Skip To...
It took me years to stop confusing Roblox with LEGO. At first glance, it’s an easy mix-up. Characters with boxy bodies, little texture, and a cartoony aesthetic dominate both. I’m a lifelong LEGO enjoyer (minus stepping on them) with my share of hours in LEGO Batman and Star Wars, so looking like LEGO isn’t an insult. I just thought Roblox was the kid version of gacha scams and had dressed for the part. None of the games had depth… or so I thought. Then I found Type Soul, Blox Fruits, and a few other Roblox greats, and my view changed. I was wrong. Roblox has its problems, but in many ways, it’s a fantastic platform for indie design. Here’s how Type Soul showed me what I was missing.
Gameplay and Grinding in Type Soul
Most LEGO gameplay boils down to smashing things. Break objects to get bricks, then use those bricks to build things or solve puzzles. That’s an oversimplification but largely true. Being simple doesn’t make these games bad, of course. The point is to highlight the complexity of Type Soul, a game with intense (but superficial) similarities. Building a character in Type Soul is at least as complex as it is in the average RPG. You have races, clans, weapons, Bankai/Voltstanding/True Resurrection, skill trees, and more to set characters apart. It can’t go toe-to-toe with Path of Exile, but theorycrafting is a thing in Type Soul.
Elite Dangerous and Dead by Daylight have lengthier grinds, but Type Soul is happy to task players with multi-stage quests. Consider Hollow progression. The journey from Menos and Adjuchas to Vasto Lorde and Vizard took ages before the recent grind-reduction update. Post-update, you’re still looking at dozens of enemies to slay, key items to find, and specific locations to visit before you can rip off your mask. Pretty much regardless of the metric you use to judge them, Type Soul and many other Roblox games are at least as complex as everything else clogging our Steam libraries and shelves.
Microtransactions and Bleach
One of the most interesting and upsetting parallels involves microtransactions. Some Roblox games exist solely to pry the credit card number from your cerebral folds. Yet Type Soul is free of that stain, featuring deep content and ways to progress without pay-to-win microtransactions (although you can pay if you want). Compare that to Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, AFK Journey, and the zillion other “adult” games that are no less ambitious in trying to squeeze players for their last penny. Type Soul and many others care more about, well, being games than they do milking players for cash, defusing one of the last big criticisms of the platform.
From theorycrafting to socializing with clan members and diving into the game’s lore, Type Soul offers everything you’d expect from a PvPvE multiplayer game. Yes, its characters have cinderblock physiques and a hilarious lack of normal mapping, but it’s a legit Bleach adaptation in every way. If you’re a Tite Kubo fan, Type Soul remains one of the best ways to step into Bleach and rub shoulders with the Gotei 13. Though I feel guilty for dismissing Roblox the way I did, I’m just happy to have discovered its virtues. Better late than never, even if it means losing fights to Voltstanding Quincies.
Roblox is available for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Mobile.
