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BLEACH Brave Souls

BLEACH Brave Souls is a free-to-play, online action RPG on mobile devices based on the original Bleach anime/manga series with cell-shaded 3D graphics, many Bleach characters to collect, fast-paced action combat, over 100 story-driven stages, real-time co-op missions, and automated PVP.

Publisher: KLab Global
Playerbase: Medium
Type: Mobile RPG
Release Date: January 15, 2016
Pros: +High quality graphics. +Smooth, action combat. +Deep story from the original anime/manga. +Many characters to collect. +Real-time 4 player Co-op.
Cons: -Repetitive gameplay. -Automated PVP. -Can’t evolve characters.

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Overview

BLEACH Brave Souls Overview

BLEACH Brave Souls is a 3D hack-and-slash action RPG developed and published by KLab Global, the company behind the popular mobile titles, LoveLive! School idol festival and Glee Forever! Experience the critically acclaimed anime/manga series, Bleach, for the first time or once again in the palm of your hands. Play as Ichigo on his journey to save the world from invading Hallows as a Soul Reaper, and meet many interesting characters along the way. Defeat dangerous Hallows with fast-paced, action combat with skills, combos, and the ability to dodge. Collect a large variety of Bleach characters to fight along your side. Team up with players around the world in 4-player real-time co-op or battle it out in intense PVP battles. Customize your characters’ stats in the Soul Tree, equip them, and link them with other characters for even more power. Relive the engaging and emotional tale of Bleach today!

BLEACH Brave Souls Features:

  • Stage-based Levels – Fight through over 100 unique stages full of dangerous Hollows, bosses, and character dialogue.
  • High Quality Story – Experience the highly popular Bleach storyline full of humor and emotional events retold in a mobile game.
  • 3D Anime Graphics – High quality, anime-inspired graphics bring each character to life with realistic animations and flashy effects.
  • Fast-paced Combat – Defeat Hollows with action-oriented combat with three characters to switch between, skills to use, and the ability to dodge by swiping the screen.
  • Many Characters to Collect – Collect well-known Bleach characters, each with different attacks and abilities, and form the ultimate party of characters.
  • Real-time Co-op & Automated PVP – Team up with up to 4 players in real-time co-op or battle against other players in automated 3 vs 3 PVP.

BLEACH Brave Souls Screenshots

BLEACH Brave Souls Featured Video

Bleach: Brave Souls Trailer (Official)

Full Review

BLEACH Brave Souls Review

By, Herman Y.

BLEACH Brave Souls is a free-to-play, 3D action RPG developed and published by KLab Global, a Japanese game developer behind the popular mobile titles, LoveLive! School idol festival and Lord of Dragons. The game was first released in July 2015 in Japan where it acquired over 7 million downloads before it finally launched worldwide on January 15, 2016. Unlike a lot of the rip-off anime browser games, BLEACH Brave Souls is an officially licensed game based on the original Bleach anime/manga series. The game is very story-oriented, and despite condensing and streamlining the story onto a mobile game, it manages to tell a complete and engaging story full of humorous dialogue, emotional events, and colorful characters. Apart from the intriguing story, the rest of the game is fairly generic and greatly resembles other mobile action RPGs in terms of the action combat, stage-based progression, and characters/heroes to collect, except everything feels a little more polished, and the game also has real-time co-op and a PVP system that makes it worth trying out.

Reliving the Anime One Stage at a Time
The world of BLEACH Brave Souls is divided into hundreds of stages, each of which feature a lot of character dialogue and recreated scenes and events from the Bleach animated series. Like most mobile action RPGs, the stages are quite short and designed for casual gamers but get longer and more difficult later on. Each stage involves running through a fairly short and linear map consisting of a couple waves of enemies with a boss battle at the end. Before stages, players can choose a random other player’s character (AI-controlled) to tag along for the boss battle and as expected, they will appear during the boss battle to help out. Players can also have 3 characters in their party that they can switch between at any time during battle. This is a useful feature that allows players to level three characters at the same time as well as adds a strategic aspect to the game via switching out characters low on health or switching to a character with a more favorable element compared to enemies. Completing stages gives gold, experience, Crystals (for Soul Tree upgrades), possibly accessories and characters, and progresses the game’s storyline. Although everything feels polished, the short stages and stage-based progression system will feel very generic to those familiar with mobile action RPG titles.

The Story of Ichigo, the Soul Reaper
BLEACH Brave Souls is a very story-driven game that stays true to the original story in the Bleach anime and manga series. Players play as Ichigo, a noble high school student who becomes a Soul Reaper in order to defend his loved ones from invading Hollows, monsters containing the soul of deceased people who fail to pass onto the other side, known as the Soul Society. The story features all the important events from the anime with a lot of filler content cut out in order to condense it into a mobile game. Considering the anime contains over 300 episodes with thousands of hours of content, the game goes through the story fairly quickly, picking out note-worthy events and dialogues, but in a way that keeps the story well-paced without any confusion for players that have never seen the anime. The story itself, is quite engaging, and ranges from humorous to emotional, with lots of memorable characters and character development. The developers did a very good job retelling the story, and even players who have watched Bleach in the past will likely enjoy reliving the tale once again.

Defeating Hollows with Action Combat
The combat in BLEACH Brave Souls is very similar to other mobile action RPGs such as MARVEL Future Fight. Players can assemble a party of 3 characters and can switch between them at any time in battle but can only control one at a time. The game uses the typical controller-style, virtual joystick/button layout with an additional feature of swiping the screen to dodge. The combat is very smooth and fast-paced with fluid animations, but although the controls are responsive, the swiping to dodge feature is a bit odd. Generally, controller-style mobile action RPGs would have a button to dodge due to the specific hand placement so having to swipe the screen to dodge feels very inconvenient. Other than that, the combat feels very action-oriented and more polished than a lot of other mobile action RPGs. In addition to regular attacking, characters also have a special skill that can only be used once per battle, as well as two other skills with cooldowns. Being able to switch between characters adds a strategic component to the game as enemies become harder and overall, the combat is fairly simple but polished. Like most mobile RPGs, there is also an Auto option which allows characters to automatically move and attack on their own for some good ol’ AFK farming.

Collectable Bleach Characters
There are many Bleach characters to collect and add into the player’s party, even characters that normally would not work together in the anime series. Each character has different elements, skills, stats, and playstyle. There are five elements in the game so it is important to level up characters of various elements to switch between for the most advantage over different kinds of enemies. The characters also have different skills, including unique special skills, soul traits that give a passive bonus, and stats that vary in ATK, DEF, FCS, SP, and STA. Some characters are melee or ranged, and have different attack speeds and attack ranges which affects their playstyle. Characters can be leveled up through completing Story Mode missions, by sacrificing other characters via the Augment system, and from their Soul Tree. Each character has a unique Soul Tree containing many branches in which players can increase their character’s stats with Crystals obtained from completing stages which offers some stat customization. Unfortunately, characters cannot be evolved in this game (i.e. going from 4 to 5 stars) so the only way to obtain rare (4/5 star) characters is through Gacha summons, making it purely based on luck. However, players do get a lot of summons for free (will be explained in In-App Purchases) and the large amount of collectable characters adds variety to the game. Characters can also equip accessories as well as Soul Link with other characters for additional bonuses.

Taking Down Hollows As a Team (Co-Op)
A fun online feature of BLEACH Brave Souls is its 4-player real-time co-op. There are special co-op missions (separate from the Story mode) that players can participate in a couple of times each day that contain event missions as well as missions recommended for certain levels. Upon creating or joining a room, players can match up with up to 3 other random players and play together in real-time. The missions generally play the same as in the Story mode except with new environments, more enemies, and more powerful bosses. Players can only control one character during co-op and cannot switch between their characters like in the Story mode, but teaming up with 3 other players makes up for this. The co-op mode is quite fun because of the real-time partying and social interaction but unfortunately, there aren’t that many co-op missions and the main Story itself does not contain a co-op feature. Overall, the co-op is a fun addition to the game but due to a lack of co-op stages, it eventually becomes a mode to simply farm Crystals in.

An All-Out Automated PVP Brawl
In addition to the Co-op mode, the game has PVP where players can take on random player’s parties for special rewards. However, unlike the Co-op mode, the PVP is completely automated. In the VS Battle mode (PVP), players can choose an opponent from a list of other players and then watch as the two parties go head-to-head in a chaotic 3 vs 3 battle. During the PVP, both sides have their 3-man party out at once as they charge toward one another with skills, effects, and bodies flying everywhere. Despite the automated-ness of the battles, they can still be quite entertaining to watch due to frantic “every man for himself” style battles, which sort of explains why the developers went for the automated PVP approach. It would just be way too chaotic and difficult to manually control a character amidst all of crazy action going on especially when the computer AI all have perfect skill aim, player targeting, and whatnot. Players receive prizes for their rankings each week and the PVP, despite being automated, still makes for an interesting addition to the game.

Cash Shop/In-App Purchases (IAP)
The in-app purchases are very similar to those of other hero-collecting RPGs. With Spirit Orbs (premium currency), players can summon random Heroes and accessories between 3-5 stars (Guaranteed 4 star if they summon 10 at a time), and purchase in-game gold and energy. The in-app purchases are fairly simple- there isn’t really much else other than that. There are tickets players can obtain to summon Heroes from login awards and events for free but the game also gives out a lot of Spirit Orbs for free. Players can get quite a lot of Spirit Orbs simply from completing Story missions, as well as from login rewards, events, achievements, and PVP rewards. The game is actually extremely generous in giving out free Spirit Orbs so players can summon a lot of Heroes and accessories regularly without spending any money. Although stages get more difficult in the future, money is not necessarily needed to progress, however, spending money offers advantages such as more energy and in-game gold, as well as having a greater chance of obtaining a 5 star Hero/accessory due to more summons, which gives an edge in the Story missions and PVP.

Final Verdict – Good
Despite its generic mobile action RPG appearance, BLEACH Brave Souls is a very polished game that improves upon an old formula with many interesting features. With a top notch story based on the original anime, smooth action combat, real-time co-op, and many Bleach characters to collect, BLEACH Brave Souls is a game that all anime and action RPG fans should try out.

Screenshots

BLEACH Brave Souls Screenshots

Videos

BLEACH Brave Souls Videos

Bleach: Brave Souls Trailer (Official)

System Requirements

BLEACH Brave Souls Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Android 4.0 and up / iOS 6.0 or later

Music

BLEACH Brave Souls Music & Soundtrack

Additional Information

BLEACH Brave Souls Additional Information

Developer: KLab Global
Publisher: KLab Global
Platforms: Android, iOS
Release Date: January 15, 2016

BLEACH Brave Souls was developed and published by KLab Inc. (also known as KLab Global and KLab Games), a Japan-based game developer behind the popular mobile titles, LoveLive! School idol festival and Glee Forever! BLEACH Brave Souls was first released on July 2015 in Japan where it acquired over 7 million downloads and hinted toward a global release in November 2015 (Actual Release Date: January 2015). BLEACH Brave Souls is based on the Bleach anime/manga series by Tite Kubo and features the original story retold in a streamlined format. KLab Global is also the publishers of the hit mobile strategy games, Lord of Dragons and Age of Empires: World Domination.