Bleach: Heat the Soul 5
The Bleach: Heat The Soul series for the PSP has come a long way. It is still the longest running series for this handheld. For those who've not watched the anime, Bleach tells the story of Kurosaki Ichigo - student by day, soul reaper by night. When his friends and families get threatened by supernatural beings, he can go either way. Like its predecessors, Bleach: Heat The Soul 5 focuses on a certain part of the Bleach storyline. In this game, Ichigo and his friends have entered the alternate dimension of Hueco Mundo in an attempt to save a friend from captivity. While the last game featured a whopping 77 characters (many just being variants), Bleach: Heat The Soul 5 streamlines the roster and cuts it down to 47 unique ones. Fret not, as quite a few are new additions, such as the Vizard and Arrancar teams of superpowered beings, who have never been featured in previous Bleach games. A nice addition to the game is tag-team battle, in which you fight two characters. Gameplay remains largely the same except that you are able to switch back-and-forth between the characters in your team. There are also some special combo moves when certain characters are paired together. For example, you can get a unique finishing move by pairing Ichigo with his evil self. What I'd really like is to be able to make four characters face off at once wirelessly - that will be something really new. Other than the tag-team, it's more of the good old Heat The Soul series action - simple button-mashing, special moves like Ichigo's sword energy blast and in incredibly easy-to-defeat CPU. The gameplay mainly caters to people who've watched the anime and want to play as their favorite characters. Fans of the Bleach anime would take to Bleach: Heat The Soul 5 easily, with even more playable characters to satisfy them. Those who are looking for a real fighting game would do well to stay away.
