You know the deal, a shonen series gets popular and it spawns a simple fighting game. It's like a rule, something that will happen because it's the way of the world. Back when Bleach was in its heyday, it actually spawned quite the amount of fighting games. You had the amazing but ignored DS fighters, the simpler but fan service-er PSP fighters and then there were the PS2 arena fighters and the even more obscure Gamecube ones. Shattered Blade it's a pseudo-rework of one of those Gamecube game, but they swapped buttons for waggling, and it works about as well as you'd expect.
As far as modes go, it offers the usual suspects: Episode Mode(Story Mode), Arcade Mode, VS(CPU or Player), Training(And tutorial!) and the Shop where you can buy items for the Gallery. The game's gimmick was Arturo Plateado, an original character designed by series' creator Kubo Tite exclusively for this game. His story is terrible. Basically, about 8 characters get an Episode Mode, which is more or less a retelling of the same story from their point of view, and them getting to fight Arturo Plateado in the end. The plot revolves about Arturo Plateado being sealed, but somehow being able to create duplicates of certain characters that coerce other characters into collecting all the shards of the Sokyoku. How can he create duplicates from within the seal? Who knows. Why not have these duplicates collect the shards incognito instead of trusting someone to defeat everyone else and collect all the shards? Who knows. Basically, the story is bad. As far as roster goes, it features 32 characters, 2 'guest' Arrancars as well as Arturo Plateado, while the other 29 come from the Soul Society arc. I thought the character selection was pretty good, and covers all the major characters from the arc.
The first thing that you should know is that the game only supports the Wiimote+Nunchuck combo, and that you can only attack while waggling. There's three types of attacks: Normal, Critical and Special, and all three of them come in three varieties, depending if you thrust the Wiimote, flick it to the sides or up-and-down. It works about as well as you'd expect. But here's the thing, you can actually have a bit of fun with the game if you don't take it seriously. You can't take a fighting game that relies on imprecise motion controls seriously anyways. You can perform some simple normal-into-critical or normal-into-special combos, but nothing fancy Sadly, the novelty does wear off, and then it just gets dull. It doesn't help that the game is designed around a Stamina meter, because having to wait in order to attack again is always fun. It's not like having infinite stamina would've allowed you to spam your enemy to death, y'see, you can input Critical attacks WHILE receiving damage, not only will you break their combo, it will actually negate a ton of the damage you would've received, as a matter of fact, more often than not, breaking a normal combo attack with a critical attack will deal more damage than what you receive. It's not a deep game, and even if there were optional joystick support, buttons couldn't save this game.
There's a few other mechanics at play as well. Z button is used to block and C is used to dash faster. The game plays like a 3D Arena fighter, which means full 8-directional movement is supported, although you can't jump. There's also a Bankai Gauge, and it is called that even for characters that don't have a Bankai, that is filled by dealing or receiving damage, or by waggling the nunchuck. Once it's full, waggle the nunchuck once more and you'll enter Bankai/'Super' mode. It increases everyone's attack power, and in some cases, it actually changes how they fight. Plus, one of the Special attacks becomes a Super Move. It only lasts for a while, so make the most of it. There's this one mechanic that really annoyed me though, Clashes. If two critical attacks clash, you will be subjected to a mini-game, in which you must play a best-out-of-5 rock-paper-scissors match... except that it's a stab-slash-slice mini-game. These bring the game to a halt, they are slow and boring, and worst of all, the game loves to mess up your inputs. Not that it matters since it's pretty much a luck-based affair, but knowing that if the sensor had read your move correctly would've netted you the win can be pretty vexing. Here's the thing, during normal attacks, it really doesn't matter if it reads your inputs wrong. If it reads your Critical Attack wrong, it doesn't matter either, they behave mostly the same. When it reads your Special moves wrong, it shouldn't be a big deal either since you should be using it to end a combo. Regardless, it doesn't seem to happen often. But when it comes to clashing, it seems that it will never get your inputs right, it's hilarious really. These clashes happen way more than you'd think and they only get more and more annoying.
If one good thing can be said about the game, is that it looks pretty decent. Character models are more reminiscent of the manga than the anime, which I really liked, and they look pretty good. They aren't very detailed, but Bleach's designs are very simple to begin with. That said, there's a lot, and I mean a lot of clipping issues that kinda take away from them. The game also employs a very washed out color palette, something the Wii is infamous for, and I think it kinda plays against it. It's an anime game, make it colorful, make it pop! The music was pretty as well, although not memorable. The voice acting is good, but only the American dub is available. Newcomer Arturo Plateado is the worst of the bunch by far, his 'I'm disappearing!' line is hilariously terrible.
Bleach is a bad game. The combat offers no depth, and the clashes are infuriating, however, I do admit that some fun can be had by waggling, until the novelty wears off anyways. Even for fans, it's better to stay away, Arturo Plateado isn't worth it, and he makes a reappearance on the much better 'Bleach: The 3rd Phantom'.
3.5 out of 10.
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