Sisters Royale is the latest shmup from Alfasystem and on every level this game is essentially Castle Shikigami 4 (They really should have left that title as Shikigami no Shiro...). For someone who does not know what that means, the biggest trick is that each playable character has a wildly different shot type. One woman fires a seeker that attacks every enemy on screen one at a time, another deploys spinning blades around her, one even has a shield that can absorb and reflect fire. Each shot type feels like it is from a completely different game and requires a completely different strategy to play for survival OR score. Score is fairly simple here: If you are close to danger, you can score up to an x8 multiplier when you kill enemies. At x8, your basic shot gets powered up as a bonus, but your alternate shot gives you massive rewards based on how high your multiplier is. Plus, the x8 applies also when you collect the coins dropped by the dead enemy, so there are several ways your score multiplies in on itself to the point where slightly better than awful play can add two whole digits to the end of your score. The mechanics are simple, but they require constant risky play to take advantage of. Since score gives extends AND score is so swingy, survival play for newbies to score just enough to try to get enough lives for a 1cc can be fairly daunting, as you simply cannot afford to ignore the score system.
Even for a shmup, Sisters Royale is fairly short (5 stages and usually done in 20-30 minutes), but given the amount of variety in replays, I appreciate it. The story is also worth replaying, telling about a pack of truly awful, completely delusional sisters all fighting over a man none of them have actually met. Everyone is an insane psycho and as a result the story is charming in a "These women would have been run out of Gensokyo for being too self-absorbed and crazy" sense. (For CS fans, the DLC shot type isn't just Fumiko's shot type: The character is her complete with her own story. As you might imagine, she has some good chemistry with a bunch of obscenely powerful love-obsessed women.) I have run this game several times, I am utter trash at it, but I really enjoy it. Castle Shikigami was a large part of my youth (I was not any better at it either) and to see another helping of that game brings a smile to my face. There is a lot of competition for shmups on Steam, and it is tough to say this one is going to beat out CrimzonClover or the Cave games, but if you have a hunger for more shmup action, I highly recommend this one.
