as far as i know, the game its only one disk... but the retail copy (i got the verbatim copy) might have come with somethin extra, but i cant tell, sorry.
for the second question, if im not mistaken, the second screen after selectin the game, its for the difficulty settings... i'd have to see to confirm it, since its been awhile since last time i palyed.
It's only one disc, though mine (cardboard box with manual and plain jewel case) wasn't packaged as if there should've been a second disc, either.
Menus are:
Game mode: standard (default), easy, extreme, extreme II, extreme III
Stage demo: on (default), off
Character voice: all on (default), exclamations only, all off
BGM: original (default), remix
'Stage demo' just skips the banter with bosses if you turn it off. You can skip it by hitting start, anyway, but it's nice to be able to make it go away altogether.
'Character voice' on the middle setting keeps voice acting for in-battle exclamations but disables it for dialog. Probably preferable to turning it off altogether, since the bitching when you get hit is potentially useful audio feedback. Middle setting is functionally identical to default one if you have stage demo off, I assume.
Don't recall exactly what the modes do, but I think they're comparable to the previous instalments. Easy has drastically reduced rank and I believe stops early (stage three?). Extreme speeds up enemy bullets, adds so-called suicide bullets to most enemies, and might increase enemy HP, not sure. Becomes more exaggerated on II and III - can't remember if they all have suicide bullets or those start at II, but easy enough to find out by trying it.
[edit]Character voice middle ~= left, not right, d'oh. Probably obvious enough what I meant, but corrected anyway just in case/to satisfy today's gratuitous OCD quota[/edit]
Last edited by Veracity on Wed Sep 26, 2007 8:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I just got this running at full speed today for the first time (thanks to Twiddle). I think I paid $60 for a new copy, so nice find. There was only one disc, btw.
Lili-Xiang wrote:I always wanted it, but could NEVER find it at all anywhere...
Huh? Bear in mind announced XBox and Wii ports, though, which may turn out to have more appealing extra features.
BTW, do they have more characters (and NOT ban any veterans)?
A better place for general questions about the game would probably be its 'official' thread, where you'll likely find most of them answered already, anyhow. Briefly, Sayo's the only character I recall from II who's really gone, since no new character's shot/shiki combination is much like hers. She's still in the game, since she's dead and now appears as Kuga 2's shikigami. Kim and Niigi are gone, but each has a more or less identical replacement in she-Kim and uh...Nagino? Loli with rabbit, anyway, not exactly vitally distinct from loli with cat. Properly new characters are Reika, probably the most 'straightforward shooter' choice to date since her shikigami is just a more narrowly focused vertical shot, and Emilio, a fairly interesting looking mixture of Hyuga and Kim properties I haven't tried using. Oh, and Munchausen replaces chibi Fumiko, which I suspect is entirely cosmetic.
Play-Asia would ship to the US, and it's PC software, so you shouldn't have any reason to be concerned about the kind of region lock issues that affect most consoles. Not sure if I'm misunderstanding, so excuse me if I'm just belaboring the obvious, but the Japanese Windows version is the only one that's been released; you won't get it without importing that yourself, or finding it second-hand from someone else who imported. Castle of Shikigami II had NTSC-U releases, though I don't know off-hand for which platforms (considering it was on everything sooner or later).
Veracity wrote:Castle of Shikigami II had NTSC-U releases, though I don't know off-hand for which platforms (considering it was on everything sooner or later).
In the US it was only released on PS2, though in Japan it made it onto just about anything.
But anyways, yeah, if you want to find Shiki 3 or imports like it, you'll either have to be lucky enough to have an import shop someplace near you or, like most of us, shop online instead.
