(played the Dreamcast version -- Japan-only release)

I had no experience with the Castle Shikigami series before this one, and played this one purely on a whim. (Was in the mood for a shoot-em-up, and the Japanese cover art for this piqued my curiosity.) But I was in for a very pleasant surprise with Shikigami no Shiro 2. The game looks fantastic, has an awesome soundtrack, and gives you a whole bunch of different characters to work with -- each with their own bullet pattern and special ability. They're all actually pretty different from each other too, making it worthwhile to try out all of them. This is the magical flying person variety of vertical shmup, and a bullet hell one at that... Which means it's incredibly difficult. You better believe I save-scummed my way through those last few stages, ho-ly shi-et. But still, a very fun game that I recommend strongly to all fans of the genre. I'm also a fan of the character art for this one. It's very anime, but it doesn't go full moé or have a bunch of fanservice, and has an even split of men and women for the characters.

Apparently the English release (on PS2?) has an infamously horrendous English dub, which is a shame and surely dampened the experience for a lot of players! I checked it out on Youtube, and it's sadly the type of terrible dub that isn't so bad it's funny, it's just bad. So I think I'll recommend the Japanese version of this game, and hope the story isn't actually something anyone is that invested in.