Bleach: Shattered Blade for Wii Reviews by Gamers

The Bleach fan boy in me wants to give this game a high rating, but the fighting game enthusiast in me won't let it happen.

This is a great rental title for Bleach fans. Its awesome to be able to play with just about all the characters from the show and see them pull off their Bankai's and other specials. The original storyline added is also pretty cool. However, seeing pretty much the exact same story from the perspective of multiple characters gets old after about the second storyline you play through.

"Well Midboss, no one is making you play through all the character storylines."

Wrong. The game starts out with less than half the characters unlocked. To unlock everyone, you'll end up playing through all the story modes and arcade mode multiple times (sometimes with characters that you have already beaten story mode with). I'm all for unlockable extras, but its hard to jump right in and have fun playing with friends, when you have to spend so much time unlocking so much content that most would deem necessary.

As far as gameplay is concerned, this is not a deep fighting game. Each character has 3 specials, and 3 weapon attacks (criticals). Some characters gain new moves when their spirit meter fills up and they go into Bankai mode (or whatever they call it in the game). Which brings me to my next point: This game is not balanced. I understand that we're not talking about Tekken or Virtual Fighter, but this is still a fighting game and there are huge differences in the effectiveness of some character's moves over others. While it makes sense that Kenpachi is better than the pretty boy from squad 11 (who's name escapes me right now), it makes for a poor fighting game.

So in summation, if you're a Bleach fan, rent this game, spend the weekend unlocking your favorite characters and watch everyone's Bankai move and then send it back.

I'll 1st say I never watched or heard of Bleach. I rented this game because I had high hopes due to the high reviews. My total playtime for this game did not exceed 3 hours (in that time I was able to unlock most things and complete the story modes for multiple characters)

Controls/Gameplay:
The controls are very simple. They work great but you can do your most powerful moves with a flick of the wrist. While this Is good for new players to pick up on the game quickly, it makes the game feel old quickly because the all of the characters moves are done the same way. The mix of easy controls makes winning (against the computer at least) as easy as holding the B button and waving the wiimote. Multiplayer, I imagine, would have a more interesting feel to it.

Graphics:
The game is visually beautiful (like all cell shaded wii games). The graphics guise the linear game play very well and whenever you play it looks great and the supers are visually beautiful. I only wish the storyline wasn't told through still images.

Sound:
As a little bit of an audiophile I find the sound to be flat. I wish the sword clashes sounded more "full". The voice acting in battles is alright however in the story-lines it sounds like a very poorly dubbed anime (Elebits cut scene voice-overs come to mind). I think the Japanese sound are better.

Conclusion:
If you know the anime it may add more to the table (for instance DBZ:BT2 is that much better if you like the show, I imagine this is too). However unlike DBZ:BT2 this game is very easy to master and gets old quick whereas games with controls like DBZ:BT2 make the replay value higher as timing is far more important than in games like this.

I know it sounds like I've been bashing this game but it's not bad. It is still fun and if your the kind of person who likes easy to play/learn games you will likely have a good time with this title. Defiantly worth the rent for bleach fans and casual gamers. Just don't set your hopes too high.