Published by Chorus Worldwide and developed by Alfa System, Sisters Royale –Five Sisters Under Fire has made its way to Xbox One after its debut on Nintendo Switch and PS4. Sisters Royale is a spiritual successor to the classic title Castle of Shikigami and features the same anime aesthetic of the 2001 classic. It also follows the same high risk, high reward formula of the title where it takes its inspiration from. This is our review of the Xbox One version of Sisters Royale in which we shoot our way through enemy waves to defeat our own sisters for an angel.
While Sisters Royale’s main strength is its gameplay, it does come with a story. The game is based on five sisters Sonay, Nur, Selma, Lale, and Ece. They are from the land of Pultima where the evil Seytan rules. According to a prophecy, these five sisters were supposed to combine their powers together and rid their land from the evil Seytan but the five sisters hate each other and live separately from each other. However, when all five fall in love with the same Angel Yashikin, they come together finally but this is not a friendly meeting. All five sisters try to defeat the others and try to win the heart of the angel Yashikin. This is where the game starts.
The game consists of five levels in any session. It hardly takes around 30 minutes to complete the levels but the amount of replayability is extremely high because the game emphasizes high-score hunting with its online leaderboard. At the start of the game, you pick one of the five sisters and complete their unique levels and reach the final boss fight with the sisters. Upon defeating the sister, you move on to the next sister and so on until you get to the final boss of the game and beat it. Depending on your difficulty chosen, you will have to face tougher enemies and even tougher boss fights. Defeating enemies give you coins that are lost if you take a hit. Your health allows you to take three hits before you die and you have to press continue to start again.
While you start again at the very same spot where you die, you lose all your score for the level and your coins as well. You basically have to start afresh and if you are a high score chaser, you will need to try your best to complete all levels in a session in the same life or else risk losing everything you earned. Each playthrough will take you through the same levels but their order is different depending on your sister of choice. Each sister has a ranged attack, a close attack, and a Bomb Attack. Ranged shots and close attacks are your main offense abilities in the game and bomb is the ultimate weapon that is only allowed for limited uses. Combat is where Sisters Royale really shines.
Sisters Royale features a unique mechanic that is known as the Tension Bonus System or TBS for short. With this mechanic, your score is doubled based on the distance between your character and the enemy that you kill. The closer you are to your coin, your coins and score are doubled and vice versa. This is the reason why every sister also comes with a close attack along with their normal ranged Shot attack. If you really want to risk it all, you can switch to short-ranged or melee attacks and get up close and personal with your enemies. Not only do they give you much higher scores but they also deal more damage to your enemies which means that you will spend less time dealing with them.
If you prefer more relaxed gameplay, you can stick to your ranged attacks and the special Bomb ability that will clear up the screen of all the enemies in one fancy attack. Each sister comes with her own unique bomb ability and normal ranged Shots ability. Since the story is pretty much the same for all of the sisters, you can easily choose the sister that suits your playstyle. Each Shot requires a different strategy to play with so you can try all of them and then stick with the one that suits your playstyle for chasing down those highscores.
Apart from the normal story mode, you also have a practice mode where you can practice freely without any worries. You can also check your rankings in solo mode or the Online Leaderboards. Initially, the game only comes with five sisters but there is actually a sixth playable character Ode as well who comes with his own unique take on the same story. Unlike the sisters who are going after the angel Yashikin, Ode takes on all of the five sisters in the game and then proceeds to the end battle of the game. It is a good addition to the game and provided a brand new character for you to try out. His shots are really good as they change their angle when you move around and personally, Ode was my favorite character to play within the game.
Final Verdict:
If you are a fan of games that encourage precision-based gameplay and allows you to compete in global leaderboards for highscores, then Sisters Royale – Five Sisters Under Fire is a great game for you. Even if you do not care about the competitive leaderboards and highscores and like to play classic top-down shooters defeating wave after wave of enemies, Sisters Royale is a good title for you as well. It offers plenty of epic moments as you try to duck and hide and learn boss attack patterns, use the advanced mechanics such as TBS and try not to lose all of your collected coins in the game. Sisters Royale demands pattern learning and precise gameplay but it is a great shooter for casual players too since there are no lives and you can practically die as many times as you want and still end the game. If you are a fan of the classic vertical-scrolling shooters and love chasing highscores, I am sure that you will love playing Sisters Royale.
Final Score: 8.0/10
