Dragon Ball Sparking Zero has received a major update and nerfed one of its most controversial characters. The changes to Yajirobe’s kit have split fans of the game.
Dragon Ball Sparking Zero has been a massive success for developer Spike Chunsoft. Selling over 3 million copies on its first day and becoming one of the most-played fighting games of all time on Steam.
This popularity is due in large part to the game’s faithful recreation of the numerous anime on which it’s based. Unlike other fighting games, Dragon Ball Sparking Zero focuses more on its recreation of the anime than it does on traditional balance. This means stronger characters in the show like Vegito will perform better than weak ones like Mr. Satan.
For this reason, it might surprise those with less experience in the game to learn that the very first character to receive nerfs in the October 2024 update was none other than Yajirobe. The modifications made by devs to the rotund ronin have been seen as a blessing by some but others are not so thrilled.
The reason a relatively weak character like Yajirobe was slapped with such significant nerfs was his frustrating Senzu Bean ability. If the character is able to use the ability successfully, it will completely heal him. The skill has infinite uses meaning Yajirobe can keep himself alive indefinitely in a strategy that players have dubbed “bean stalling”.
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To prevent people abusing this strategy, Yajorobe received the following adjustments in Dragon Ball Sparking Zero:
- The Senzu Bean skill now costs 6 Skill Count instead of 5
- Yajirobe’s health has been reduced from 3 bars to 2 and a half
- Yajirobe now begins matches with 0 Skill Count as opposed to 2
Some players on the game’s Subreddit are delighted with the changes calling the Yajirobe nerfs “well deserved”, and a “massive W”. “Bean stalling is too much of an antigame,” one player elaborated.” It isn’t fun for anybody. At least now if somebody wants to use him they have to at least be good to pull it off.”
Others have pointed out that the nerfs may have been a little heavy-handed. “Honestly the HP nerf is kinda overkill, I think the Skill Stock nerf and increasing the Stocks needed is a good change, but he didn’t need to lose HP on top of it,” one user opined. “Could’ve just made the bean a single use, along with one of the nerfs they also introduced,” another added.
Yajirobe did technically defeat Great Ape Vegeta in the anime and given how that character was filtering players early on in Dragon Ball Sparking Zero, you could argue his strength was lore-accurate. We’ll have to see what the next cheese strategy is that emerges after these changes.
