Don't let Atari's name for this game fool you. This isn't just another game in the Budokai series.
The previous three PS2 Dragon Ball Z games were made by Dimps and were more along the lines of your traditional fighter, attempting to incorporate the Dragon Ball Z characters and their style into its world. Those games were aimed at that first group of fans. Dragon Ball Z: Sparking! [I'm sorry, I just can't call it Budokai Tenkiachi anymore...] is aimed at the second group I mentioned that wants a Dragon Ball Z game first and their fighting second, and as for you third group of fans? Stay off my lawn. Seriously. That brick throwing robot isn't for show.
Aside from the developers being changed from Dimps to Spike this Dragon Ball Z game is strikingly different in its format. First off, you fight in very large arenas and the camera is centered behind your character. You are free to move in any direction you want. Really. You've got complete control. R1 makes your character jump and if you so choose you can keep your character in the air. While in the air R1 makes you ascend and R2 makes you descend.
Physical attacks are handled by Square, and Ki attacks are handled by Triangle. Press Triangle rapidly for a bunch of small Ki attacks and hold it in to charge up a big one that wil pass through other small ones. While some of you my run screaming into the night at the thought of just one physical attack button don't worry. Its not that simple. While admittedly you'll be pressing Square a lot, Triangle, X, and Circle all have different functions when used inside of a combo. So while pounding away on your hapless victim you have three other options for attack available to you, which you're going to have to use if you intend to get far in this game because well... the AI of Sparking just flat out hates you. I mean really, we're talking "I'm going to set you on fire because I don't like your face" kind of hates you.
You can adjust the difficulty in the menu to ramp up the AI hatred of you to obscene levels [We're talking I skinned your puppy alive and then ate it raw before I set you on fire kind of hate in this department] or you can reduce the AI to a sort of happy that you generally only find among the lobotomized. [That means you can make the game really easy]
For the primary functions of X and Circle they are Dash and Guard respectively. These arenas you fight in are BIG and you're going to need a good way of getting around other than just happily floating by and watching the butterflies. Pressing X and any direction will make you "Dash" [duh...] in that direction. You can also control your altitude while dashing by pressing either R1 or R2 at the same time.
L1 is the button that you press for Locking On to your opponent. Once locked on the camera will follow the opponent and you won't easily lose sight of them unless they fly outside your range and find a nice place to hide. While "Locked On" The camera moves around your character a bit so that your own character won't be blocking your view. L2 is used for charging Ki. Press it at the same time as X and you can Dash at an increased rate of speed at the expense of your Ki.
Now unlike the DBZ games brought to you by Dimps, Spike has given you characters with 5 moves each. These moves cannot be switched out or altered and don't have to be found or bought. They're ready to go once you get the character they are attached to. They are divided into three classes: Blast 1, Blast 2, and Blast 3. You can still customize your character, but this is done in regards to their standing in any of 8 different categories such as Attack, Defense, Speed, Ki, ect. Each character has different preset stats you may increase on and some have more spaces for customization than others, but the general rule goes that the more powerful a character is without customizing his stats, the less spaces they are going to have to work with. [I.E. Mr.Satan will have PLENTY of room for equipping stat boosting or support items, while Mecha-Freeza..... not so much...]
You have two Blast 1 moves and these are support type moves. From blinding your opponent with Solar Flare, to raising your attack power with Kaioken.
Your two Blast 2 moves are your offensive ones. These range from character specific attacks such as Death Beam, Kamehameha, and Finish Buster to generic Ki Blasts and "Rushes" that once connected with the opponent launch a series of punches/kicks before knocking them away.
Your final move, the Blast 3 is your characters Ultimate Attack. To use this move you have to be in Sparking! mode [ or "Full Power" for the American and European versions .... real original there Atari....] which is done by charging your Ki past its maximum to 200% as long as you have a Blast Ball that is. Okay put down your WTF Flag, I'm getting there.
This is how the Ki system in Sparking! works. You have your regular Ki bar that is charged with the L2 button. Your Blast 2 moves can be done anytime you're locked on to your opponent and have the required amount of Ki. Below the Ki bar is a tiny blue bar that you can't do anything with. It charges on its own. Every time it fills up, you get a Blast Ball, and you can have up to three of these. Blast 1 moves require Blast Balls to use instead of Ki and can require 1 Ball, 2 Balls or all three of them. You have to have at least 1 Blast Ball before you can charge your Ki past 100% And you'd better be prepared to go all the way to 200% because if you stop anywhere past 100% without making it to 200% your ki resets to 100%.
As far as game modes go, you have Z-Battle Gate which is the story mode, Ultimate Battle which starts you out at Rank 100 and you must climb your way upwards to Rank 1, World Tournament, Duel, and Practice.
Z-Battle Gate has you picking from one of the main DBZ Sagas and then playing out the various fights that are contained within with you playing as the good or in some cases "less" evil characters and the AI as the villains. Getting 100% on a Gate will open up other gates that are either side stories, Gates for the some of the DBZ movies, or What If gates that have you playing as the villains. The entire storyline of Dragon Ball Z is represented there's even a bonus gate that pays tribute to the World Tournaments of Dragon Ball.
You GT fans get a couple of Gates, but unfortunately for you those usually don't contain more than 1 or 2 fights, while the main DBZ gates have upwards of 30 fights each.
Okay. That's the technical side of things and now the aesthetics side.
The graphics are very well done, but aren't as colorful and rich as the models found in Budokai 3 their animations are also not as fluid as those found in Budokai 3 but they're still on the good side. Plus when your characters take enough damage in battle it will start to show. Get a characters life really low and they'll become "Battle Damaged" and have cuts scrapes, torn clothing, the works.
Most of the music from Budokai 1 and 2 returns with only a couple of tracks from Budokai 3 [and not the good ones]. The music played during most of the menus oftentimes feels out of place and too overbearing for a simple menu. During battles your background music is chosen at random, you have no control over what you're going to hear regardless of the stage that you pick and most of the music is bad.
The Ruined City Theme and the Ruined Islands theme from Budokai 3 haven't shown up in any of the matches I've fought as of yet and they are sorely missed. As far as language goes, the games default is English, but you can change it to Japanese in the options menu. This changes all the VOs in battle and in the menus. Note that even when set to English there are some in battle voices and winning quotes that will be in Japanese, which is a mistake I'm sure.
Also in regards to this, if you save the game with the voices in Japanese when you start the game the voices will be in English again, however your setting in the options menu will not have changed, the game will still be SET to Japanese, however it will be in English. To change this you must set the voice option to English, confirm it, leave the options menu, return, and then set it back to Japanese again. If Japanese is the language you prefer for your DBZ you'll have to do this every time you start the game.
And last and definitely least. Every form a character has in this game counts as a separate playable character. That's right. If you're a Freeza fan [and honestly... why wouldn't you be?] that means that you'll have to choose which of his forms you'll want to play the ENTIRE match in. Same goes for any of those stupid monkeys as well. You can't just pick Goku and go up and down his transformations as you please, once you've settled on Goku you're going to have to settle on which one... Base, SSj1, SSj2, SSj3...and so on. With this system in place you're getting some variety in the moves that your forms have at their disposal.
So all in all the game is pretty good, but it could really have used one more month for Spike to finish up the little things and put a spit shine on some of the features. The music would be my first example. It seems like they just took a bucket that was full of Budokai 1 and 2 themes and just threw it at this game and then let those tracks stay wherever they hit. Also, the glitch where the game starts in English every time regardless to whatever is set in the options menu is really annoying [for me anyway]
So there you have. Now get outta here.