Despite unassuming visuals, this shmup feels excellent to play, learn and improve at. Multiple characters with each their own playstyle and tools, a scoring system that rewards grazing and a unique scoring meta that pushes early/mid-game speedrunning followed by last boss milking for a cool game feel and a pretty crazy pacing that accidentally works wonders. Features a very useful (but not perfect) practice mode. Cool urban fantasy setting with some horror/occult vibes as well.
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Note about the EVO Mode DLC :
EVO mode is a remix of the game where the characters and scoring mechanics stay unchanged but the enemy waves and boss patterns are all different. The pacing is not as fast, stages are noticeably longer, sometimes more repetitive (2-3's enemy waves are actually kinda bad). The final boss milk is no longer a thing, though you might probably milk some earlier bosses. Kuga players will likely struggle a lot for time in this mode.
This mode is nice to have if you are craving for some more Shikigami content but the arcade mode feels snappier and character viability in it is more balanced.
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Castle of Shikigami is a port of a vertical arcade shmup made in 2001 by Alfa System. Back then, it was ported to multiple systems including PC. This version here on Steam is different from the previous PC port though.
In this game, you can play as one of 6 characters, investigating a series of bizarre supernatural murders in modern Tokyo. I'm a sucker for contemporary/urban settings like that so this is pretty cool to me.
Those characters all have their own main shot, tension shot (which is a stronger variant of the shot for whenever you are grazing a bullet or enemy), shikigami attack, and consumable bombs. The shikigami attack is the star of the show since the characters have wildly different shikigamis, such as a familiar that auto-attacks enemies, a set of blades you position around you at specific angles, an orbital strike that you have to aim yourself by moving a reticle beforehand, a spinning bird, or electric balls that can latch onto an enemy until its death.
Most shmups with multiple characters or ships feature relatively minor changes in their shot types, such as the fast speed and narrow shot VS the slow speed and wide shot. But the weapons here go beyond that and it makes playing as a new character feel like learning a new game in a way. And all of these shikigami attacks are important for score since they will generate more coins and will autocollect them when you kill enemies with them. Since scoring involves killing enemies with the shikigami and collecting their coins while grazing enemies or bullets, you thus have to plan your strategies and playstyle depending on what your character's shikigami allows you yo do.
The bombs are also not the same for each character, as some have screen-wide attacks while others will fire concentrated blasts on a specific point for big damage.
With the shikigami attack and the bombs being so different for each character, it becomes fairly fascinating to see how the strategies and techniques for each vary. Even if the scoring system in itself is the same for everyone, the spots and fights where each will excel or struggle will not be the same.
Kuga may have a shikigami that attacks enemies for him and allows the player to easily graze from afar and get score faster, but he will struggle more against the late-game since his tools lack raw power and have limited area-of-effect. Kim's blades are powerful and flexible in their uses, but the low movement speed can take some time getting used to and the power can in some cases be too much for his own good when scoring the final boss. Fumiko and Tagami's shikigami you have to aim requires a lot of dexterity and knowledge of the enemy waves to fire it without putting yourselves at risk, but on the other hand keeping a maxed multiplier during said final boss scoring is easier. The players will likely use their bombs on different bosses too, or in different ways.
The game's resource system is also interesting in how it seems fairly restrictive at first but opens up as you get better. The number of lives is capped at 3, the number of bombs is capped at 5. You can never get more than that at once. It sounds unfriendly and in a way it is, but it allows the tension to never falter as hoarding tons of resources early on to trivialize the rest of the game is impossible. Besides, the life and bomb restore systems encourage you to get into the scoring to get more of them. Extra lives are awarded when you hit scoring thresholds and since it works on a "one every XXX points" basis, there is no hard limit to how many life recharges you can get in a single run, as long as you keep scoring to get said points. Since getting a life (or losing one for that matter) also gives you one more bomb, you have more opportunities to replenish your resources than you'd initially think.
There is a power system which is kind of a double-edged sword (and will be removed in later installments of the series) where your character gains power levels (there are 4 levels total) by collecting enough coins, and taking a hit causes a loss of one power level. This can create some tricky situations where the lower power makes it harder to get back on one's feet. However, gaining a power level awards you with a bomb too, so losing a life means you can actually regain two bombs, one for the life loss, and one for the regained power level. This is far from those games where you can have plenty of bombs in stock but lose every single one of them when taking a hit.
How grazing works in this game is also slightly different from the norm and works well with the game's pacing. You need to be grazing an enemy or bullet while killing enemies and collecting coins to increase their value up to 8 times. Unlike many graze-based scoring systems though, the overall number of bullets you graze does not matter at all. Instead, you want to be continuously grazing hazards, and a same hazard can be used to get a x8 multiplier for many coins and enemy kills. This approach also means there is no super-graze milking on bosses or anything which abuses bullet spawners like that.
Learning how to play the game and how to progress further is a real joy because the game is divided into stages that each have 3 sub-sections. They are usually relatively short and you can practice them individually after reaching them in a full run. It's a shame you can't practice the bosses directly (except the second sub-section of each stage which is only a boss) but replaying the sections to get better, and doing some full runs to get even further in the game thanks to the practice feels tremendously rewarding. There's just something that works.
Now let's tackle the overall meta-scoring and its strange but compelling and unique quirks. Most shmups have stages that last the same amount of time no matter what, and killing enemy waves faster can sometimes net you some bonus waves to prevent dead air. Since stages will naturally end no matter what, only bosses would feature a timer as to prevent infinites on them. However, this game is different. Unique to this game (even within its series) is the inclusion of a global timer, and non-fixed-length levels, with the exception of 3-1 because it has walls and fixed enemy spawns and the 5-3 finale that always lasts ~70 seconds.
The Steam review character count cap is too damn small, here's the rest of the review : https://pastebin.com/8FgDZ7sn
