Shikigami no Shiro 2 - what's the deal?

[Mayhem]

Okay so I tried out Esp.ad.de in MAME, and it's quite interesting. What's the principal behind the special weapon and the shield? Or in other words, how can I tell (status bar wise) how much I can use them still?

[mid]

Mid, is it happy PAL (60Hz) or unhappy PAL (50Hz)?

I actually got some time in on this last night, and it is indeed unhappy PAL. Its still really good fun, however, and definitely worth the ?6 it cost me.

I don't know how different EspRaDe is to Shiki, but the thing seems to work like this:

1) the Tension system means you get a multiplier for kills proportional to how close you are when you kill them; practically ram them for maximum (8x) bonus.

2) rapid fire gives you bullets, hold down for the shield-thing, both of which are different for each character, and the second button for smartbomb, of which you have limited amounts.

3) killing things releases coins. 100 coins means you level-up your firepower, but you drop them all when you lose a life.

4) Tension also means that if you're very close to bullets or enemies (rather like the 'buzz' system in Psyvariar, I believe) then your firepower is boosted. So in order to defeat the bosses within the time limit its really to your advantage to keep squeezing through those gaps, rather than sitting well out of the way.

I'm not terribly good so far, only making it to 2-1, but I've only clocked up about 30 mins of play.

[Henning]

Good resume Mid. I?m a fan of the system. Played the Psy/Buzz sys for the fist time yesterday and I thought it was kind of nuts making out with the bullets like that.

[johnkiddier]

MLF2 has been universally panned for the following points:

Bad cover artwork and initial menu screen
Japanese voice acting being replaced with english
No 60Hz
No Tate mode........

...err and that's about it.

So, if you have a large CRT telly you're not going to need tate as your tube would probably break off it's mountings,

It runs suprisingly smoothly in 50Hz (much better than the PAL Ikaruga conversion)

If you don't speak japanese you're not going to miss the voice acting (it's really not as bad as people point out).

The core gameplay (from what I understand) remains exactly the same. Same combo and scoring system, same music, same graphics.

To top it all the have the cheek to distribute the game in supermarkets where the casual gamer can buy it, for less than ?15.

I feel the PAL conversion has had an unfair drubbing by the importing 'elite'.

No matter how you look at, beyond the packaging the game IS Shikigami.

(awaits angry response)

[mid]

The way I see it, I've picked up Shiki for ?6. I can't be rotating my 28" Trinitron, and what I don't know about its speed at 60Hz isn't killing me so far. I rarely pay any attention to game sound, and hadn't even noticed the voiced I'm that inattentive.

Frankly, it rules, and certainly makes me feel less bad about the fact that Amazon still haven't shipped my Psyvariar to me.