Castle Shikigami 2 - Mute the game

I don't know the first one or any other castle shikigami game but since this was on the PS2 I decided to give it a try. Its a vertical scrolling shoot em up that manages to suck pretty badly. How can a shoot em up suck? You just have shit flying around with bullets and stuff like that. Pretty hard to fail that but yeah they did it. Apparently theres a "story" to the game but all I can learn about it from wikipedia is "In the beginning of the story, a giant castle appeared from above the city of Tokyo. At 40 km, the ship-shaped castle was known as Nejireta castle. The battle of mankind and gods is about to begin." Really? What kind of shit is that. Ship-shaped castle? or castle-shaped ship? Why is it called a castle when its shaped like a ship. Call it a ship. The game is english dubbed with horrible voice acting and dialogue.
You start by picking the difficulty and then choosing one of a dozen possible characters. There seems to be a lot of characters for some reason and they're all a bit unique. They have a primary fire button that shoot your "bullets." The secondary fire depends on your character but they're usually slower melee weapons and or special weapons like throwing a cat. You are a person just flying around and robots and shit starts shooting bullets all over the place. You dodge, you shoot back, you nearly get hit by a bullet then see your shots go fucking crazy. Yes when you nearly get hit by a bullet your shots go into rapid fire mode with bigger bullets. The strategy is to stay close to enemy bullets while shooting back. Now you're asking this doesn't sound so bad. It isn't its just so bland.
A story isn't really needed for a shoot em up. Its nice but its not necessary. Its like fighting games. If the combat is nice then a story isn't really needed. But it has to add the worst sounding dialogue I have ever heard in a game. How did the makers of this game play it and go "ok this sounds good lets put it up for sale."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTQOTpSnuRw
Thats the final stage and the hardest stage in the game. Theres not much background in the game either it kinda feels like Ikaruga with the 3d backgrounds and box breaking stages and shit like that. Just inferior in graphics, gameplay, sounds, everything. Its not that hard of a game but its just boring. I can't stress that enough. It just feels like something is lacking in the game. The bosses itself are easy as well they have a health bar that you can see and everytime it reaches a section it changes attack styles. The first few bars are there just as an endurance fight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuLnvJ6wopA
That is a video of mushihimesama my favorite shoot em up I've played so far. Its hard as fuck, the music is nice the explosions are awesome and who doesn't like blowing up bugs while dodging a clusterfuck of bullets? Theres not much of a story and theres nothing you need to know other than you're riding on a giant beetle shooting bullets at bugs on the search for the god beetle or something or another. I'm too lazy to look up on wikipedia on something unrelated to the game I'm talking about. I seem to have gone off topic.
Back onto castle shikigami 2. Theres nothing that stands out for that game. Its just a mediocre shoot em up. If you're really that bored and have no other alternatives (unlikely) then go ahead and play that game. Just have it muted when you reach bosses. Or keep it muted since your characters will speak too. I know shoot em ups is not a very popular genre of games. Just look at Valkyrie sky, the only shmupmmorpg ever made and it ended up sinking into oblivion. Its a great game other than the fucking stamina system in every korean mmo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOE52sLowJM
Its unique, nice graphics, very nice music, and you can play with 4 people at once online with others. Kill bosses collect gear, pvp etc etc. But really most people just can't stand the difficulty of the game. While others can't stand shoot em ups in general. Its a shame. Once again I have gone off topic. Castle shikigami 2 is just so boring that you just wander off into something else.
Theres not a lot of variety in bullet styles, robot creatures, even the bosses feel the same. The dozen characters you can pick is probably the only saving grace to the game. Its fun to try out new styles of shooting but some characters are just so gay you can't help but skip them. There is also the annoying stage where you have to keep breaking blocks. It was fun in ikaruga but complete shit here because the blocks just come out of nowhere and its pretty much the same as every stage except they fucking cut the walls into one small fucking passage where if you touch the block walls you die. The boss is also the most brainless drawn out boss ever. Its the stage from hell. Not because its hard but because its annoying as shit.
The dialogue differs between characters you picked so you can always hear a new aural cancer filled dialogue everytime you try out new characters. And for shits and giggles they decided that when playing two players depending on the two different characters picked dialogues differ! Now you have even more shit to listen to if you ever decide to murder someone with bad dialogue. There really isn't much else to say about this but its mediocre. Its not complete crap, it doesn't stand out. Its like the kid at school that no one knows. He stands in the back with no friends and never talks to anyone and no one notices him and only know him by his name. That is Castle Shikigami 2. The game sold for $10 bucks on release. And many people just overlooked it based on the price alone. Perhaps it is for the better.