On January 30, 2020 Sisters Royale: Five Sisters Under Fire (“Seven Sisters”) was released on PS4 and Nintendo Switch, and now it finally makes its way to the Xbox One. The developers, Alfa System, are now welcoming a new audience into their top-down shooter centered around five lovestruck mystical maidens whom are vying for the love of the angel Yashin instead of attending to their mission to save the world.
Seven Sisters features a varied cast of characters, and some fairly clever mechanics, and with this a great game for those who only have a really short gaming session to work with. But The repetitiveness of the gameplay, and too many gimmicks to go along with the stages just make it hard to digest over longer sessions, especially considering the relatively short run-time. The plot doesn’t pull you in, and dialogue is lacking, but you do have a clear sense of what the plot line is throughout the game.
Each Sister (Ece, Lales, Nur, Selma, and Sonay) has their own stage to play, but you can’t just play any of them you want. You need to get through one sister’s stage in order to advance on to the next. The stages are themed to the sister and have their own unique challenges such as ice on the ground or powerful wind mills causing your movement to become less predictable. The challenges aren’t terribly difficult, but they are the only thing that really differentiates gameplay between the stages.
The controls were simple and intuitive, using B to shoot, X to bomb, A for your secondary attack and left stick for movement. Movement around the screen couldn’t have been smoother, even when the chaos of a million bullets is invading the screen (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but gets pretty hairy in there). The controls are polished enough to escape bullets in the busiest of stages. Using you bomb can get rid of some of your anxiety when the bullets just become overwhelming.
The soundtrack is upbeat and enjoyable as you begin the game. But it won’t take long before you realize, there’s not a lot of variation to the score. Boss Fights will change the music and provides for a nice change, bringing the right amount of tension to the fight making them a little more entertaining. As themes for each sister are varied from stage to stage, it would have been a nice touch to see the music compliment as well.
You play as the sister of your choosing the whole way through, and replayibility comes from proceeding through the game as a different sister, each having their own move set allowing playstyle to be changed up giving a different experience. And they do bring you back. The game isn’t entirely challenging unless playing on the HARD difficulty, but the cultured controls and pleasing visuals make up for this in my opinion. Not the best game, but I am putting out a solid recommend to anyone who is a fan of the top-down shooter drama, or those who just generally enjoy this style of game.
4 stars out of 5
