Unfortunately there is no kickass opening in this game. But when you enter the game you can tell the main menu was improved from the first game, it looks very organized and much easier to access. The game itself seems a little brighter than the second one, but that could be just me. When you first take a look at the characters you can choose there’s already a large amount, and you can still unlock 12 more(for a total of 33). There are also 52 support characters, but we'll go over what those are later.
Graphics
They are basically left unchanged from the second game, so people who played the series before should know what to expect. They are cell shaded but still have that problem where the characters tend to look a bit jagged, mainly because of the black outlines of the character. However this is just a different style, and when you get used to it you have to admit the graphics look good. Like I said, people who played the other games already know what to expect. The backgrounds of the stages are very detailed and nice to look at, and at times it feels like you are in the actual anime, so the stages were done very nicely. When you guard with a sword against another character's sword small sparks bounce off, I don't think this was in the second game. When you use soul release the character's hair may float upward with the energy and it looks very nice. Overall, the graphics are quite good, but can seem a little awkward at first.
Sound
Nothing too special with the songs in the background, they do their job and that's it. However some stages do have peculiar and catchy songs, but still nothing highly out of the ordinary. The voice acting however is superb, straight from the anime, so you shouldn't be disappointed. The default system voice (the voice that says fight!(etc) in a match is really annoying by the way. This is why you want to buy a system voice from the item shop as soon as possible. There are 33 extra, one for every playable character, I prefer having mine Ichigo's. Lol, just telling you this in advance.
Load times
Similar to the second game, a match takes about 12-15 seconds to load, so the load times aren’t a big deal. A little shorter would have been nicer, but it’s still fairly fast.
Gameplay
In this game there are two kinds of battles, group and single. I'll explain single and group at the end. So let's start of with the basics.
The soul gauge. Both you and your opponent share 1 "energy bar" to say, called the soul gouge. It starts off with your and your opponent’s energy at the same amount, taking up half of the gauge. When one character's portion of the soul gauge increases, the other's decreases and vice versa. To make thing easier for the future let's call the left border 0%. The middle 100%, and the far right(this will be when you completely fill up the bar with your energy and your opponent's isn’t even showing anymore) 200%. Now how to increase your side of the soul gouge, and decrease your opponent’s.
1. Hit your opponent with attacks (specials don’t count), the soul gauge goes up more when the opponent doesn’t guard against the attack (obviously). 2. You can also release your soul and spin the analogue stick to make it increase (I'll explain how you release it and what it does later). 3.You can also hit your opponent’s soul release with a circle(button) attack to increase your soul gauge as well as counter their soul release.
Your health bar. In a match you have two health bars, however say you damaged your opponent and then died. Your opponent's health bar stays the same to the point where you damaged him. So basically you win when you take away the 2 bars of health from your opponent. Guarding is rather simple, when you're on the ground either stay perfectly still or back up a little and you are guarding. A guard can be stopped when a person who is guarding is hit with a soul release, or of they are grabbed.
Now let's talk about the attacks, and what the buttons do, yipee-_-. Let's start off with X. The X button performs fast attacks that aren’t too powerful, usually the character punches or kicks. <-- X, -->X, up X and you get the picture do different moves that can vary with the character. You can also link combos with some X attacks and also later link uo the combos with O(circle) attacks.
Now O. O allows you to do more powerful attacks than X, however these are usually slower. You can also do --> O and all those too, which have different results. Just like X, you can tie these into form these into combos, just let me mention that all combos very with which character is being used. Now something important, <--O is your grab. This is usually used for the defensive, like a counter attack after you guard, or a way to break your opponent's guard(you cant guard against grabs). Very few characters have grabs that you can tie into other moves and that can be used offensively(well they still can but they'll suck and can be dodged, you know what I mean?).
Just a side note, you can clash attacks in this game, and the attack that would be fastest would hit(or if you're character ducks for a certain attack and the opponent punches straight, stuff like that comes in too). Triangle button allows you to jump. Simple, no? You can also click triangle in the air to slightly dash forward. You can also do an air attack in the air with X or O. Simple. Square button. Hold this to release your soul. What this does is make a energy surround you, and the how big of territory is covered depends on how big your soul gauge is. Like I said you can also spin the analogue stick to increase your soul gauge while you are holding B, and this also makes the soul release territory a little bigger. Now if your opponent walks/runs/etc into your soul release, or if it touches him the opponent will get stunned for a short amount of time. This usually gives you enough time to start a combo or perform a special without worrying that it will be guarded against, however if you hit hem from far away(with a really big soul release) you might not have enough time to get to your opponent fast enough to perform your wanted action. How to cancel a soul release is to hit it with a O attack, it's pretty simple, and when you do this your opponent will also be temporarily stunned. When you have only half of your 2nd health bar your health turns red. You are able to click Square then Triangle to go into transformed mode. Basically your soul release will be red instead of blue, and your soul release will cover a bigger amount of space. Your soul gauge will steadily increase as well. If you hit your opponent with your soul release in transformed mode not only will they be stunned, but afterward they wont be able to move for another 3 or so seconds, which is really handy. However a huge downside. You cannot guard in this mode. And this game is quite defensive, so you do have a disadvantage in that mode too.
Lastly and importantly you activate specials with Square O or X, but I will explain specials next, so hang on! Soul dash. You simply click square twice and you will dash quickly to your opponent, reflecting all projectiles on the way, but be careful you can be grabbed or counterattacked when you reach the other player. If two people in soul dash collide you must press any of the four main buttons(X, O those) as much as you can. The person that pressed the most buttons will win, you also increase your soul gauge like this slightly. And by the way what I meant is, say a person clicked X 10 times. The other person clicked X 2, O 3, and Triangle 3, the person who clicked X 10 times would win since they clicked a button more.
Specials time! Let me just say that most specials in this game look really kool, they also usually don’t take very long so they don’t "halt" the pace of the game. The specials are also in game, no cutscenes, and that helps keep the feel of the game. Now you activate a special with Square then X, or square then O. Most characters have two different specials so you can see why. Now don't get confused, you do not hold X like for soul release you click it and then you click X or O. You can also click the 2 at the same time and it should work. Specials can vary. Most of them require you to hit the opponent with the initial strike in order to start. Some of the specials require the opponent to hit you afterward, and the special begins, like a counter. Some specials (but very few!) don't even harm you’re opponent, but have effects like you. Like Square X for bankai Byakuya makes him go into another form (the one where all the swords appear in the sky). Square Circle for Orohime makes her heal herself (of course she does it steadily in order to allow the opponent to stop it). Now the power of the special is affected by the soul gauge. If the soul gouge is 200%(completely yours, remember we talked about this when I explained the soul gauge) the special might take away half a health bar, or close to that much. when the soul gauge is at 0%, it takes away only about 1/10 of the health bar. When it's at 100% it does a good amount of damage, but if you want to use the special to its full potential you should use it when you’re side of the soul gauge is overpowering your opponent's. Now also the game creators did something to... well, cancel the abuse of specials (if you didn't play bleach 1 or 2 you wouldn’t know what I'm talking about). Now when you use a special it takes up part of your soul gauge. Yup! You no longer loose most of the gauge and get stunned like in the second game when the special is cancelled or misses(you don’t get stunned at all anymore for failing specials). Instead after you use a special a certain amount of soul gauge gets taken away from you(remember this also means your opponent’s increases). Most specials that are offensive (do damage) cost about 60-70% of the soul gauge (on average). Some may even cost 100, but are usually more powerful. The "countering" specials almost always take about 20%, not too much since threes a high chance of the opponent being smart and not hitting you at all. Remember the "transforming" specials I talked about? Like for example when bankai Byakuya goes into the form with all the swords in the sky? That costs 20% too, but since the form is usually more powerful, as long as you remain in the form the opponent's soul gauge slowly increases. That’s about it, holy I took forever explaining the specials!
Now I’ll quickly explain group battle. It's everything I already explained, except you have support characters. You can choose up to 3. You have to make the group bar go up in order to use the support characters, and you do that by hitting your opponent with attacks, or your soul release (you and your opponents have different support characters by the way, it's not like the soul gauge lol). When you filled up the group bar enough you can use the support character. Some unleash an attack, like Ishida fires his arrows, some help you, like increase defense or attack for a certain amount of time. To use the support character you click R. It's a pretty neat little addition to the game, and you have a choice where you want to play with support characters or not.
Now let me offer my two cents on the gameplay. It is quite simple, and easy to get into. However it is quite deep, and linking certain combos may take a bit of practice. I really like the gameplay and the mechanics. Also what rocks is that most of the characters have variety. Their moves aren’t similar, and even when you click the same button they have different effects. It keeps the game from getting boring because the different characters for the most part offer a different experience. Some fighting games the character's moves resemble one another's, or look different but have the same effect. This game does pretty good to keep the fighting styles different for most of the characters(well a lot of them have swords, its bleach, so there are similarities). Also some good news, most of the 12 characters from the second game had an extra special added, like Orohime, Sado, Ishida, and Renji.
Now I will say what I would like to have changed. First the soul dash is a great addition, however I do not like how they made it be performed. Square square. I would have liked it if soul dash was R, and support characters were the L button (since that isn’t used). Why? Well, in the heat of battle you may have to soul release right away, or special that instant. You might click the buttons too fast or forget to hold square, and instead you soul dash, and this might cost you the game. Now I know this is just a mistake that you should avoid doing, but a pro might do it too, very rarely though. Like I do not have this problem anymore, but sometimes when things get a bit crazy I tap to fast and end up soul dashing instead of soul releasing, lol. It’s really not that big of a deal and just sort of "adds the skill needed to play the game", but it just would have been a whole lot easier and less confusing is soul dash was the are button. My other complaint is powering up the soul release. Remember how you spin the analogue stick to increase your soul gauge as well as increase your soul release territory? Well I think your soul gauge goes up just a bit too fast, not a major problem, but I would prefer it a bit slower, since its kinda cheap. These are more personal preference changes that I would like to happen, some may disagree. Next, I would just like for there to be a little bit more combos involved. Like some characters to keep them un-broken, don't have a lot of combos. That's kind of okay, but it would have just been a bit kooler if you were able to link more moves together then the ones available. Again this is personal preference, if you played the second game you know about how large you can make a combo, this game is unchanged. But these are minor problems, the game still rocks. Phew, gameplay section finally finished!
Playability
Let me explain what's in this game, and trust me there's a lot of content. I'll start with the simpler things first, however. Just like in the other game, there is Time Attack. You simply fight 8 opponents and try to get the best time. In this game, if you loose you cn continue, the time just adds up though (in the second game you loose you lost the time attack).
There is also Survival. You pick a character and fight opponents. Next round however you stay at the same health and don’t recover it, so it's basically to see how long you will survive, hence the name Survival.
There’s also something called Ex Survival. You choose an opponent and very weak versions of these appear, when you kill one another comes out, and you just keep fighting till you die. By weak I mean they die in like 2 hits! However the farther you go the longer it takes. Like by the time you killed 70 it may take like 6 or 7 hits to kill one, but I cant really remember.
Then there’s also free battle, where you just simply pick a CPU and fight against it till you feel like you wanna do something else. These four modes are both for single and group battle.
The game also has training, you all know what that is. You fight against an opponent (or you can set it so he doesn’t do anything) and just fight, but you never die. It’s basically to try out the character's moves.
Then there’s Mission Battle. First there’s Story Mission. It is quite kool, because you fight the battles that actually happened in the anime! Most of these have clips from the anime after you complete the mission too! Some missions have special requirements, like kill opponent with a special etc. There’s a total of 20 story missions, and I think about 17 of them show actual clips from the anime when you finish that certain mission. Then there is another Mission Mode, this one is mainly for kicks. You only fight about 5 or 6 battles, and it has a made up story that’s quite humorous (even if you don’t understand Japanese).
There’s of course a mode where you can play against your friends, but two copies of Bleach 3 are required, no software sharing (I think). Self explanatory, no?
Then the mode that will last you ages, and what I so far have spent the most time on. It’s called Soul Road. This mode also unlocks some of the support characters as well as alternate costumes for the characters. For example, Ichigo wears his school uniform, some characters even wear tuxedos, and some of the girl characters usually wear some sort of dress or kimono. Anyway the extra costumes are really awesome. How this mode works is there is a map that you travel across, and every destination has a battle that happens. You pick the character you fight as and your support character. When you win a battle, the support character gains percentage (you start at 0%). The first battle usually gives you about 10%, then next 7%, and by the time you get to 50% you only get about 3% for finishing a battle. Also you score points after you finish a battle. A normal battle gives you 100 points. Sometimes special battles happen (with circumstances like your opponent has higher defense, or is always in transformed mode, etc), and these give you 200-500 points. On the map 3 faces of your support character appear on random destinations. When you reach that place, the points are converted to %, 100 usually gives you about 1-2%. Also the character asks you a question, and if you answer right you get extra % points (you guess randomly if you don’t know Japanese though, lol). When the support character reaches 100%, you unlock the alternate costume if that support character is a battle character. Sometimes you also unlock other support characters when you get certain characters to 100%. Soul Road will last you a long long time.
There’s an Item Shop in the game, you can buy system voices, gallery pictures, trading cards, character voices for the sound collection as well as stage songs and sound effects. You can also buy some stages and support characters from the item shop and other things from the item shop.
Now the bad news, the 3rd installment of the Bleach games does not have Block-On. At least I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, if it does somebody please inform me, but I’m pretty sure that the addictive mini-game has been taken out, unfortunately. A small reason to keep the 2nd Bleach game if you have it, lol.
Navigation[
I only decided to add this section since this is an import, and a lot of people worry about the game being Japanese. Trust me you do not need to know any Japanese for this game. Not to mention the menus are in English, can it get better than that? So since the menus are in English, navigating through the whole game is a piece of pie. The only real thing it would be nice to know Japanese for is Soul Road. Remember how I said you’re sometimes asked a question? If you don’t know Japanese you have to randomly guess, but that’s barely a problem, it’s not really even worth mentioning. Trust me if you’re considering not getting this game just cause its an import, put all those worries behind you.
Overall
An extreme of 33 characters and 52 support characters, so the lacking of characters is no longer a problem. Many bonuses to unlock, so this game will last you a very long time. A very fun 3D fighter, and I highly recommend it, even if you already have Bleach 2. This game is a great addition to the PSP library!
Wow.. my eyes hurt! LONG but extremely thorough review! Good job! <If you're thinking of reading this..watch the gameplay footage first..makes understanding Kage's explanations easier >. Sometimes I think it takes a long review to explain a game with this kind of depth. I can tell you really thought it out. Where did you import your copy of the game from? Thanks again for the great review!
psp411 split my review into sections when i didnt even want to split it, lol. oh well, and damnit i still made a few mistakes, i though tchecking my work with word would fix that, but i still missed some suff, lol.
this game doesent really have more depth than your average fighting game, its just that most people dont take the time to explain the combat system, lol. well i felt like expalining it, and regreted it in the end(took me forever!)
thanks chance, oh and i got it from a game store by me that sells some imported games. but if i didnt have that i woulda gotten it offa lik-sang or play-asia or a site like that.
and yeah sorry about the gameplay footage, i forgot if i uploaded those vids after i wrote the review or if i just forgot about them while i was writing this. woulda helped if i posted them in the real review like you said chance, instead of after it. but meh, nothing to do about it now.
i got tekken about 3 days ago, i like this game more. tekken is more eye candy than anything lol, arguably best graphics on psp. i hatehow hard it is to preform diagonals though, i gave up on using them in real battle.
i know nothing of the series either (except the main theme). but i do recomend it, its a fun 3D fighter, not as complex as tekken, but i think its more fun. kinda like naruto for the gc is more fun than soul caliber (in my opinion)
I just got this game from play-asia, it is awsome. But it does get a little confusing not knowing the language, i was plaing in Story mode and i couldn't beat the other character renji abarai!!! he had no energy and i kept hitting him but he wouldn't die! whats the deal with that?
in a year, probably. just import it, menus are in english. and the missions are easy, if hes not dieing theres obviously a special requirement. to defeat renji you need to enter heat mode
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>. Sometimes I think it takes a long review to explain a game with this kind of depth. I can tell you really thought it out. Where did you import your copy of the game from? Thanks again for the great review!