Dragon Ball Sparking Zero officially comes out later this week, but thanks to an early access period, a slew of players have been jumping into the game ahead of time. From the sounds of it, the newest DBZ title, which returns to the long-dormant Budokai Tenkaichi sub-series of arena fighters, is a (ki-)blast. It turns out that folks have missed letting loose on huge destructible stages and fully embodying the fantasy of being one of the Z-Fighters—including 19 different Gokus—as well as the rest of the series’ supporting cast. However, many players seem to be having trouble overcoming one of Sparking Zero’s comically huge hurdles, and the game’s deeply funny community is already making light of the whole affair.
In Sparking Zero’s story mode, dubbed Episode Battles here, you can relive some of the most famous fights from the renowned shonen and follow the stories of certain key characters. Of course, Dragon Ball’s longtime protagonist Goku is featured prominently in this mode, and his story is both one of the longest and most demanding of the bunch. Nowhere has that been more clear than in the showdown against Great Ape Vegeta, who is the first real boss you encounter in Goku’s story and has become the bane of many a player’s existence.
This trial has been absolutely kicking people’s asses since Sparking Zero became available to play, and it is downright hilarious seeing people react to its intense difficulty. From the clips that I’ve seen, Great Ape Vegeta’s well-earned reputation for giving players a hard time has to do with just how damn unrelenting he can be. He can evidently spam his beam attack (which also does splash damage as an extra bit of dirt in the wound) with relatively little charging in between—that or he charges his techniques much quicker than the player—and he has an utterly brutal command grab.
To make matters worse, it appears that Great Ape Vegeta can literally pull out either move to start a fight, and as you might expect, his attacks do heavy damage. Hilariously, there are clips of players immediately restarting the fight in the hope of getting optimal openings, which Great Ape Vegeta doesn’t seem prone to give often.
To complement his massive damage-dealing abilities, Great Ape Vegeta also dwarfs Goku in this fight, and shrugs off basic attacks like he’s swatting a fly thanks to his super armor. The whole thing seems like the funniest callback to Great Ape Vegeta’s appearance in the original Budokai Tenkaichi, which was a pretty brutal fight as well. All I know is this monkey is being a motherfucker, and I’m living for the reactions to it.
The fight isn’t impossible, but it’s pretty damn brutal until you learn to sidestep the blasts and spam your own Kamehameha back at Great Ape Vegeta. For the folks who haven’t learned yet, Great Ape Vegeta has been ridiculously difficult, and some are already invoking comparisons to similarly tough boss battles in other games, like Elden Ring’s Radahn encounter. Word on the street is that Great Ape Vegeta might not even be the toughest fight, either. All I’m saying is don’t let the Ginyu Force catch y’all outside.
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