My copy of CoS3 finally came in today, and I've made a few attempts. This game is balls-in-a vice hard, and it's wonderfully refreshing to see a game that is willing to kill you a few times. I tried the game with three characters(Kohtaro, Emilio, and Nagino) and I have yet to make it past the boss of stage 3, even on the easiest difficulty setting.

I'm amazed by the variety present in the various characters. Each character has a unique bullet pattern and "tension" pattern for when they're flying next to enemy fire, two separate Shikigami attacks(of which you choose one at the beginning of the game), and a Special bomb attack, which renders them immune to damage for a few seconds and allows the player to spread damage and chaos across the screen in various ways. Each character can also expend a bomb usage to activate "high tension mode" which allows you to shoot your tension bullet pattern for a few seconds, no matter where you are in relation to enemy bullets, and which also increases your score multiplier to x8 for a little while. I expect to use this more often when I get more adept at dodging enemy fire, as opposed to my current strategy of trying to block it with my character's face.

I haven't yet tried out the game's special mode, "Dramatic Change" which allows the player to select two characters at once and switch between them at will, but I'm eager to experiment with it. Apparently, every combination of characters has unique storyline pieces between them, which sounds like epic lulz to me.

And to anyone who's curious, unlike in Castle of Shikigami 2 and Mobile Light Force 2, the voice actors Aksys hired for this game appear to have some traces of human emotion. However, the script is equally as silly, and many of the lines are still delivered with (this time intentional) inappropriate enthusiasm/malaise. And yes, Kohtaro's "I like girls" line is still present, and still oh-so hilarious. Also: Aksys TOTALLY used the phrase "Wapanese" to describe Roger Sasuke, the American Ninja. Which is just epic lulz imo.