rizalariff's Review of Bleach: Blade Battlers 2nd

If you're a Bleach fan, this game is for you.

User Rating: 8 | Bleach: Blade Battlers 2nd PS2

By rizalariff | Review Date: March 30, 2008

Based on the highly popular anime series, Bleach, which revolves around Kurosaki Ichigo who can see spirits and gains the power of a Shinigami (death god/soul reaper) from Kuchiki Rukia. But that's all old news. Bleach: Blade Battlers 2nd is set very far into the series (Arrancar arc) which means if you don't want to be spoiled by spoilers, avoid this game for now. The game has 3 main modes, Free Mode, Story Mode, Battlers Mode. The gameplay is fast-paced and very easy to learn. Basically, there are 3 bars on the screen for each character. There's your health/life bar, special attack bar and your bankai bar (but for characters with no bankai it's something else such as Rukia turning into a shinigami from her school uniform and stuff like that). When your'e actually playing the game, you start out with an empty special attack and bankai bar but as you fill them up, you can use bankai by tapping L1 and R1 at the same time. This will initiate a short cutscene where you can see your favourite characters transform. However, the cutscenes are exactly the same every time except for the dialogue during the cutscenes which can differ from one to another which means there are only 2 sets of lines for each characters bankai cutscene. The special attack can be used by tapping the circle button. If you are moving while pressing the circle button, you only use 1/3 of the special attack bar but if you are stationary while pressing the circle button, you will use your whole special attack bar and of course, release a more powerful attack as well. There are also different special attacks when you use it when you are in bankai form. Free Mode is where you just play for fun and practice to with your favourite character and master their moves. You can play the game 1 on 1, 2 on 1, 3 on 1, and 2 on 2 with up to 4 players. In the beginning, you only have about 14 characters to choose from. But you can eventually unlock up to 36! Yes, I said 36 characters to battle with.

In Story Mode, well... it's a mode that has story... All in all, it has about 7 or 8 episodes. Each episode has it's own theme from the serious episode of the battle with the arrancar, to the very funny episode about the women's Soul Society meeting. However, the whole game is about 95% Japanese which means, if you don't understand Japanese, your'e going to miss out on the hilarious Bleach humour as well as the gripping Bleach dialogue. I don't understand Japanese too much, but I do know a bit from all the episodes of Bleach that I have watched and believe me, eventhough you don't understand Japanese well, you will still be chuckling and giggling as well as laughing out loud from the Bleach humour. Playing story mode will unlock battle arenas to play in Free Mode as well as snapshots from the story that can be purchased from Urahara Shop.

Now for Battlers Mode... In a nutshell, Battlers Mode is kinda like a board game where you start on a single square with 2 characters (Ichigo and Rukia) but as you keep defeating all the opponents there, you will advance to the next square and unlock characters. Get it? Each square on Battlers Mode has a specific colour. The red square means it's a free mission where they will give you an opponent (or sometimes 2!) to battle with but you can select the character you want to use. The blue square means it's a challenge mission where it's the same as free mission but the game will give you the character to fight with and sometimes with certain conditions such as their special meter is full or maximum and your life bar is only half while your opponent has 2 full lives. I played the whole game in normal difficulty, and while there were some very tough challenge missions, none of them seem to be impossible. Challenge mode can also relive classic battles in the anime such as Ichigo going against Byakuya. Even the location is correct!!! (Soukyoku Hill). After completing each mission, there will be a screen where there are 3 objectives to be completed in each mission. Each objective you complete, will be awarded with a crown. After obtaining 50 or 100 or 150 crowns, (and other milestones) more squares will be revealed with more challenge missions. And the review by Skip04 is right, if you don't know Japanese, you will have trouble completing Battlers Mode.

There are also a lot of extras to unlock in this game. There are little items to be bought in Urahara Shop which you can put on the characters such as hats, boxing gloves, and a lot of other wacky stuff. (there's even an afro!!! Just imagine putting an afro on Ikkaku... Hilarious!!) You can also buy the snapshots that I mentioned earlier. There's even 3 videos of Kon's radio show which you do not need to buy, but is unlcked from Battlers Mode (I think) as well as characters and arenas which are nlocked from Battlers Mode and Story Mode respectively and are also unlocked directly and do not need to be bought. There's also a Tutorial and Training Mode which I thought was unnecessary because of the simple gameplay.

All in all, Bleach: Blade Battlers 2nd is a very fun game especially for Bleach fans such as myself. Non Bleach fans however, aren't going to enjoy it as much as Bleach fans, but they will still enjoy the simple gameplay and controls which can picked up by just about anyone. Along with the billions of unlockables that will be keeping you playing for a long time, as well as the solid fighting mechanics, this game is a must-have for Bleach fans as well as fighting game enthusiasts.

Bleach: Blade Battlers 2nd

If you're a Bleach fan, this game is for you.

Things just keep getting better

Takes all fun and action from the previous game to another level