I’ve always been a fan of the Bleach series and still watch the anime episodes every week to this day. It is a show based on a spirit realm and enemies spawned through hatred called “Hollows”. The place charged with keeping the Hollows in check is called “Soul Society” which protects the human world by sending their “Death Gods” to slay the Hollows using powerful swords. The game takes you through the Soul Society arc of Bleach, allowing you to play as all the important characters involved, and even use most of their abilities. Only a few characters have recycled moves, but of course these are just spells that are the same.
The controls are really amazing, your character responds very well to each individual key and you have the ability to make split second decisions. Perhaps the greatest innovation is the ability to use all your special attacks without having to perform the combos! This allows even beginners to easily learn the controls of the game. All the special attacks are placed as buttons on the touchscreen and are blue (standard attacks) or red (most powerful attacks) when you can use them and gray (inactive) when you can’t. Some attacks can only be used when in the air, and Red special attacks can only be used when you gather enough spiritual pressure. This you do simply by fighting.
Overall the game play is fast and fun, however there are some serious balancing issues between characters that need to be fixed. Ichigo, the main character in the show, is able to combo regular attacks pretty insanely causing mass damage, and has many moves that fire from a distance. He is even given his “Bankai”, the highest level of power that he could achieve in the Soul Society arc of the show, which allows him to take hits without being knocked down, and do a three combo attack that cannot be stopped, AND breaks blocks on the second strike. This only lasts for about 10 seconds, but in that time you can take 70% of your opponents health or more. Another character who is clearly overpowered is Aizen, a character revealed to be evil in the Soul Society arc at the end. With him, you do not even have to move. His blue-ability attacks can be used constantly, with no cost to spiritual pressure or energy and can be powered up to three levels of power near-instantly. You can stand there the whole match just firing a lighting attack and should your opponent get closer, use a flamethrower type attack to throw them back to the other side.
All in all, it is a fun game and works pretty well in multi player as well, as long as long as somewhat fair character selection is done to keep things fair.
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Tags: blade of fate, bleach, ds, nintendo