Sparking Zero Getting Yajirobe Nerf In First Patch

The Bean Daddy had a good run. After a week of terrorizing Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero players through his infinite bag of health-restoring Senzu beans, Yajirobe will have his stats evaluated in an upcoming balance patch, Bandai Namco confirmed. That suggests an all-but-certain nerf for the cowardly samurai currently dominating in ranked matches.

The Dragon Ball account on X (formerly known as Twitter) announced an update for Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero will arrive near the end of October. Here’s what it includes:

• Improvement of an issue where some controls become unresponsive during online matches when classic controls are selected

• Adjustment of difficulty levels when playing certain stages in Episode Battle on lower difficulty settings

• Adjustment of Yajirobe’s stats

• Improved operational stability

The fixes seemed innocent enough, but the potential hit to Yajirobe’s stats immediately became a lightning rod. Some players don’t want the old-school-style 3D arena fighter to succumb to the modern obsessions with balance and competition integrity. Anime characters blowing up planets and turning people into chocolate bars should be allowed to embrace their inner chaos. But others are pumped to see Yajirobe getting potentially knocked down a peg.

It’s still not clear what exactly the nerf is likely to be. One obvious change would be limiting Yajirobe’s Senzu bean usage to just once per match. More likely, the developers might be taking a look at his health bar which is currently surprisingly high relative to other fighters in his Destruction Point tier. Regardless, it’s funny that Bandai Namco is not only calling him out by name but singling him out for the game’s very first patch.

Of course, other issues still persist in Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero. There have been complaints of a corrupted save data bug, input delay on console, and trouble finding ranked matches. Fans are also requesting cross-play between PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, but it’s unclear if or when that will happen. Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is the most popular Budokai Tenkaichi game by far, with millions of copies sold in the first few days, so Bandai Namco is probably still playing catch-up.