Fun, fast-paced - but repetative...?
The first HTS game I played was the previous instalment and comparing these two games, this feels more like Heat the Soul 4.5 – while still being a fun and enjoyable game, it has a slight rushed feeling.
What immediately got alarm bells ringing with me was the game's size. As a rule of thumb, I always research the game's data size. HTS 4 was about 790 MB. HTS 5 however is about 550MB (even less if you've downloaded the game and compress it) - never a good sign. This tells me that instead of things being added and improved upon, things were removed and changed around.
HTS 4 had a total of 51 playable characters and featured 77 characters from the Anime/Manga. In this game not only have the partner characters been removed (26 partners), but 7 of the playable characters have been removed too - but more on that later on. Tag battles have been introduced, though – again more later.
HTS 5's story mode covers the Arrancar Arc as shown in the Anime. Unlike HTS 4 you don't need to earn a certain rank to play the entire mode – once you've won the battle that's it, you move on. The story-telling is the exact same as the previous game, dialogue with pictures and some scrolling text for the narration. No changes. As far as I can tell you only unlock one character playing through Story Mode. There are only 18 fights compared to HTS 4's possible 32. It's shorter and because of the current fillers in the show, the story ends differently to both the Anime and the Manga – and rather disappointingly. It's not the game's fault the Arc it was based on was cut short, though.
In Tag Battle mode you are able to practice (Training), have a wireless fight with friends (Soul Vs), fight against the CPU (Free Battle), charge head-first into continuous fights (Survival), fight with a time limit (Time Attack) and, most importantly, participate in Tag Master. This is where the meat of the game is and you'll spend most of your time here. You create a partnership and select a numbered challenge to fight in. After five fights you reach the bosses of that challenge. After completing each challenge you are rewarded points and unlock the bosses that you defeated. Earning 50,000 points this way earns you the game's "secret character". Each of the 18 challenges are split in to three groups, their difficulty represented by the sword shown in the background of the selection screen. Challenges 1-6 are easy (Sealed Zanpakutō), 7-12 are medium (Shikai [Zangetsu]) and 13-18 are hard (Bankai [Tensa Zangetsu]).
Single Battle mode is the same as Tag Battle mode, but, obviously, you play as a single character – no partners whatsoever – not even to help you, as in HTS 4. This mode has all of the fighting options that were in HTS 4. Nothing new.
HTS 5 has a much welcome tutorial mode where basic fighting styles are introduced via the story being told from the Soul Society: Sneak Entry Arc to the end of the Arrancar Arc.
The tutorial is split in to 2 different modes: Tutorial 1 and Tutorial 2. Each has 9 tutorials on how to play the game. Tutorial 1 focuses on Single combat while Tutorial 2 explains the mechanics of Tab Battles.
The Appendix and options remain relatively unchanged.
Fighting has become drastically different from previous games. Your partners are no longer little pictures down the bottom of the screen – you can now play tag matches! The Soul's from HTS 4 have gone (Shinigami, Vizard and Arancar) and have been replaced with 3 different types of Tag (Offence, Defence and Technical). Each offers different fighting styles.
Each character has only one Special attack however when partnered up not only are both characters able to execute their specials on a single character but their second special (as seen in HTS 4) is also seen. Some characters make up unique combinations and as a result their specials are an actual Tag Special. These are actually pretty cool to watch, but are a double-edged sword – when you see them for the first few times, they feel rushed and there is no time to savour the moment but when your on the receiving end with only a little health, you have to watch the entire attack even if the first hit killed you, and even though it only takes a few seconds, it can be frustrating.
Characters are now able to transform during a battle – but only if you have 2 or more bars of reiatsu and you're in a Single fight. This is cool, but by the time you have enough reiatsu to transform, your enemy is half dead – unless you spend most of the time just charging your reiatsu. In Tag Battle transformations are selected before a fight – there is no transforming when you have a partner.
HTS 5 has the option to unlock more characters if you have a HTS 4 game save on your PSP – fat load of good that does you. You get and extra 16 characters to use – JUST in Single Battle mode. This game has done nothing to these characters. No transformations, no partner capabilities. It looks like they were just directly copied from the last game. NOTHING NEW. In fact, as though to emphasise this point, these characters are on a different page to the others and feature the same art as the previous games.
The game features 34 characters without the HTS 4 save and 50 with the others unlocked. Technically this means that only one character was dropped from the previous game, but as stated above, 16 of them are copied over with no compatibility with the "new" characters. Oh, and several fighting arenas have disappeared. They've been replaced with various arenas from Hueco Mudo. While the new arenas are very welcome, it would also be nice to have arenas from previous instalments, too.
The music is more of the same, but that's a good thing – still no music from the show, though. The voices sound good and solid. At times the characters look a little sluggish and mechanical – the in-game movies look much better than actual game-play which is a little disappointing.
Overall there are some interesting new inclusions in this game, but it seems like the only effort that was made was with the new Tag system and incorporating the main characters to fit that. There are now 13 Arrancar to play as which is a nice improvement, but we need more than just a few new characters. My biggest beef is with the poor 16 characters that feel and look like they got left out of the "Tag Treatment". Have to wait a year for an improvement.
The game feels like an expansion for HTS 4, and just manages to be its own game. That being said though, its still fun and is worth getting if you don't have HTS 4 (you can just download a HTS 4 game save to unlock the "Neglected 16").