PLATFORM: PC, PS4, SWITCH, XBOX ONE (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Acting as a spiritual successor to the cult classic Castle Shikigami series (and made by the same developer), Sisters Royale is an anime-style vertical shoot ’em up which follows five sisters who have fallen out with each other over a boy. But, of course, monsters and demons are involved, and they need to be dealt with before the sisters can settle their rivalry with each other.
Each sister is a playable character, along with a previously-released sixth character included for free in this release, and all have their two unique weapons (one long range, one short) and a screen-clearing bomb attack. Some of the available weapons are really quite inventive, each character feels different to the others and some feel much more powerful than the rest, so it’s well worth experimenting to see what each has to offer.
This is one of those rare shmups where your character walks along the ground rather than flying through the air. This means that occasional buildings might have to be navigated around, possibly forcing you into the path of enemy fire, and you’ll also have to contend with things like patches of ice which reduce your control over your character (a nice idea in theory but, in practise, forcing players to relinquish a degree of control over a twitchy shooter doesn’t really work too well).
Sisters Royale‘s five short stages are made for those who enjoy chasing high scores. It uses Castle Shikigami’s “Tension Bonus System” that rewards brave players with extra points for grazing past enemy bullets, and piles extra points on at the end of each stage based on the amount of coins collected and how quickly you beat the boss. Coins are dropped when you take a hit and your score resets completely when you die, so there’s plenty of motivation to improve your game if you want to climb the online leaderboards. Infinite continues are available on each of the game’s three difficulty levels, but if the hardest setting is still too easy, a “Maniac” options menu allows the gameplay to be fine-tuned with things like increasing bullet size and speed or altering the tension bonus range.
Sisters Royale might not go out of its way to do anything massively different, but it’s still a solid low-priced shoot ’em up which is something that we’re all in favour of. With its anime aesthetic and links to cult classics of years gone by, Starburst readers may well want to give this a look.
