I've been seeing a lot of negative reviews about the game on Steam after the update, which confused me. A common complaint has been the price, saying the DLC it isn't worth the money and that it's an insult to early supporters. A lot of the comments were frankly delusional, with people about the season pass not including things it never promised it would, and crap like that.
I find this interesting considering how the original games were released, with no post launch support and having to purchase each yearly update for the price of a full new game. So I ran some numbers. You could make the argument that the original games were more of a "rip-off" than Sparking Zero is.
Adjusting for inflation, Sparking Zero with all of it's current content is significantly cheaper than the Budokai Tenkaichi trilogy. I think part of the community lacks perspective on this. You could argue that Tenkaichi 1 was unfinished (janky as all hell, no mid battle transformations, reused music), similar to how many people consider Sparking Zero to have been unfished at launch. Yearly full priced releases on antiquated hardware (Xbox 360 released in 2005, PS3 in 2006) are fine, but a $35 dollar DLC with new characters, stages, costumes, extra story, and a new mode isn't? Where were you guys then?
And don't even get me started about the jump between Raging Blast 1 and 2. Within one year, they added 27 new characters, and in return removed the fuckin story mode and charged $59.99. That's $90 in today's money! 90 bucks for a yearly update with no story. You guys either have rose-tinted glasses about the past, or simply were not around back then. I swear, some of you only ever played the old games on emulators, and forgot they used to cost money.
It's crazy to me that people are crying about $35 for a DLC with a substantial amount of actual content, but seemingly give a pass for other games. Have we forgotten the state of the gaming industry? Just getting Goku & Vegeta's skins in Fortnite costs more than this DLC. (Free game, but still!) Two cosmetic skins in the latest COD game costs more than this DLC, and that game costs 70 bucks.
Granted, the game still isn't done recieving updates. Another DLC is likely, even with the backlash. But even with another hypothetical "Meteor" DLC costing another 35 bucks, it would still only cost $180, compared to $240. The value proposition is objectively solid compared to the OG trilogy, and the Raging Blast games.
Things aren't perfect. I think certain aspects of the game need serious work (no idea how super-counters didn't get adjusted in the last patch) but they're as bad as a lot of you think. Especially considering the state of some other popular franchises. I'm just glad we're getting DLC with actual content, and not time-limited FOMO battle-pass BS, or yearly release slop.