Review - Bleach: The Blade of Fate (Nintendo DS)

Written by TheBBPS

Tuesday, 08 January 2008 13:09

Let me get one thing out of the way before I begin this review: I'm not what you'd really call a Bleach fan. I watched the beginning of the anime, and while it had a good premise and started off great, it really failed to hook me much. Bleach: The Blade of Fate on DS, however, has gotten me really addicted. It's a fighting game developed by the awesome guys at Treasure, who most people know for their shooters and shumps likeGunstar Heroes and Ikaruga.

bleachboxart I usually really enjoy Treasure's work, so I grabbed the game on a whim, and I must admit it's a real treat to see something so different from them. The game is really well designed, and despite a few noticeable flaws, ends up being a fun and enjoyable title.

For those who are unfamiliar with the series, Bleach is about a young man by the name of Ichigo Kurosaki who has the unique ability to see spirits of the dead. One night he runs into a girl named Rukia, who reveals to him she's a Soul Reaper, a warrior tasked with sending wandering souls of the dead to the afterlife. Some things happen, and Rukia's powers end up getting transferred to Ichigo, who becomes a Soul Reaper in Rukia's place. The Blade of Fate takes place during the second major story arc of the series; Rukia has been arrested for transferring her powers to Ichigo and taken off to a prison in the otherwordly Soul Society, while Ichigo and his buddies set off to go rescue her.

The game itself is set up like most 2D fighters: You have the predictable Arcade Mode, Survival Mode, Time Trial Mode, Training Mode, and so on. The interesting mode, however, would be The Blade of Fate's Story Mode. Most of the game's 28 characters have their own story mode to play through, many of which are "What if?" modes that explore different scenarios and focus on different events. What if this character fought that one, what if that event happened instead of this one, that sort of thing. For fans of Bleach, this could be a major draw to the game for them, but as someone who stopped watching the series towards the beginning of the timeframe the game covers, I did feel quite a bit confused during different parts of Story Mode. It's a minor point though, because all the story cutscenes can be skipped and players can jump right to the main meat of the game: The fighting.

Combat is extremely fast in The Blade of Fate. A good comparison would be the Guilty Gear series. In fact, Comparing the game to the GG series works really well: Both have quick gameplay, quirky character designs, and extremely unique special and super moves. You have a light attack, a medium, and a heavy, the R shoulder button is dedicating to guarding, but you also have a button devoted to what's called a Flash Step. Using your Flash Step lets you teleport or quickly dash (Depending on the character) back and forth across the screen, but it comes at the price of taking energy from your Soul Meter, which is used to pull off stronger version of your special moves. There's a really satisfying feeling coming from watching your opponent start a super move, then using your Flash Step to teleport behind them and dodge it, pull off a quick combo, then nail them with a super of your own. Speaking of specials and supers, Treasure found a great way to pull them off in this title.

One of my main complaints with fighting games is how hard it is to pull of some of the more advanced techniques of certain characters in different games. To this day, I've never been able to pull off Akuma's Shun Goku Satsu in Street Fighter or Demitri's Midnight Bliss in Darkstalkers. It's annoying, but Treasure found a great way around that: You can display panels on the bottom screen of the DS for each of a character's specials and supers, and a quick tap of one of said panels will cause the character to pull off that move. It's a simple feature that works really well, and helps add a bit of speed to the gameplay. Most characters have a few specials that link together with each other well, and it's cool being able to nail an unprepared opponent with a series of quick specials.

You also have the option of displaying your "Spirit Deck" on the bottom screen. As you play through The Blade of Fate, you can earn different cards which you use to bulid a 10-card deck. These cards are dealt to you two at a time during battle, and tapping one of them will activate it's effect. Some of them are simple things like giving a brief boost to a characters attack, speed, or defense, while others have greater effects like filling your Soul Meter up or adding elemental effects to your character's attack. It adds an element of strategy to the game that other fighters don't have, and adding different cards to your deck can really turn the tide of battle against different foes, as well as catch unprepared human players off-guard. There's a "Change" button in the corner of the screen, and tapping it lets you switch between the Spirit Deck and the special/super panels.

As far as unlockables go, The Blade of Fate delivers in massive spades. As I mentioned earlier, you have a whopping 28 characters you can unlock. Two of them (Ichigo: Hollow and Komamura: Wolf) are just sprite edits of other characters, though, and a small group (Bonnie, Kon, and Tatsuki) are joke characters, but the other 23 are all solid additions, and play well enough. There's a ton of artwork to unlock in the gallery, and you can get most of the characters as the game's system voice to read your menu options for you.

Sadly, the game suffers from a few small flaws that I have to point out. The story, as I noted, can be really confusing to non-fans of Bleach. I'm still not sure what exactly the villain of the game did, and why his flunkies were helping him. And like a lot of fighters, a few of the characters are miles better than others, namely Ichigo and Renji, a red-haired Soul Reaper who uses a whip-sword similar to Ivy from Soul Caliber. I'm assuming it's to keep them at the same level of power as their anime counterparts, but it would have been nice to have them balanced a bit better, ESPECIALLY Renji. When I can blast through Arcade Mode as him on a harder difficulty, and not take a single bit of damage....yeah, something is wrong there.

The last flaw is in the game's three- and four-person fights. While the game plays really well in the normal one-on-one battles, there's very noticable slowdown when you add more fighters to the mix, especially when some of the more graphically demanding special attacks comes into play. Personally, I think the game would have been better off with the three- and four-person battles removed; many of the story mode battles are outright annoying to play through due to the slowdown. It's just that bad.

In closing, Bleach: The Blade of Fate is a really solid title I can recommend to not just Bleach fans, but also to fans of Guilty Gear and fighting games in general. There's not much choice on the DS in that genre (Ultimate Mortal Kombat and the horrible Guilty Gear: Dust Strikers are really your only other options), so if you're looking for a solid fighter on the go, pick up The Blade of Fate. You definitely won't be disappointed.