detail, you can do so with the Budokai Tenkaichi 4 Logo on Main Menu mod by lilcino- and yes, the mod does exactly what its name suggests.