Bleach 4th FlameBringer
Overview
The 4th Bleach Nintendo DS title has just been release only a few weeks ago. In the series of Bleach games for Nintendo DS, the first two games titled Blade of Fate, and Dark Souls were 2D fighting games that then was proceeded by 3rd Phantom an RPG title. Now, Fans awaiting another bleach fighting will be surprised to find out this time the game is an Action RPG. Another surprise to the game is that there are only 8 playable characters: Ichigo Kurosaki, Rukia Kuchiki, Uryuu Ishida, Renji Abarai, Byakuya Kuchiki, Byakuya as a child,.Toshiro Hitsugaya and Yoruichi Shihoin. This is a less than diminutive list of character compared to the rosters from the previous games.
However the only good news is that many of the other characters like the Arrancar and Vizard are either featured in boss battles or 'special assists' . With that said still the game feels to have let the fans down because they may not be able to play as their favourite characters in Bleach. There are 4 main modes, A Story Mode, Mission Mode, Survival Mode, and Free Mode.
Official Discussion: Here
Published & Developed By: Sega
Release Date: Aug 6 , 2009 (In-Japan)
Single Player Only
Design
Impressions of the level design are that the game make use of the dual screens. The level take up the area from top to bottom, encompassing both screens meaning that player can interact between the two split screens. Story Mode works the same way it did in Dark Souls, players proceed through the game a linear path, once you complete a stage you either proceed to a short duologue scene or to the next stage of that level. As you progress through the game's story you unlock more levels. The stages can be pretty redundant, every level is similar to previous one just with a new minor type of obstacle added.
Enemies and Hallows remain the same pretty much throughout the game, occasionally a player might stumble on a few new types of enemies here and there but for the most part your going to be striking down the same enemies continouslly. In each stage there wil be Hell Butterflies that appear in random areas, they are collectable in each level and are used later in the story.
After each stage you either encounter a floating squid like hallow that spews coins out as a sort of end of the stage bonus or you will have to fight a end of stage boss. Although sometimes amusing, boss fights are quite simple and short. In some battles in-between action your suddenly hit with a random dialogue sequence where you have to select from 3 options and the results vary depending on what option is choosen.
Features
A feature in the game is this sort of card's system similar to one seen in games like Jump Ultimate Supstars. A player is given two boards to place collectable Character cards on. As players progress to the game you can earn more cards or buy them from Urahara's Shop. Some Character cards have special effects while others will let you call out a support character (by pressing the A button) to either evoke abilities like healing (Nel), temporary shield a character from taking damage (Orihime), or launch an Cero blast on the area (Shinji).
As stated before, there are 4 main modes, A Story Mode, Mission Mode, Survival Mode, and Free Mode.
Story Mode, Free Mode, and Mission Mode are the same, free mode allows you to use any character to replay the same level you did in Story Mode. Mission Mode is almost identical, except in Mission Mode there restrictions set out to increase the difficulty of the stage.
Gameplay
The core gameplay of the game is spent jumping platforms (B to Jump( and hacking and slashing (with the X and Y button) your way through waves of enemies on screen. As your hit count increase by successfully chaining attacks and avoiding any damage from your enemies, your "Soul Rating" also increases. Any sufficent damage will reset your rating back to 50%. If you do manage to increase your Soul Rating you may "Over Soul." Over Soul occurs when your soul rating is beyond 100% and it will temporarly increase your SP, and also enables Characters to use special abilities such as Ichigo's Bankai by pressing X+Up and X-Down afterwards to unless Hollow form. This is so simple to accomplish that the game allows one to spam as many specials as they wish, as long they are alright with watching the same bankai release animation repeatedly. Soul Rating has a maximum of 1000% and affects your letter-grade rank you recieve at the end stage completion. Although the game is simple enough that it is not difficult to achieve a high rank on every stage
Overall Presentation
There is a new OST for the game, however much of the music and especially the sound effects is reused from Dark Soul. The character's voice-overs have been redone and new lines taken from Versus Crusade (Bleach Game for Wii) are used in combat.
The Opening Sequence Animation is nothing spectacular. The Start Menu uses the current Bleach Opening Theme (Shoujo S by Scandal) as the Title Screen. But to listen to the song you have to stare at looping animation of Start Menu. It seems what the designers should have done is incorperate the song into the opening animation.
Opening Title Screen
