The DS is quickly becoming the home of unexpected gems. Ouendan, a game often heralded as the best title on the system, is a musical adventure in cheerleading; something few would have expected to earn rave reviews. Phoenix Wright, a game about being a trial lawyer unexpectedly won over the hearts of American gamers when released last year. Now it's time for the next surprise hit. Based on a comic later turned anime (which is usually the death knoll for games), Bleach is a 2d fighting game that not only breaks from the mold of weak licensed games, but also is quite possibly the best portable fighting game to date.

Taking a page from Arc System Work's Guilty Gear series, Bleach is setup on a foundation of combo-heavy air juggling. Just like GG, Bleach allows players to land a jumping attack, connect it to ground combo, follow it into a air combo, quickly jump up once more and connect into a 2nd air combo, then finally finish it with an air special move. Even though that may sound complicated, in execution it's actually fairly simple due to the nice training sections during story mode. But then again long combo strings aren't really necessary to win. Again similar to GG, a pummeled character can instantly break out of a combo at any time by using one gauge of their super meter. Other similarities to modern fighting games come in the form of RF moves, or refined moves. These are the EX moves from Street Fighter. The moves consume a bar from the always- filling spirit meter (the other meter besides the super gauge) and are enhanced versions of normal special attacks. Also included in Bleach is the 2-line system that's been seen in fighters since Fatal Fury. Using one level of the spirit bar players can switch between the foreground and background lines of play. Finally Bleach contains the traditional attacks that form a modern fighting game: special moves and multiple supers per character.

Besides borrowing bits from the best fighting games, Bleach also brings in a few tricks of its own. One of the most important abilities in the game is the dash cancel. This dash, completely invincible, teleports any character near or behind the opponent for a cost of one spirit bar. Using this move, players can easily get around projectile spamming characters, or narrowly dodge the most powerful level 3 super attacks known as "bankai". The dash cancel can also be used aggressively to cancel the recovery frames of a normal attack. This way, players can string long combos of standard attacks by mixing in a dash cancel every few hits.

Another addition to Bleach comes in the form of cards. Though they can be completely turned off for those wanting a standard fighting game. How the card system works is that a player can take eight cards into a match. These cards show up in sets of two on the touch screen and touching either card activates its properties. The cards can be won during the games various modes and assembled in the deck assembly mode. As for the properties of the cards themselves, they tend to cover a wide range of abilities. Some cards will increase defense or offense; others will decrease the enemy's defense or speed. Some cards will affect move properties allowing players to chain dozens of normal attacks into a single combo for a few seconds, while others will make every attack send the enemy flying. Some will make a player invincible for a short time, while others will stop the enemy from being able to use their own cards. All in all, collecting cards and making strategic decks is a well-crafted system that adds quite a bit to the replay value of the game.