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Although it’s true that there’s been a lot of Dragon Ball games over the past few console generations,Dragon Ball: Sparking Zerois a totally different beast. A fourth Budokai Tenkaichi game is something that fans have been dreaming of for more than a decade now.
Well, it took its sweet time getting here, but Sparking Zero, like Shenron, has finally brought that wish to life with the biggest game in the series to date. After waiting for so long, you might be wondering just how much time you’re going to need to put into it - let’s rock the dragon and break it down.
How Long To Beat Episode Battles
Aside from multiplayer matches and versus battles which are essentially endless,the bulk of your time in Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is going to be spent in its story mode, which is known as Episode Battle.There are eight Episode Battle stories in total, with each one focusing on a different character such as Goku, Frieza, Vegeta, and Jiren.
Goku’s story mode is by far the longest and willtake around three to four hours to complete the main pathline for(if you can get past Great Ape Vegeta that is). Most of the other Episode Battles are much shorter in comparison and should only take between one and three hours depending on which character.Overall, it takes around 10 to 14 hours to complete the main pathwaysfor each Episode Battle.
Of course,if you’re trying to see every what-if scenario and Sparking Episode, that’s going to add some extra time as well. Some of the Sparking Episodes are pretty lengthy while others are short,but you’re looking at least six or seven more hours. In total,it’ll take around 19 or 20 hours to complete Episode Battles 100 percent.
How Long To Beat Bonus Battles And Tournament Matches
Episode Battles are the meat and potatoes of Sparking Zero, but there are several other modes to complete as well that arenecessary for unlocking every character(assuming you don’t just use all of your Zeni for that). Bonus Battles are the next big thing and with more than 30 of them,you’re looking at another three hours to get them all beaten.
The final bit of single-player content in Sparking Zero is the Tournament battles, which are comprised of three matches each and there are six Tournaments in total. These aren’t very long, but beating them awards a trophy and unlocks a specific character, so they’re worth doing.It took me less than an hour to do all of these on the normal difficulty.
Overall, getting Bonus Battles and all of the Tournament Matches complete took around four hours, which meansgetting every bit of substantial single-player content completed in Sparking Zero was a total of 24 hours.
How Long To 100 Percent Complete
This is where things get complicated. If we’re talking about the 100 percent needed for the Platinum trophy, the only remaining thing you should need to do beyond seeing some special finishers and banter scenesis to take part in 100 online matches. This is tough to put a time on, but with matches usually lasting a couple of minutes,you’re easily looking at three or four more hours depending on your skill level and matchmaking.
That might net you the Platinum trophy, but Sparking Zero still has tons more to do.Zen-Oh’s Orders and Whis' Stamp Book are absolutely packed with challengesto complete and with so many of themrequiring you to level up every character on the 182 fighter roster, that’s going to take an incredibly long amount of time. I’ve been hopping around characters quite a bit and only got one to maximum proficiency after 60 hours of playtime.
With that in mind, it’s tough to say how long it’s going to take to do absolutely everything in Sparking Zero,but I can only imagine it’s between 60 to 100 hours depending on how much grinding you want to do. In reality, though, not many players are going to want to max out every character or complete all of the wishes,so most players are going to be satisfied with around 25 to 30 hours for all of the single-player contentand then just enjoying the online and versus battles.
