BLEACH Rebirth of Souls Review — Bankai

BLEACH Rebirth of Souls is a 3D arena fighter featuring the cast of the hit anime BLEACH, bringing the hype of some of the greatest fights between some of the most interesting characters in Shonen anime history to life with a shocking amount of style. Though there are changes I might make to the game and a plethora of performance issues reported by other players, my personal experience with the game was fun, and nostalgic, and got me itching to catch up on the anime. Though a day-one performance patch is clearly needed, according to the game’s Steam reviews, I think that BLEACH Rebirth of Souls is otherwise a phenomenal fighting game and one that fans of BLEACH are sure to love.

Before I really get into my review of BLEACH Rebirth of Souls, I need to address the game’s performance issues. More specifically, I need to address how my experience with the game seems to have differed from others, at least according to the game’s Steam page.

It is my understanding that BLEACH Rebirth of Souls has been having serious performance issues with other players, many of whom claim to meet the game’s minimum requirements. This is why the game has a score of “Overwhelmingly negative“ on its Steam page, with a shocking 64% of the game’s 450 reviews being negative from the day after release on March 21st, 2025. After browsing through these reviews, I can see that essentially every single one of them lists the same issue, saying that the game is riddled with performance issues and constantly crashes.

While many players seem to be having these issues, I can say that my experience with BLEACH Rebirth of Souls was much different. I experienced precisely two performance-related issues with the game; I found that battles took a little longer than I would have expected to load, and once after tabbing out during training mode, I came back to find that the game was completely frozen. Besides that, I didn’t experience the constant crashes people seem to be attesting to.

While I believe these user reviews, I must emphasize that this review is about my experience with the game, and so while I will point out that the game probably needs a performance patch, I will not be taking the game’s negative reviews into account for my score. I will also include my system specs later in the review so players can compare.

BLEACH Rebirth of Souls is a three-dimensional arena fighting game in the vein of the Dragon Ball z Budokai Tenkaichi or My Hero One’s Justice franchises, a formula that seems to work incredibly well for Shonen action anime adaptions.

Mechanically speaking, BLEACH Rebirth of Souls is pretty fun to play, reflecting the previous two comparisons with a straightforward control scheme that is used to unleash more complex combos, requiring some character-specific time investment and training. The game revolves around intense 1v1 fights where you beat down an opponent’s health bar to then attack their stored Souls, unleashing devastating attacks when the enemy is open to annihilate their soul reserve. Each character is surprisingly unique with their playstyle (Coyote Starrk certainly took some getting used to) and plays to their own unique strengths and weaknesses, while also featuring their own cinematic attacks and incredible transformations.

If there was an aspect of BLEACH Rebirth of Souls’ combat I would complain about, it’s that it can feel needlessly complex, if only for the large number of resources you have to track at once, each with their unique naming conventions. The game is not newbie-friendly, if only because there are a lot of terms to learn, resources to track, and rock-paper-scissors style interactions to remember, and the game’s tutorial isn’t quite enough to make you an expert on them right away.

Also, you cannot chain a combo without first landing a hit, meaning that a missed attack will only play the animation for the first move in the combo and not the rest. While I enjoy this choice in theory, it can make the game feel a little awkward at times, throwing out little stunted kicks in the air or swinging at nothing and then having to recover. If the 3D space was perhaps a little smaller, with less space for the enemy to get away from you, this might not be as noticeable.

Despite these slight complexities, the game still boils down to a straightforward premise; hit the enemy until they’re dead, a process that BLEACH Rebirth of Souls simply does incredibly well. Between the flashiness, the cinematography of attacks, the incredible feeling of landing a full combo on an enemy, and the nostalgic joy of getting a win with your favorite characters, it goes an incredibly long way toward making BLEACH Rebirth of Souls an awesome experience.

What really surprised me was how seriously well done the game’s graphics were. While the 3D characters and environments look great, I’m more talking about the visual effects and overall style of the game, going for that grungy, gritty, almost street look that BLEACH is famous for. Every transformation is incredible to watch, and special moves are downright cinematic in execution, giving tons of fan service in the way of awesome character shots. The menus look awesome, and in-battle information is displayed in an immersive, punky way, with everything coming together to feel like what a BLEACH game should be.

Something that did bother me a bit was how unnecessarily censored the game seemed to be. I’m not normally the kind of person to comment, or care, about this sort of thing, but BLEACH Rebirth of Souls seriously cuts down on the blood, gore, and skin you might expect from a BLEACH video game. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think a game about BLEACH, an anime famous for its gruesome violence, borderline nudity, and downright terrifying depictions of ghosts and carnage that borderline rate the series a horror manga, should be shooting for a “T for Teen” rating.

To cap off my review, I wanted to share with you all my system information, like I promised I would earlier, as well as the game’s recommended specs. As a reminder, I faced very few performance issues while playing the game, with the only two memorable issues listed earlier in this review. I hope by sharing my specs, players should have a better understanding of what they need to run the game, although many in the game’s negative Steam reviews claim they meet these requirements anyway.

Recommended Specs:

• OS: Windows 10 / Windows 11
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X / Intel Core i7-12700KF
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT / Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

My System:

• OS: Windows 11
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5500, 6 cores, 12 processors
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT

TryHardGuides was provided a PC review copy for BLEACH Rebirth of Souls. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! BLEACH: Rebirth of Souls is available on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox.