RATING
Graphics: 6
Sound: 6
Gameplay: 5
Overall: 5.5
Pros: Clean Manga graphical style and themes true to the original Manga series.
Cons: Small gameplay window, not enough explanation of lore, characters and the world.
Since Bleach Online started into open beta testing several days ago, we leaped at the chance to throw a first glance on this new massively multiplayer online role-playing game in order to get to know what it has to offer and what it exactly is all about. In case you haven’t heard of it yet, this title is based on the well-known Japanese Manga Bleach that revolves around the adventures of a character named Ichigo Kurosaki, a high school student capable of seeing ghosts.
Upon logging in to this free-to-play browser MMO, the game already welcomed us with lots of flashing pop-ups and icons that were strewn over the entire screen and we realised pretty soon the Asian style of the MMO with all its rewards, freebies and other aspects that are a staple to this kind of games. We were instantly thrust into the story where we met a plethora of characters right from the start, which fans of the Manga anime will most probably be well familiar with. There unfortunately is pretty little information on who these characters are, meaning that Bleach Online presumably aims at confirmed enthusiasts of the Manga.
Similar to many other MMORPGs of this kind, Bleach Online uses an extremely automated system, including auto pathing to travel between NPCs and quest locations as well as completely automated combat during which the characters in the player’s party perform attacks and special abilities without any involvement of the player. The core gameplay revolves around building up your Battle Power, a value which indicates the player’s strength compared to AI opponents and enemy players. This Battle Power can be enhanced by increasing your Soul through the Soul Map, levelling up the main hero and all companions added to the player’s party as well as equipping them with gear and weapons.
One of the game’s major focuses is constantly heaping rewards and gifts for continuous play on the player, e.g. bonuses for logging in on a daily basis, extra bonuses for levelling up (which doesn’t require much time), item rewards for winning battles, quest rewards, refresh rewards and so on and so on. Apart from that, players are also able to benefit from the VIP function which allows them to gain additional XP by topping up and grants access to enhanced services and privileges, as, for instance, discounts on spirit stones, the ability to purchase more vitality chances, auto win in taverns and many more conveniences for the game.
The gameplay in this kind of games is always hit and miss; they’re loved by some players and loathed by others. However, whichever group you side with, one can hardly deny that there truly lies a great appeal in them for a considerable amount of gamers and they are tremendously popular especially when the game is based on an already established IP. The developers seem to stay true to the core of Bleach in so far as the same characters, story themes and even powers and abilities seen with heroes in the animated series are reflected in the game.
The visuals hold up quite well and look like an animated Manga with fully animated battles and smooth character movement when manoeuvring across the maps. They do however take an unexpected style twist in the Overland maps where the icons are represented as more chibi style characters (a bit of a stretch from Manga). The most annoying issue was that the actual retail space on our screen wasn’t all that big. Even when expanded to full screen mode, the game window still only occupied the centre and was continually crowned with pop-ups and icons which in fact dominated the limited space available and felt a little bit crowded.
Except for the window size, the major drawback was the story as such, which was absolutely uninspiring and confusing to anyone who isn’t already familiar with the Bleach franchise. For someone who hasn’t any idea of the show, most of the references that are made have absolutely no context and we don’t have any doubt that other players in our situation would have exactly the same feelings (though we must admit that if the game has been developed and marketed specifically for fans of the show, then it has undoubtedly been successfully done).
Please stay tuned if you want to find out more as we'll soon publish a profile of this game as well.
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