Bleach, one of the keystone manga and anime franchises of the early 2000s alongside Naruto and One Piece, has finally been given another chance at carving out some kind of legacy in the video game space.
Bleach: Rebirth of Souls is a one-on-one fighting game that’s easy to pick up and… well, truth be told, it’s fairly easy to master, too. While it isn’t quite on the same level of overall simplicity as your typical anime-based arena fighter, it’s still lacking the necessary depth to keep anyone outside of hardcore Bleach fans hooked beyond the 20-ish hour mark.
Now look, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The fact that we’ve actually got a new Bleach game is cause for celebration in itself, and developer Tamsoft (of Senran Kagura fame, hilariously) has done a fantastic job of adapting the style and tone of Bleach as a whole.
If, like us, you’ve been waiting on a proper Bleach game for what feels like an eternity, Rebirth of Souls will scratch your itch. The crazy visual effects, the sizeable 31-strong character roster, the rocking soundtrack… it’s just a blast to be back in Ichigo Kurosaki’s world.
And again, for around 20 hours or so, the honeymoon phase is great. You’ll play through the story mode, which does a surprisingly decent job of retelling the key plot points of the source material, and you’ll work your way through the playable characters, gawking at their super-cool attack animations.
But you soon realise that there’s just not much meat to the game. Beyond additional, original story scenarios of varying consequence and a local versus mode, there’s very little for offline players to sink their teeth into.
So you turn your gaze to online matches, but that side of the release is disappointingly barebones as well. Bizarrely, there’s no ranked match option — just casuals and player-made lobbies — meaning that any sense of online progression barely exists.
And to make matters worse, the lack of rollback netcode results in some noticeably laggy encounters. A game like Rebirth of Souls doesn’t strictly need cutting-edge netcode to be playable given its simplistic nature, but you’ll often notice your inputs being eaten, and it becomes incredibly difficult to react to specific attacks and situations.
Which brings us to the combat system. Fundamentally, there are some enticing ideas here, like how matches revolve around taking lives away from your opponent, rather than winning individual rounds. Basically, once a life bar runs out, you perform a flashy finishing move, which strips away a number of ‘lives’.
More of these lives are depleted if you’re in a powered-up, awakened state, which then places an emphasis on comebacks. If you’re getting hammered, you’ll usually reach that awakening faster than your foe — and so a lot of matches feature a fun, almost cinematic quality to them where the underdog fights back with everything they have.
Some characters change quite dramatically upon activation — and seeing all of the transformations play out is undeniably hype. If there’s one thing Rebirth of Souls gets right, it’s that the roster feels just as varied and interesting as what you’d expect of the source material.
Having said that, the actual mechanics that underpin each character are so basic. There’s very little room for things like combo expression or more advanced defensive techniques, because repetitive three-button strings and the simple act of blocking negate so much of what’s on offer.
You would hope that the game’s 3D movement — complete with directional dashes — would offset some of these criticisms, but it’s just not potent enough. It’s so easy to get caught in strikes that cover huge distances, to the point where moving can feel counterproductive when you could just turtle up behind a guard gauge that takes ages to break.
And then there’s the game’s balance, which borders on being comedic at launch. There are infinites, ridiculously overpowered special attacks, and certain characters who make others utterly redundant. We certainly don’t go into anime fighters anticipating competitive-level balancing, but Rebirth of Souls still beggars belief at times.
It’s a shame, ultimately, because there’s a unique ebb and flow to matches that can set the title apart from its peers. The best fights really do feel climactic, like you’re watching a season finale from the anime; there’s a pacing here that’s objectively quite slow, but it creates tension as battles rumble on, characters awaken, and the stakes get higher and higher.
Conclusion
There’s something really compelling at the core of Bleach: Rebirth of Souls, but it struggles to emerge amidst half-baked mechanics and a general lack of depth. The game wows over the first few hours with slick visuals and a varied character roster, but it just doesn’t have the content to keep anyone but the most hardcore Bleach fans hooked. While it’s great to see Tite Kubo’s edgy blockbuster back in action, Rebirth of Souls will go down as a flashy fighter that never realised its potential.
