Shikigami no Shiro EX 式神の城EX - 1.339.609.970 pts - ALL- Arcade Mode - Kuga

Here is a pretty old replay from 2013 I've had lying around. Shikigami no Shiro EX is a PC port of the Shikigami trilogy's first game. High-level scoring in this game involves rushing the first 4 stages to keep as many seconds as possible on the global timer and then milk the 5-1 boss's green crystals for what feels like forever as you use those saved up seconds. Long boss milking is not my idea of fun so I settle for a simple clear, albeit with some scoring strategies here and there. It's pretty fun game, but not as polished as the following entries. For example, the aforementioned boss milking strategy can only last so long due to the quirky global timer and was replaced by the usual per-boss timer system in the next games. Shikigami no Shiro EX is also very unbalanced in terms of scoring difficulty : aside from Kuga and maybe Gennojo, all the other characters are extremely difficult to use for scoring purposes. The scoring potential difference isn't too drastic IIRC but trying to use the other characters' shikigamis involve lots of risk-taking compared to Kuga's safer shikigami. Replay playback recorded with OBS Studio.