Just to be clear, I have no idea who the phantoms are. No one in this game is ever called a phantom, and there is no group of 2 and suddenly a third enters. The game’s about a set of twins and their foster parents who are siblings. That’s four, not three.

Anyway, Bleach. I watched Bleach around until the end of the Soul Society arc, which I guess was a good thing since most of what I hear beyond that point isn’t really that great. There’s something about the ending that really sucks apparently, and I kind of enjoy having no idea why any love for Bleach as a series just kind of died one day.

For those who don’t what what Bleach is, it’s very anime. Orange haired kid can see ghosts and gets the power to fight evil ghosts. After some real world shenanigans that set up his main crew he gets involved with Soul Society, a group that basically manages reincarnation and wandering souls. Apparently some rule breaking happens with the girl who gave Ichigo aka orange hair his powers and stuff happens and it’s all part of a giant two sided conspiracy fight apparently. None of that matters for this game beyond that Soul Society is a thing and that arc happened.

As for why a Bleach game is here, well this game has many hot spring cgs. For some reason. The cgs themselves aren’t anything impressive. I just wanted to highlight a series with some well known fanservice girls. And guys I guess, the game is very equal about who is in this hot springs.

Story- 4

So this actually starts more then a hundred years before the Ichigo stuff. One day some Hollows, the evil monster soul things, break into the town around Soul Society. Three Captains deal with them and find a set of twins almost being attacked by a somewhat strong Hollow. They are saved and brought under the care of Seigen and Konoka, the Captain of Squad 5 and his sister. For those who like Bleach, this is already a break from canon, get used to it.

The twins eventually join Squad 5 to serve under their dad(they never call him that. They never actually talk about the child/parent thing directly). This is when it introduces a bunch of child versions of some of the later characters. Rengiku, Rukia, Gin, and a few more. After a lot of fluff, the twin you chose gets sucked into a mirror after a climatic battle with one of Arrancar, the second main arc villains from Bleach.

Then the next arc from the show kind of happens, but instead of being about Ichigo and Orihime and Aizen, it’s about the twins and their Dad and Aizen who served under that Dad.

This game is weird. Honestly it doesn’t really do anything with these characters beyond nodding at their quirks. It’s a family story using Bleach elements, and I guess revenge?

Gameplay- 5

It’s a strategy RPG. It has a Fire Emblem style support system and counter attacks during combat. It has an advantage chart, leveling, and is honestly not that complicated. There’s not much to say about the actual combat system directly. It is weird that everyone only has 1 range for attack despite using spears and bows.

The support system is kind of interesting. You chose who supports who in pre combat. Other then your main character, everyone has a small preset list of who they can support with. You chose to fill their 1-4 slots, and then if you go to that other characters set and set them to the same characters they get team attacks, while you just get supports if it’s one sided supports. Support is just stat+ based on the supporting character, team attacks do a higher amount of damage.

The affection system, which is only towards the main character, is just an excuse to get items when they max out. These are mostly things you stick in your bag for passive stat buffs.

Leveling is kind of weird. I don’t think actually leveling up affects stats at all other then HP and SP. The actual level up points are rewards on map completion based on some hidden variables. Things like speed of completion, support count, hidden missions and such. This is mostly something you grind in post game to get the stats for the final fight, the rest of the game don’t really need better stats. There’s also buying weapon levels, which is actually just a three way skill tree. Each character has three paths you can go down as you want up to level 16-18. These give the characters their role and in general are much more important then the stat points you can buy instead.

Honestly I liked free time more then the combat. Free time is like a linear board game where you interact with the cast. This is where you recruit characters, get a majority of the hot springs, and see some references to the actual Bleach story. You pick an event and move that event’s cost down the board. Certain spaces on that board have things like stat ups, items, and discount spaces to make events cheaper. There are also drop spaces that end free time immediately. Moving on this board and trying to min max rewards from it was fun for me.

Lewd- 2

Let me start by saying the show and manga have more fanservice then this game. The beach episode of Bleach is more horny, and having watched that recently just to compare, it’s barely horny outside of throwing swimsuits on the girl. This is the game in the series with the most fanservice that isn’t gacha. That is why this is here.

The top screen is often used for cgs, with the text and choices on the bottom. There’s a lot of cgs of the characters in general. Outside of the Yoruichi transforming one, most of the images are clean. The main draw for fanservice is the hot springs scenes which start fairly late into the game and serve really no purpose other then for the image. Depending on the which twin you chose you get different scenes. They share a grand total of one scene, and unlike what the Bleach wiki would tell you they have the same amount.

Either way, this is the most equal opportunity game I’ve played. So many shirtless men and towel covered women. It’s always only guys or girls, and the shots are mostly so zoomed out that actual titillation would be difficult. Even the scene with Rangiku groping Orihime is so tame it just kind of feels pointless. Which makes sense when you remember the era.

I’m not going to talk about this for every older game I play, but when it comes to releases that are PS2 era or so, even when horny was a goal they were never really good at it. Either it was character models, which were just bad, or it was really tame fanservice art. Like a bit of cleavage or leg. It’s not until the 3DS and Vita that fanservice really became a genre of games in its own right. So I’m not surprised this Bleach game is pretty tame.

Verdict

It was alright. Felt complicated at the start but the replay I had to do proved that it wasn’t really. They tutorial poorly making the game seem complicated when it really isn’t. Definitely not a must play even for Bleach fans, but it’s not bad. Just alright. Which might be worse actually, cause this game is kind of unremarkable other then the brand and the hot springs.

DS save for Bleach: The Third Phantom

Saves to every hotspring or semi lewd cg in the game. There’s a list to explain which does what and who’s in which save. I think this is all of them, but I might be missing some if the end game tower differs between male and female. There’s plenty of you tube runs of the girls endgame stuff, but the only run for the guy I could find ends halfway through the game. I don’t think they differ at that point though and I didn’t see any missing cgs when I glanced around.

Between the saves I should have everyone available. Not 100% on that though, the guides aren’t exactly very good.

Gameplay: 5/10 Eroticness: 2/10 Story: 4/10

Completion:

Main goal was convenient saves to each hot spring scene at the lowest file size I could manage. This did involve beating the game with both main characters. Beyond that I made sure to have everyone recruited between the two runs of the game as a few characters are missable/require weird fight things to unlock.