Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero’s Great Ape Vegeta is wrecking players so hard even Bandai Namco is memeing about it: “This monke got hands”

Everybody’s reliving their childhood Budokai Tenkaichi trauma

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is available now for players who bought into the Deluxe and Ultimate editions, and it’s already kicking players' butts. Thedifficulty is getting called out as “fucking absurd"in some cases, and early on there’s one name people are cursing more than any other: Great Ape Vegeta.

Vegeta’s Great Ape transformation occurs fairly early in the Dragon Ball Z anime, and is a similarly early fight in Goku’s stretch of Episode Battle, which is Sparking Zero’s main single-player content. For players still getting to grips with Sparking Zero, Great Ape Vegeta is a massive early difficulty check, as the boss starts spamming super moves at you the instant the fight begins.

developers after making great ape vegeta fight in sparking zero: pic.twitter.com/Q4zlzwSNrUOctober 8, 2024

Great Ape Vegeta fight pic.twitter.com/XrymhoFAPqOctober 7, 2024

They had to put “lower difficulty and retry” because damn, great ape vegeta is a tough one to beat lol💀 pic.twitter.com/TRLdWiDup6October 8, 2024

The complaints about Great Ape Vegeta have evenreached Bandai Namco’s ears.

This monke got hands! #SparkingZero #DBSZ pic.twitter.com/EC6ozhx2YtOctober 8, 2024

As oneReddit user puts it: “this game is so dumb fuck this game WHY IS HE SO STRONG HES THE THIRD FUCKING FIGHT FUCK THIS GAME AAAAAHHHHHH.” Of course, you can’t complain about a game’s difficulty without a bunch of people showing up to tell you it’s super easy, actually. Apparently thewinning strategy to useis simply spamming rush attacks in sparking mode. If you’re still struggling, give it a shot.

In the end, this is all just series tradition. Players have been quick to note that the Great Ape Vegeta battle in the original Budokai Tenkaichi is"even worse,“and in that thread you’ll find plenty of folks reliving their traumatic memories of getting absolutely destroyed in these games over and over again. Better yet? Sparking Zero’s Great Ape Vegeta is apparently not even thehardest fightinthe game.

OurDragon Ball: Sparking Zero reviewawards it 3 stars out of 5, noting that it’s “Intentionally prioritizing flashy fanservice over competitive play.” But that seems to be exactly what Budokai Tenkaichi fans have been waiting all these years for.

Check out all thebest anime games.

Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter

Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He’s been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

MultiVersus has $60 worth of FOMO-inducing DC skins that’ll be gone forever once its Halloween event is over

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero publisher warns players to delete modded Custom Battles “immediately to avoid a ban”

Millions of Fortnite players watch Snoop Dogg and Ice Spice livestream a concert as part of a rap-themed Chapter 2 Remix that includes Eminem and a tribute to Juice WRLD