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TGS07: Bleach DS hands-on impressions

by Graham on September 30th, 2007

Now I’m going to be honest, I have never seen an episode of Bleach or played a game, (if there are other games), well you would no doubt find out soon enough, from reading this, if I hadn’t told you.  I know of Bleach, that it exists, but nothing else, what it’s about of characters, nothing.

While some may see that as being bad, some can also think it’s good.  I am pretty impartial on this, so my views should not be swayed by bias, (not that they normally are).  But due to my lack of knowledge, this could be a pretty short article.

The Bleach DS game, was located opposite Ghost Squadand had two systems setup for play, linked to tv sets, so people could watch you play, without bending over your shoulder.

If you don’t know Bleach DS, is a RPG, which means a lot of talking… yeah you know what’s coming.  Due to being a Japanese exhibition, the game was entirely in Japanese.  So when I started playing the game, I basically kept tapping A through the conversation at the start, until I could start playing.

Graphically the game is ok.  It looks very much like a GBA game, don’t expect anything mind blowing.  Though the animation in the battle sequences is pretty decent.  Overall they get the job done, certainly.

The game also plays much like a GBA game.  You don’t use the stylus at all.  Nope, no touch screen action for you in this game, and most of the time you will only be looking at one screen, the top screen was only used when you attack - and then it only showed who was fighting, otherwise it just displayed the word ‘Bleach,’ over and over.

The TGS demo, threw the player straight into a battle, and you had 5 players available to use.  For fans of the Shining Forcegames, well the early (good) games on the Megadrive and Saturn, they should be right at home with Bleach’s battle system.

It is pretty much just like the Shining Force games, but with some changes.  The main similarity between the two games, is that you are put into a small battlefield, and you move your characters around strategically, depending on the terrain and enemy types.

Some of the differences are, how you now have a set ‘Player Turn’ and ‘Enemy Turn.’  In Shining Force, your characters and enemies moved depending on their level/skills, while Bleach, you can move any of your players within in your turn, then the enemy has his turn to move and attack.  This may seem unfair, as you have a chance to wipe out the entire enemy force straight away, but when you attack an enemy, they will always take a stab at fighting back - unlike Shining Force, when they rarely counter-attacked - every time I attacked, the enemy struck back.

You can also choose which of your team you want to move in your turn.  Rather than having to wait for your character to have their turn, you can select who you want to move/attack.

One other cool feature, is that you can double team enemies.  By standing next to another of your team, in front of an enemy, you can select an option to team up.  This means that when the person you originally chose attacks, the other character will jump in, and help out, to effectively do double the damage on the enemy.  You can use this option, even if the extra character has already made their move.

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That’s pretty much all I can tell you about the game I guess, how the battle system works.  A fair amount of it was guess work on my part (language issues, again), though a Sega guy helped with the double team thing.

The music was pretty decent, as far as I recall, but due to the loud environment it was hard to hear, so I can’t give a definitive opinion on that, I’m afraid.

Summary:

While I may not be a fan of Bleach…. or know anything about the series, I am kind of excited for this game.  Mainly because it reminded me so much of the original Shining Force games.  As Sega don’t seem that keen on resurrecting the old style Shining Force titles, and are content of pumping out the iffy PS2 games, and the lack-lustre Shining Soul games on the GBA, I think that Bleach could be the closest thing we will see to a true Shining Force style game.

Perhaps that is the wrong way to go about wanting this game, and I’m sure Sega is hoping people would buy it for the Bleach title, but for anyone like me, who doesn’t care much about Bleach, but misses the good old Shining Force series, I would definitely give this game a look.  As for Bleach fans… you’ll no doubt buy it whatever.

Shining Force.

~G~

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POSTED IN: G, Japan, News, Nintendo DS