First Things First: Legal Issues
Now, anybody who’s familiar with Bleach and the handful of anime games online knows that the characters, names, symbols and any other copyrighted IP in the games are being used without permission from the owners. Bleach Online is no different, and this one is particularly noticeable because it uses assets (namely from the audio) from other Bleach games – which is something that a big name developer will not give away freely (and something that is unnecessary for a legitimate online game developer because it’s easy to produce on their own.)
Basically, if you’re going to play this game, don’t expect too much and don’t get attached to your progress as it could disappear anytime, especially since Japan has started bolstering their online campaign against copyright infringement for manga and anime-related properties earlier this month.
Now, let’s get on with discussing the game itself.
As mentioned above, Bleach Online is a browser-based game so there’s no need to worry about system requirements as long as you have an up-to-date browser that supports the APIs used by browser-based games (namely Flash and JS.) I don’t know if it’s playable with a netbook, but I’m using a low end PC with an IGP and a browser that has hardware acceleration turned off and the game still ran fairly smooth, so it’s likely that Bleach Online will run even on an el cheapo portable.
Graphics-wise, the game looks good. Ichigo, General Yamamoto, Shunsui, etc. all look exactly like they should and even the custom characters designed for the game look exceptional – they fit in with the general theme. The male user character does remind me of Sol Badguy from Guilty Gear, though. Audio is also decent and as mentioned above – you’ll recognize some of it if you’ve been playing a lot of Bleach games. The attack animation, even if not occurring in real time, also look impressive and devastating even at the lower levels.
The first negative thing about the game is that the screens look cluttered. There’s way too many things to click and there’s way too many things going on at once. If you’re an MMO veteran, you’ll easily get the hang of things but it’s easy for a newcomer to be overwhelmed. What’s worse is the amount of text you have to wade through – and it’s not like the text is a joy to read. They’re poorly structured and obviously written by someone who doesn't speak native English. Thankfully, you can speed things up by clicking anywhere on the screen and the quest can be done on semi-autopilot by just clicking the auto task, but if you’re doing things this way then it renders the story and the text completely useless, which is just wrong on games that are part RPG.
Gameplay is similar to most browser-based SRPGs these days. It’s turn based between your character(s) and the enemies, although with Bleach Online even the combat is on auto pilot. The gameplay itself is just clicking on an enemy icon on the map screen and then watching as the cpu plays on its own.
I spent an hour or so playing the game before deciding that there’s really not much in this one that can be considered as a proper game. It’s basically just watching the stats rise while looking at pictures of Bleach characters - if that makes you happy, then good for you, you’ll enjoy Bleach Online. But if you want an enjoyable browser-based game, there are tons of other games that would do a better job.
