This is my new, relatively lengthy review. Now that I've finished the game and experienced enough of the online. coming from someone who has basically 100%'d the game and watched every cutscene in its entirety and has 80+ hours of online play.



- Story -
The story is mostly faithful, besides a few smaller details, such as Ichigo's friends from school not appearing or his sisters. (Kon also gets limited screen time, which is a damn shame.)

Pros: Fully voiced (English/Japanese), both in gameplay and cutscenes.

Cons: In-engine cutscenes are lazily done for the most part. It leads to certain iconic scenes from the anime or manga. Being played out... shoddily. For example, Soul Reapers running in the background of a shot, meant to be running fast but moving at the speed of a snail, like they're running in place, and less expressive faces, since they re-used facial and movement animations for the majority of scenes. Overall, some scenes come out looking awkward, unfinished, or even fan-made. Some points where the camera is intended to turn to another character can often feel "too slow" or badly timed. Black load screens can also often ruin the cutscenes' pacing (spoiler warning for this point). like the scene during the ending fight with all the captains, with constant switching between each captain getting ready to fight in their own locations. Yet the scene loads each scene so slowly that it ruins the momentum of the moment. (This is not lag either, btw. This is just how the game is intended to work.)

Negatives: Despite In-Engine, they didn't re-animate mouth movements for English audio, both in cutscenes and during Kikkon Move scenes. I have noticed that since my first review over a month ago, the Kikkon Move scenes SEEM to have a somewhat better movement line-up now, which I'm happy to see they tried something at the very least. Still doesn't change the fact that other smaller developers, with even smaller or no budget, can and have re-done scenes with mouth movements for dialogue, but I also understand the extent of how many hours of cutscenes in this game exist, so a part of me can excuse this since it's a minor issue.




- Gameplay/Online -
My experience with fighting games is Soul Calibur, Smash, and Jump Force (RIP). So my fighting game preferences are very "specific." Despite not being a massive fan of fighting games, I play them, but not religiously or daily. However, this game has had me coming back almost daily or, at the very least, a few times a week, enough for me to nearly 100% the entire game.

Pros: Extremely well done. While I do wish they had done something with a "support" type system that you could turn on/off, giving us a reason for characters like Orihime, Hachigen, Kon, etc. They did not. but what we got is, at the very least, "great." It's nothing special, it's not amazing, it's not bad, it does what it's intended to do, and it does it well while still being fun. Gameplay is smooth, and attacks and combos feel nice to pull off.

Cons: Lack of joke characters. I understand some might not care about this, but as a fan of the anime, missing characters that should have been ingame, even as unlockables, and also not having unlockable characters from doing things like the "Mission Mode" is a colossal-sized missed opportunity. We have so many characters that could work.

Negatives: The balance of characters isn't always the greatest, Yoruichi feels like you're tickling people, Meanwhile, Renji over can straight up range attack for a good 20% of health. Certain characters with range such as these should have had them tied behind part of their "Evolution" system as a semi-evolution. Characters with "giant" bankais at launch, As long as you play correctly, you can now survive their bankai... a little too easily at times, but I'm not sure how else they could balance that. It feels very unfixable, especially with the combat in this game.



- My honest opinion -

This might be a hot take, but I feel like the devs put in too much story mode content. The cutscenes come up to a whopping "20 HOURS." You don't truly realize how lucky we are that we have actual voice acting. I think the developers should have stopped the story at the point where Grimjow invades the world of the living. Doing this would have cut the story in half-ish and ended the final fight with an iconic moment. With half of the story gone, we could have had an overall more refined game. It could have stopped its shoddy launch. The amount of systems and gameplay-related things they could have added if they had more time. The list goes on forever: ranked system, unlockable characters through the many modes we have in-game that currently serve no purpose other than "Hey, I did all the side story content." Systems exist that could be great, but they feel underwhelming or half-baked. Like Kisuke's shop, it exists... but you tied it to only story mode items? and a few trinkets to customize your profile? Why? In the time you spent doing the other half of the story, you could have given players a reason to use Kisuke's shop. Could have added beloved characters, Kon, Pesche, Buff Kon, even Don Kanonji, as playable characters, Kon is super underutilized, yet he has a model. Pesche, like Kon, has a model. He even has the perfect Kikkon that you could have pulled straight from the anime, where he pulls his "sword" from his loincloth. Then cut to the Enemy with a worried face. Skin's would have been perfect for Kisuke's shop as well. It's not like you would have needed custom art concepts; Kubo has done HUNDREDS of different pieces of art of characters, both in classy and casual clothes. You could have just pulled outfits from that and made a few for different characters. You would have also had more time to work on online in general, adding a ranked mode or an actual cross-play feature. The Kisuke shop could have even had a paid skin section that costs real money; I wouldn't have minded this, and others wouldn't have either. For every amazing thing in this game, there are like 3 huge missed opportunities, but I feel like it was all wasted because you decided to make the entire anime's first story into a single game, something that you could have easily spread out into 2 entirely separate games. This is your first attempt with this IP; doing the entire story in one go was risky as hell with a low-ish budget. This game is the perfect example of "Don't put all your eggs in one basket," but they did, and they got lucky, and none of the eggs cracked.

So is the game good? Yes, absolutely, I would recommend it to most people, especially fans of the manga/anime or those who enjoy fighting games. From my understanding, there was an update about them looking into Ranked, but that was like April 2nd. It's been straight-up silent since the last update on April 18th. This could mean they're cooking up the ranked and working on the DLC. But a part of me is praying with just hopium that Bandai has noticed and acknowledged that the game is at least "doing something," and, if we're lucky, they've given them more money and the developers are cooking something extra. It's doubtful. But you can never tell; Bandai is still actively tweeting out and releasing DLC for that really weird Death Note Among Us game, after all. From my understanding, this game has sold 122k copies on just Steam/PC alone… And PC is basically dead. Now imagine console, where literally everyone is playing. We severely need crossplay. Please, for the love of God, give us damn crossplay. If ranked isn't possible, please at least enable crossplay. The PC community is small, but we're a small group of good boys. I haven't seen a single hacker, so clearly the anti-cheat is doing its job... or we're just so small that hackers don't exist. Open the floodgates and let us in.

Overall, solid 8/10, Could have done more in places, Should have done less in others