Anyone new to a Bleach DS game is in for a treat. Many of the menus and character names are in English, so knowing Japanese isn’t a requirement for playing the game. The main menu screen even has the voice of a character pronounce the other menu titles in Japanglish for you when they are highlighted.

With the persistant language barrier fears of newbies assuaged, let's now explore the changes veterans can expect to encounter upon delving into Treasure's second offering. After all, what would a sequel be without changes?

Veterans will find some changes a little hard to adjust to at first, but quickly get into the new groove. Now there are even more characters to choose from. Urahara and Ikkaku are two examples. Not only are there more Shinigami (soul reapers) to choose from, but there are also four Hollows including Grandfisher (The Hollow who killed Ichigo’s mother) and the dreadful Menos-Grande. The first game surprised gamers everywhere with an odd selection of playable characters like Ganju’s boar Bonnie and Kon. This time around all of the former characters are back plus some you wouldn’t expect like Ririn, Shibata (the boy that was trapped inside a cockatiel) and a couple of random shinigami from the 4th and 13th squads.

Certain characters have new moves as well as new special moves. The biggest change that veterans might notice is a difference in game play mechanics for some of the most popular characters. For instance, now there is about a second delay for characters to perform the maneuver where they disappear and suddenly appear next to an opponent. Generally speaking, pretty much every character that was used online to be as cheap as possible has been altered for the sake of balance.

The developers have also made it more difficult to Damage Cancel. Damage Canceling is when you press an attack and the dash button while being hit or after you’ve been hit in order to slightly repel your opponent and give you time to block or escape. It takes one special bar to perform this maneuver, but for some reason the timing feels off and you can't perform it with the same ease that you could in the first game.

The touchpad still has shortcuts that you can touch in order to perform an attack or special move without manually imputing the command during battle, but a timing bar prevents you from inputing the same shortcut in rapid succession.

All these changes may throw off the Bleach DS veterans used to the first game, but it doesn’t take much time to get adjusted, especially after playing through the Story Mode.

The Story Mode has four different parts to it. You earn characters and cards by completing different challenges. The only way to unlock all of the characters is by finishing all four parts 100%. If you don't know Japanese, don't fret about figuring out how to beat missions. Most of them just involving beating your opponent, but the few variants become clear after the first try or two.

Wi-Fi is a lot better this time around. The first Bleach DS game would lag terribly at times, but so far hasn’t been an issue in the sequel. Although it's seemingly impossible for it not to lag at least a little, it was definitely worse before. Both single and doubles matches are available online or even during download play. The most welcome addition to both online and download play is the quick start rematch option. Especially handy for download play if you want a rematch with the same characters because it requires no loading to do so.

This game is definitely worth getting, especially for fans of fighting games and of Treasure. The controls are easy to pick up, and it doesn’t take much to learn how to play. The fighting game genre is a barren wasteland in the U.S. Thankfully, Nintendo and Sega of Japan have filled this void with excellent games like Jump! and Bleach.

System: Nintendo DS
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Treasure
Genre: Fighting
Release Date: February 14th, 2007
# of players: 1-4
Wi-Fi online play: Yes

IMPORT FRIENDLY – O
LOAD TIME – O
ORIGINALITY – ▲
GRAPHICS – O
MUSIC – O
LONGEVITY - ▲
OVERALL - O
CURRENT FAV IN GENRE: Jump Ultimate Stars.

Review Key:

O - Good ▲ - Average X - Bad