TL;DR - If, like me, you thought this game would be "Guilty Gear Xrd but bleach" - you were misled...partially. (a weak 7)
Let's start with this, in 2025 this game is locked to FULLHD resolution, with no support for 2K or 4K
And the frame rate? It degrades as soon as more than one character appears in a scene.
Gameplay wise - it's a fun and easy to learn fighting game, but when the game facing you at a certain difficulty its were the cracks are showing, and there's a lot.
Let's start with the fact that in some stages the CPU simply spams dirty moves - a lot, like a bot - and your option as a player to neutralize it is very limited:
They spams a ranged attack? You can use your flash move to teleport behind them, but you are limited to the reverse gauge, which recharges painfully slowly.
Locked into a combo? You have two options, either wait patiently for the combo to end and then it's your turn to return to battle, or use your entire reverse gauge, which again, recharges embarrassingly slowly.
For a game that emphasizes fast attacks, it's embarrassing that the game on the other hand locks you into using its speed so few and far between.
"Then use the crystals and level them up"(I hear you screech) - bite me, you have to grind the game until you can even buy such crystals and then level them up is a bigger grind in itself.
So like me, you just wanted to "rewatch" the anime, the beginning up to the Arrancar arc - not a bad deal, the graphics and selective animations look impressive, in the trailers...
Only if you start the story section you'll find that it's animated in a painfully stiff way, many of the iconic moments and battles have been censored (due to "mass appeal") they skip action with a flashing screen with some effects and end the scene, it's just lazy. (which is strange because there are parts where you can see the investment that was put into certain scenes but it's really just a few moments)
In addition to that, throughout the plot you focus on Ichigo, and control him continuously - because the plot has an important battle for other characters, the game throws you into a battle against a character you've never played with, against a boss with boosts, and higher difficulty (the battle against Kira in particular was stupidly difficult).
I guess they stick the landing with the Bleach tradition and put a few hours section of pure FILLER(good on them - but how about next time using that time for polishing the cutscenes?!)
These things aside, some characters simply "play" better than others, it feels like they put too much emphasis on certain characters and just glossed over others.
The menus are embarrassingly slow - there's no reason in the world that going from menu to menu would take so long, especially in offline modes.
The character selection is lacking, there are characters that the devs invested in building but can't play with...I know it'll probably be in DLC, but it's still embarrassing.
Do I regret this purchase?
Not really, I luckily got the game on a deal
(And I can't stress this enough - there's no reason to buy the ultimate version of this game especially in the state it's in right now.)
I like this game to a certain extent but am equally disappointed with it, if they had polished it a little more, ignored the "mass appeal"(this series didn't become popular because it was shy of blood for God's sake!) This game could have taken its own place in the fighting genre because it really offers something special that just needs a little polishing and balancing and - yes - let the player go wild.
What disappointed me the most right now was reading that the developers are focusing on "balancing the game for competitive battles" - they have a long way to go unfortunately and I really hope they succeed.
Right now is not the time unfortunately, even in a deal.
