Bleach: Rebirth of Souls

Bleach: Rebirth of Souls was provided by Bandai Namco for review. Thank you!

It's fair to say that Bleach hasn't had the same outpouring of love and devotion in the videogame department that its Shōnen Jump contemporaries have had in recent years. Outside of mobile titles and subsequent ports to console, Bleach last graced our screens with a "larger" release with the PlayStation 3's Bleach: Soul Resurrección (or Bleach: Soul Ignition, as it was known in Japan) back in 2011. Meanwhile, Dragon Ball, Naruto, and One Piece released copious standout gems in that same period. To play devil's advocate, yes, the named contemporaries are still ongoing in some fashion, whereas Bleach ended its manga run in 2016. That being said, recycling content has never been something the anime tie-in subgenre has ever shied away from. How many times have we killed Frieza over the last two decades? Exactly.

With the last Bleach arc, Thousand-Year Blood War, having made its way to Disney+ starting in 2022, it was only a matter of time until Bandai Namco did what was expected of them. Anime tie-ins are a true backbone of their business at this point, and to capitalise on the renewed interest caused by the release of the arc, the only one to have not had an animated counterpart, makes perfect business sense. And I am here for it, Zanpakutō in hand. Or Steam Deck. Either or.

Enter Bleach: Rebirth of Souls. Developed by Tamsoft, best known for the admittedly niche Onechanbara and Senran Kagura series, Rebirth of Souls somewhat amalgamates the 3D fighter and arena fighter sub-genres in a mostly cohesive package that remains true to the source material, for better or worse. Thirty-three fighters make up the impressive and diverse roster, with the combat focusing on a rock-paper-scissors approach to mechanics, particularly with attacks, blocking, and breakers. There's nuance to this approach for high-level players, but this is certainly more approachable as far as fighting games go. However, it's particularly par for the course regarding anime-based entries. We're here for the IP first and foremost, not the sweaty gameplay that more mainstay fighting game juggernauts come to blows over: Tekken, Street Fighter, et al.

Still, there's much to play with within the all-important matches, even considering the simplified attack hierarchies. Your standard assortment of attacks, light, heavy, and signature moves, will damage opponents unless otherwise blocked. Blocking is quite generous, despite the ever-present Guard Gauge meter that depletes when blocking incoming damage. What it can't block, however, is a breaker, this game's particular take on a grab. With a press (or hold, to close in should you be far away), you can near-immediately land said breaker to inflict damage that cuts through any defensive stances… unless an attack hits you whilst you perform this. And thus, the cycle continues.

The act of moving around the battlefield itself is pretty effortless, with it being somewhere between the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm series and something more standard, say, Street Fighter, with side steps, dashes, and whatnot. It's missing a certain je ne sais quoi, with control often feeling clumsy and not akin to what the characters necessarily should be able to achieve, something noticeable to hardened fans of the series.

Some of Bleach: Rebirth of Souls' mechanics alleviate a few movement-based woes, such as a Hoho, a move by which you teleport instantly behind an enemy at the cost of some of your Reverse Gauge. This gauge is a separate bar from your health bar that's utilised for both those mentioned above and Reverse actions, with these techniques having various uses depending on the state in which they are used: Extending your combos and increasing your spiritual power in one instance, whilst another may be being able to cancel the opponent's combo and recover your guard gauge, for example.

Getting to the end of your opponent's health bar isn't the be-all and end-all, though, for each character has a stack of Konpaku, a set of lives you have in each match. When the opponent's health bar is low, specifically under 30%, you can execute a Kikon Move that can remove multiple lives. Whilst you can accomplish this any time the enemy is under that 30% threshold, this will always remove one less life than if you had otherwise depleted their health bar entirely and then performed the necessary technique. This balancing act of when to knock the enemy down depending on the battle's flow is delightful and quite unlike any other fighting game, adding a layer of strategy in a game otherwise mostly devoid of it.

The more damage an enemy takes - across all their lives, notably - the closer they are to entering an Awakened state, a form in which they will most likely be harder, better, faster, and, stronger. They'll get there regardless, mind you, but it's up to you how quickly you take away their lives and force their hand.

The standard assortment of modes constitutes the vehicles by which you'll enjoy said battles, including Story, both offline and online battles, and the obligatory tutorial. However, you'll experience the vast number of your battles in the superb story mode. Indeed, and I mean this with no hyperbole, this is the best story mode presented in any licensed IP… at least when it comes to the presentation of the source material and how it is more than happy to faithfully and unashamedly re-tell the story, soul society-induced warts and all.

Story arcs are extensively covered throughout the main campaign, culminating in the ever-popular confrontation between Ichigo and Aizen. Every interlocking character journey is fully explored, too, ensuring each side-adventure, however unassuming at the time, is seen through to its eventual culmination and joining of Ichigo's "main" thread. It does mean that there's a lot of fluff included, too. Again, for better or worse, that's the Bleach way. It's a much-beloved series with many weaker story points, with various filler and "main" arc episodes considered skippable. This game, thankfully free of said filler arcs, does little to alleviate the IP's significant drawbacks, which are also incidentally felt in the roster.

The main cast of characters for the relevant arcs, such as Ichigo, Renji, and Byakuya, all feel beautifully represented and excellent to control. The minor characters, such as Chad and Rukia, wildly vary between being dull and an outright chore to play. The love and respect for the cast of colourful characters isn't felt equally at times, and whilst it's natural to gravitate towards some more than others in such a genre, the pendulum swing between love and loathing is too great. Combat's always flashy but not always enjoyable, with such a significant disparity so evident.

Bleach: Rebirth of Souls - Steam Deck Performance

Regarding the Steam Deck, Bleach: Rebirth of Souls has excellent controller support.

The game also supports 1280x800, but I opted to lower the resolution to 1280x720 just to get a slight performance boost. It introduces black bars, but we get a couple of extra FPS, and that's pretty crucial for this game.

To get a playable experience here, we have to run the lowest settings possible. The "Performance" preset lowers all the settings for us, so just make sure the resolution is set to 1280x720.

With these settings, we can expect to mostly maintain a solid 30 FPS. However, on some maps, you can see dips to around 27 or 28 FPS when doing effect-heavy attacks. Because of that, I don't recommend playing this game online, where almost everyone will be playing at a locked 60. It's possible the frame drops could even cause issues with online play.

The power draw was around 19W-21W, and the temperature was mostly around 70 °C. Thus, you can expect about 2.5 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck OLED and around 1.5 hours from a Steam Deck LCD.

Accessibility

Bleach: Rebirth of Souls supports subtitles for mid-battle dialogue. It also has difficulty settings for quick matches against AI and the story mode.

Conclusion

Bleach: Rebirth of Souls is everything you could want from a Bleach game, for better or worse. It's faithful to the source material to a fine point and, in doing so, gives us some of the finest anime characters and battles to have graced our screens for a long time. On the other hand, it's often clumsily portrayed, with uneven storytelling and, as is evident in the roster portrayals, uneven representation and balancing. It's still an easy recommendation for lovers of the IP, but those new to Tite Kubo's most significant work may be left feeling dazed and confused more often than not.

Still, we have some of the most incredible character themes in entertainment history, and what could you ask for more than that?

Alexa, play Ichigo's theme.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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