Bleach: Soul Resurreccion

Bleach Soul Resurreccion is America's first Sony developed Bleach game. Although we have not received many of the PSP ones, Bleach Soul Resurreccion is a great first entry for the franchise on this system. Rather than being a fully fledged fighter type game, it takes the established hack and slash formula but adds a bit of the good ole Bleach flair to it. What this created was a fun yet extremely short story experience that highlighted 14 key moments of the arc in the franchise with some narration that was heightened by the fact that we could play through these moments. Ultimately, it was enjoyable.

The real joy of the game comes from over 25 different missions that can be played by a majority of the games 21 member cast. Missions can vary between defeating 100 soul reapers, to being handicapped by not being able to jump. It is here that I have to replay and build my characters level to take on opponents in three different difficulty modes to be able to unlock more soul points (utilized for raising the characters level and growth, up to lvl 175) to have character gain new abilities and better states. What is the price, perhaps gratification and being able to complete numerous trophies. This game prides itself on replayability and because of the Bleach franchise and playing as Rukia, Hitsugaya in his bankai state, Byakuya, Ichigo in his bankai state, Grimmjow, and others, it wont get old for a long time. The story mode took me naught but six or so hours, while missions mode is taking me quite a long time. In addition to missions mode there are character figures to collect, with voice clips, which is a nice touch.

Graphically the game looks great via its manner that emulates the anime. The opening animation appears to be a different take on various scenes on the anime and looks great. Attacks in the game are flashy and gorgeous. It never gets old seeing them. There are numerous attacks for the characters, close to six or more for some of them that all look true to the anime as well. This adds variety for the controls on top of being stacked on simple combination attacks and skills that can be chained together for combinations. I have been able to chain numerous combos to try to get to 2000, which is possible.

The game allows one to play in both English dialogue and Japanese dialogue, music is the traditional rock type for this genre of gameplay and some songs are pretty addictive and nice while others are just fitting. Characters that are not part of the playable 21 still appear during the game and chime in to talk to your main character and often sometimes its fitting, hilarious, or just true to the anime counterpart.

The only faults of the game is that the storyline is short, varying degrees among fans about the fights in question (anyone can argue for or against the importance of the ones shown), no online multiplayer or co-op (considering Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3, a game in the same genre has it, it is a baffling omission), no anime cutscenes (it would have made it nice to have considering this is based on the anime, however the cutscenes it does offer using the games visuals are nice), and lastly, the games story could have been told in a way that would help newcomers to Bleach take part, the way it is told through narration using the same Voice Actor as the anime, it drops names with no faces to many characters it refers too and the story and is a rather brief overview leaving out some details. However, if one is experiencing Bleach for the first time, it provides enough background that they can understand what is happening, and maybe, check out the anime once they finish the game.

All in all, this game is definitely worth it and a great use of the Bleach license. I love playing as Ichigo, Uryu, Rukia and other characters, and the fact that there is mission mode, which also incorporates something from the as yet to be released in America, Hell Arc character, there is fun to be had. Definitely check it out if you are a Bleach fan, as one wouldnt want to miss this.

Let's start off with what they did right, shall we?

The Good:
They did a good job at making you feel like you're a kick butt Bleach character in powered up mode--all of the enemies die relatively easily. This can be a bad thing as well, but a simple difficulty increase fixes that problem. There is lots of replay value (assuming it doesn't bother you that the side quests outnumber the main storyline content in orders of magnitude) that will keep you busy and upgrading your characters for quite some time. They did a decent job at making all the characters have different strengths, and mostly different attacks. Hell, they even threw in unlockable guys gated behind the last sidequests, which will give you something to aim for.

The Bad:
This game just FEELS like it should have been a fighter, and not an action/RPG. There is very little story, and it skips large segments of the Bleach storyline to the point where it is basically spoiling the story for you if you haven't yet read/watched that far in the manga/anime. It even implies that certain characters beat certain bosses, where in the manga they simply fought (and the battle didn't neccessarily come to the conclusion you would think). The game doesn't explain how you went from point A to point B a lot of times (especially near the end), but again, that ties in with the lack of a cohesive story. As I alluded to earlier, the main story is EXTREMELY short. By that, I mean I beat it in a single morning--and this was with breaks to play the mission mode (the sidequest/repeatable missions I spoke of earlier).

And that's pretty much it. If you are reading my review and think it sounds really negative...well, I guess it kind of is. BUT, this isn't to say I don't think it's worth a playthrough (assuming you already know the storyline--don't spoil it for yourself) because it is. If you're a big Bleach fan (and love hack and slash action games) I'd even go so far as to say buy it. Maybe not at it's current $60 price tag, but you can decide on what your money is worth. They could have done so much more with this game, but I think it's worth spending some money on, if only to let developers know that you'd like a better version of this in the future.

The game may be a hack-n-slash game that gets repetitive after a few hours, but bleach fans would agree that the smoothness and appearance of the game make it worth having for the PS3. Cel-shaded anime games never looked so good and the voice actors are the same as in the show (i play in japanese though so i dunno about the english voices).

Of course, there are things that could be better, like more characters, more diverse power system (i.e. start in shikai then advance to bankai using the power meter thing they put in or something like that), and a longer story (14 episodes is really short... took like an hour or 2 to beat.... why couldn't they have started form the beginning of the story like other anime games do?, but the stuff that's in there is good. Characters are different enough that you won't get bored for a while (and some characters are just ridiculous...) and the graphics and combat system help keep you entertained (dynasty warrior fans know what i'm talking about for the combat thing). And there are a bunch of trophies for people who care about that stuff.

Overall, this game is a great start to bleach games on PS3. I hope they keep them coming!

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 33 reviews  3.8 out of 5 stars