Uploaded February 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago

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Shikigami No Shiro II, also known as Castle Shikigami 2, is a bullet hell shmup created by Alfa Systems and was originally released in Japanese arcades in 2003 and was ported to the PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, Dreamcast, and PC soon after. The PS2 version was given an incredibly bad translation job when it was released in the West and was the only Western release until the PC version got a remaster and was re-released on Steam back in 2021. A Switch version based on this recent re-release will come out in April.

This game, like the first game in the series, known for its high tension system consisting of getting close to enemy bullets in order to increase your scoring multiplier and increase your damage output, i.e. grazing. You also have a sub weapon known as your Shikigami attack, which differs from character to character and scores more points because you get more coins. Also, the more coins you gather, the more each coin is worth.

The seven characters available have their own unique playstyles and also have an alternate version of their Shikigami attack to select if you like, adding more variation to the gameplay. You have to learn each character's playstyle in order to survive and score. You'll need to score a bit to get extends, which are offered first after 400 million and every other extend every 700 million points. You'll need the extends to make up for mistakes and get extra bombs, but you can only hold a max of 3 lives at a time and 5 bombs.

This game doesn't start out so hard, but it gets pretty brutal after 3-2 and demands nothing for consistency and good strategies in order to get to the end. The bullet patterns in general are very dense here, some of the densest you'll ever see. Even playing with Kuga, who is known for being one of the best characters for survival and one of the easiest to score with, this is still one of the hardest clears I've done yet. Because you can't stockpile extends like you can in many other shmups, you have to stay pretty consistent through your run in order to not run out of lives later in the game. I almost ended my run with a couple of mistakes in the second phase of the 5-1 boss.

This is definitely one of the most rewarding shmups I've ever played, despite this clear taking a while to earn. The level design is absolutely superb and the amount of scoring depth is mindblowing. However, it's also simple to understand because it mostly comes down to high tension grazing and killing as many things with your Shikigami attack as possible while getting really close to bullets. It's high risk, high reward gameplay and it's absolutely brilliant.

One other thing that's not clear from this run that makes this game interesting is the amount of storyline in this series as a whole. I'm playing this run without the dialogue because it's in Japanese and I can't read Japanese, but there are storylines, which is unusual for the genre. If you play the Steam version, you'll get the dialogue properly translated unlike the infamous English translation of the PS2 version. I already had the Gamecube version prior to the Steam release, so I just stuck to playing it in Dolphin.

00:00 Intro
00:38 Stage 1-1
02:43 Stage 1-2
04:56 Stage 2-1
07:07 Stage 2-2
09:25 Stage 3-1
12:07 Stage 3-2
14:47 Stage 4-1
17:12 Stage 4-2
19:42 Stage 5-1
23:33 Stage 5-2 (Final Boss)
26:44 Credits
28:38 Final Score and Stats