Handheld fighters aren't usually that well-done, as the controls just aren't as fluid as they need to be for you to be able to throw some powerful moves down against your AI foes, and they just don't make for a good time in general. After the solid effort Bleach put forward on the Wii, perhaps it's only natural for Bleach to equally do well on the Nintendo DS…and even better at that. So what makes this Bleach fighter one DS fans should have in their collection?

THE STORY SO FAR
The story of Bleach follows the manga/anime series as it currently stands with the American dub, though it takes the current story to finish. In the game you find yourself as Ichigo and his friends as they head to the Soul Society to save Rukia who has been given the sentence of death for bestowing her powers to Ichigo. The first story you'll play is that of Ichigo, which basically details the story of the series step-by-step. Ichigo also has a few moments of decision, which will determine down what path the story takes you for the time being. As you're playing these battles, it isn't so much picking left or right to find where to go next, but rather you have to complete certain objectives in order to advance the story. If you don't complete the right objectives you'll be forced to replay some fights over again, but if you mess up too much the game will auto block those paths for you to send you down the next branching path.

Once you beat Ichigo's story you'll unlock some other episodes to play through, which after beating their episodes will unlock more character stories. The character stories are all told through pre-fight static cutscenes featuring portraits of the character talking and the dialogue underneath. The stories are okay, but not amazing or anything, as they do what they need but don't expand on anything. It's nice to have a story, but like most fighting games the bare minimum is usually all you get.

SINGLE PLAYER: GAMEPLAY
The main modes of Bleach: The Blade of Fate (just Bleach from here on) come in several different modes: Story Mode, Arcade Mode, and Versus Mode. The Story Mode plays like we've already detailed, Arcade Mode forgoes the story and just has you participating in a series of battles in a row, while Versus Mode lets you do battles that you setup, such as letting you have Ichigo fight Renji and choose the circumstances. There is also a Training Mode and a Challenge Mode, which makes you input specific attack combos to complete the challenge.

Combat is controlled with the directional pad and the face and shoulder buttons, but don't expect the touchscreen to be completely worthless in the game. You'll use the directional pad to crouch, move left and right, and to jump and double jump. Meanwhile, the A, X, and Y-buttons are all your Heavy, Medium, and Light attacks, which you'll use to perform combos and determine how strong your special moves will be. Much like in Street Fighter, the stronger your attack the longer, faster, or higher your move could go, and such is the way in Bleach also. The moves are pretty standard, featuring many of the same rolling pad moves as a fireball thrown in Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, and since they are instantly familiar and shared between the characters pretty much, we love the old school sensibility to them.

Beyond the attack moves, though, many things are pretty unique for Bleach. For starters there will often be more than one plane on the field, where you can jump between the foreground and background with a simple hit of the L-button. The plane jumping will really play an important part in combat when you have more than one player on the screen at a time, as you'll be able to have four players fighting on the screen at once, and each player will be able to attack anyone on their plane in a crazy free-for-all fight to the death. You won't always have more than one opponent during the Story Mode, but there will come times when you'll have to fight multiple people off.

So where does the touchscreen come into play. The first way in which the touchscreen is used is by being how you'll select your battle cards from your deck. Yes, you heard right, you have a deck of cards to use in battle to help you as you fight. The cards don't have unlimited usage, but you'll get a few of them for you to use in a fight. You can easily select a card just by tapping it, opening up one of several offensive or defensive capabilities depending on which card you activated. You'll be able to slow enemies, steal their spiritual pressure, give you infinite spiritual pressure for the time being, and many others. Though your deck is pretty barebones to begin with, by completing battles and modes you'll win some cards, and you'll be able to use your money you win to buy cards from the store as well. Once a card is in your possession you can then go and edit your deck, substituting whatever cards you want, which will then appear in your hand while on the battlefield.

Besides using the touchscreen to activate your cards, you can also switch to a mode that allows you to use your special attacks by simply tapping on the move from a menu on the screen. The mode seemed a bit gimmicky to begin with, but I soon find myself mastering using my thumbnail to quickly tap the screen, activating whatever move I wanted. I'd sometimes forget the move needed to pull-off the attack I really wanted or either wouldn't have the needed spiritual power to use it. With the touchscreen method, however, the moves highlight when they can be used, so there shouldn't be any missed opportunities.

The characters are also really balanced, letting players juggle between projectile specialist, strong brutes, speed demons, jack-of-all-trades, and characters with long reaches. You won't have access to every character to begin with, but that just makes you play harder to unlock them all. If you're a Bleach fan you should love all the different characters, as almost all of the big ones are here, and in vast numbers too.

MULTIPLAYER: GAMEPLAY
Not only can a total of four players battle it out with each other locally, but you can even use Nintendo's Wi-Fi to battle players anywhere. The local works better if only because there are some connection problems and reliability issues with the Wi-Fi portion of the multiplayer. Still, it's nice to be able to jump online with the DS and battle other Bleach players if they aren't right in your area.

GRAPHICS
The environments look pretty decent, thanks to them keeping true to actual locations from the series. The characters, meanwhile, look even better, though the characters suffer when you get to the facial area since it's hard to discern anything at all from their faces. However, they aren't really showing anything off emotionally anyways, so that can be given some leeway. Luckily, at least the rest of the characters look good, and they have some really nice attack animations.

SOUND
The sound is good all-around with no real faults but no really strengths either. If there was a footnote to make it's that many of the sounds repeat often as you play.

IN CONCLUSION
If you're a Bleach fan who owns a DS, you'll want to own the game. If you're a fighting fan and own a DS, Bleach: The Blade of Fate is a really good buy as well, thanks to a ton of characters, lots of unlockables, online fighting, and much more. Not everyone will love the game, but if you're a Bleach or fighting fan, you'll be mighty impressed by what this little cartridge is capable of.

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