PixlBit

Pulled another backlog game out today, this time for PS2, Castle Shikigami 2. This is a vertically scrolling bullet-hell shooter with anime characters and story. It consists of pretty short levels ending with a boss. I found the controls to be adequate, but I'd love a joystick for this. I just don't feel in control on a thumb stick or d-pad with this kind of game. It looked nice though and the dialog was pretty funny. Here's some gameplay footage:

                      

I played as Niigi GB who has an attack that makes cat sounds sometimes. I didn't stay with it long. I'm just not into these shooters with stuff flying every which way anymore. You definitely have to concentrate. I was more in a vegging out mood today, but I got pretty intensely into my main game today, Sacred 3, as I'll describe next. 

I am still chasing achievements in this game. I miraculously got the Medic one for reviving the three other players in a four player match. I didn't think I was going to get it, but I happened to jump into a match with two randoms a few levels below Mark and I. We were playing on Deity difficulty and they kept getting knocked down a lot. A tried to help to keep them going but it was pretty tough. A few times I ended up finishing a level on my own because everyone else had gotten knocked out. I tried to put on a show and teach how it's done. Ha ha! 

Then Mark and I went for the Legend difficulty achievement and got it pretty easily. Replaying story missions with level 30 plus characters is super easy, but it's fun to smash through levels sometimes. 

We then turned it up to Deity difficulty and did all the side missions which unlock all the item upgrades. We got them all and the all items achievement. We tried to keep going into the story missions to level up and go for the Deity through all levels achievement but it got pretty darn tough. There were no more randoms playing today, so with two players, Deity difficulty is hard. We each got our character to level 46 (50 is the cap and an achievement) before frustration set in and we split up to do other things in the game.

I loaded up my level 6 Serafia character and played story missions on Warrior difficulty (easiest in the game). It was still some work to do, but it allowed me to try for the five executions achievement, and after a while, I finally got it. I have only to get her through this one level about half way through the game for a character related achievement and then I'll try the last character type (called cultures in the game) for a similar achievement. 

I'm considered getting the rest of the DLC. There's several more achievements there, but Mark doesn't have it, and can't buy it right now. I wish I could gift it to him but you can't do that on Xbox. So I'll probably skip it until he's up for it. It's just two new characters (cultures) and two very short extra missions. Then I think I'll move on from this game. It's a fun game very much like Diablo but a little shorter and with a streamlined equipment and skill tree system. 

That's about my day today. Tomorrow, another backlog game, and then finishing up Sacred 3. 

Toodles!