It’s been 17 years since Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 and its 3D-arena-based combat graced consoles, and ever since, fans have clamored for a return to that old style. Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero has answered the call, with the benefit of an entirely new story arc to explore thanks to Dragon Ball Super–which wasn’t part of the Dragon Ball canon until 2013. For the most part, the Tenkaichi approach still works thanks to its fast and energized battle system; however, repetitive gameplay and limited mode options leave us wanting more from this battle.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is a return to that old Tenkaichi format, where two fighters wage war in an open arena lined with buildings, rocks, cliffs, and more just waiting to be destroyed. Each fighter has a mix of physical and ki-based attacks, highlighted by flashy and bombastic special attacks like the Kamehameha, Final Flash, Spirit Bomb, and other iconic Dragon Ball techniques.

As is immediately noticeable, the visual style of Sparking Zero is top-notch, from the main menu to the heat of battle. Every character moves and fights fluidly, and the small scenes that play during a successful ultimate attack are a delight, which makes connecting with those moves even more exhilarating. In particular, attacks like the Point-Blank Kamehameha performed by Ultra Instinct Goku’s Sign form–the animation complete with scenes ripped right from the anime–are amazing to close out a match with.

Moving around the arena and approaching a battle is exciting, but before long, each fight devolves into button-mashing exercises. Every character on the roster shares the same basic control scheme: Close-range physical attacks are assigned to one button, short ki blasts are set to another, and special moves are performed by holding a shoulder button while pressing either of those two buttons. They can also dodge, dash, ascend into the air or descend back to the ground, and counter while being attacked. Finally, if a character charges their ki beyond full power and activates Sparking, they have access to a devastating ultimate attack.

The adrenaline is there in every match, as mashing the attack button feels very close to the rapid-fire punches and kicks seen in the anime, but those looking for complex, skill-based fighting tech will not find it here. In fact, the majority of battles fall into a familiar loop: The match would begin, we’d unleash a few attacks and knock the opponent away, then we’d charge up our ki meter and repeat the process until the match was over.

There’s an exciting energy to this type of battle–pulling off a Super Spirit Bomb and watching the sequence play out is intensely satisfying every single time–and learning about different characters throughout Dragon Ball’s lore is genuinely fun and interesting. However, the lack of depth in the core battle scheme gives it a limited shelf life that’s better for quick-play sessions rather than marathon gaming. Then again, this is also true of previous Budokai Tenkaichi games, and that hasn’t stopped diehard fans from enjoying it, so series vets may feel right at home.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Episode Battle, the main single-player experience in Sparking Zero. Here, you’ll select one of the franchise’s main characters and run through the story from that character’s perspective, fighting all of the key battles that character faces along the way. Cutscenes between each fight range from still images with voices talking over them to short, fully animated scenes featuring a conversation between different characters.

This creates a repetition that, despite the battles themselves being fun, wears thin fast, as the cutscenes don’t consist of much more than a few quips before jumping into the next battle. This repetition is exacerbated by a few odd difficulty spikes sprinkled throughout the adventure. Granted, most of these come at the most climactic moments in the series and against the big bads of Goku’s adventures, but some of these spikes are downright unfair; no matter how big Great Ape Vegeta is, that monkey should not be able to tank a 10-hit combo without flinching, grab you before you can land hit number 11, and instantly deplete one of Goku’s five health bars. Furthermore, losing a battle causes a brief but unskippable cutscene to play before you can choose to retry, and multiple losses means multiple trips through said cutscene, with the same voice clips playing every time. That gets annoying fast.