Kim De John, who carries a guitar case and apparently is a Korean schoolteacher, can summon giant glowing swords to spin around him. The shikigami attacks vary wildly from one character to the next. To use the shikigami's special attacks, you press and hold the attack button instead. By tapping the attack button, you'll rapid-fire your primary weapon, which usually blasts forward in a straight line for direct damage. Each character has a different primary attack and a unique bomb move, plus two variations of shikigami for special attacks. The multiple playable characters are a real treat, since they're really quite different.
Nevertheless, it's refreshing to see a shoot-'em-up that does away with the generic science fiction premise common to most such games and instead goes for a fantasy anime theme inspired by Shinto and Buddhist mythology. Each character is functionally equivalent to a fighter spacecraft, since he or she can shoot, use his or her shikigami as a special weapon, or bomb the screen for heavy damage (and momentary invincibility). In the game, rather than pilot a spacecraft as in a typical shoot-'em-up, you instead take control of a magically imbued human character of some sort, who'll be flying high above the Tokyo skyline in "2006, the distant future," as the back of the box puts it. Shikigami are the Japanese equivalent of a sorcerer's familiars: They're spiritual assistants. Shoot-'em-up fans, take note: This unique take on the classic vertical-scrolling shooter offers tons of bang for your buck.
Plus, you can play it together with a friend, too. It's plenty challenging, relatively long for a shoot-'em-up, and loaded with more than half a dozen different playable characters. More importantly, though, Castle Shikigami 2 is a great game for that measly $10. First of all, the fact that there's a new shoot-'em-up for the PlayStation 2 is automatic cause for some celebration, since this once-hallowed styled of gaming-though it remains as purely action-packed as ever-simply isn't as popular as it used to be. In fact, it's a high-quality vertical-scrolling shoot-'em-up in the vein of old classics like Raiden or newer ones like Ikaruga, and it's the follow-up to 2003's obscure Mobile Light Force 2. If you were to judge this book by its cover, you'd figure Castle Shikigami 2 must be some kind of low-rent role-playing game, what with the smattering of generic anime characters on the box and the $10 price tag.
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