Still one of the most graphically impressive DS games, and from what I know, the shiniest, too!
I guess it was harder than I thought...?
Anyway, this review is about Nanostray! This fast paced shoot-em-up is actually one of the easiest ones I've played. Still, it's a lot of fun, and Expert Mode is indeed very challanging, not unlike an Arcade SHMUP.
You start with the main menu, which has a nice rotating background, and some rather repetitive music that you'll soon never be able to forget.
To the right is a little box with some wavy things. It leads to the "Soundtrack, concept designs, and enemy models" menu, which is two pages, and assuming you haven't done anything in the game yet, completely empty. You unlock music from levels, enemy models, and some rather dissapointing concept art, which displays a small portion of a level at an angle you wouldn't normally see it at.(I'd rather they have a map of the level with the enemy placement on it. That would be helpful.)
At the top of the menu is the "Adventure" button, and right below it is the "Arcade" button, which you will likely be tapping the most. (All the menus are touch sensitive, which is rather standard in a DS game.) Below that is the "Challenge" button, and even further down is the Multiplayer.
When you tap "Adventure" button, you're taken to a menu with three files. tap one to start a new game after selecting your dificulty. The main game consists of eight planets to decimate in three galixies. Unbeknownst to you is that you're being pitted against the entire Iridion army, which has come and reclaimed their planets by force.(See Iridion II.) The actual story of the game isn't mentioned, save for a bit of text on the main site. What it is is, you wake up in a spaceship, and you've lost your memory, but there's a destination on the main console, so you're going there to find your lost memories. The actual event is that you were part of a fleet of 1,000,000 fighters, all of which were shot down, save for you, and you're badly damaged, and have no way of contacting earth.
Now that that's out of the way, let's go blow some stuff up.
The controls are basic. You move with the control pad, shoot with Y or L, use subweapons with B, drag "coins" to you with R, and set off a smartbomb with X. You have four weapons, which you can select by tapping their icon on the touch screen. One is basic and shoots forward, another shoots to the sides, a third will home in on enemies slightly, and the final one will lock on to an enemy onece you hit it with the weapon, and not let go till the enemy is out of range, or you release the button.
The subweapons for the first two weapons are basically the same thing with more force, the third shoots off a heat-seeking missile, and the lock-on lightning makes a circle around you. Using subweapons drains a bar on the bottom screen, which will be filled by catching a blue coin. If you catch a blue coin without using a subweapon, you get a large wave-chain bonus. The more you get like this, the bigger the points you get from it. Essentially, this is how you get a good score.
Smartbombs kill everything on the screen but you and the bosses, and makes you invinceable for a short while. You have three, tops, and when you die, depending on the dificulty settings, you can get some back. On easy("Normal"), you get all of them back. On normal("Advanced"), you get one back. On hard("Expert"), you don't get anything.
Same with health. On easy, you get five hits till you're dead. Normal, three. Hard, one.(Just like every other shooter...) Collision with an enemy is auto-kill, no matter what mode.
The graphics in Nanostray are incredible. Specular mapping makes everything made of metal on an enemy shiny(Which is pretty much everything.), the shots habe beautiful four-channel transparancies, when things explode, they look awesome. Nothing ever looks blocky, save for bits of the smartbomb explosion, or boss explosions, and even then, it's not bad. The only thing to have anything remotely not beyond incredible is some of the backgrounds, which can be bland at times, but for the most part, even they're awesome. Mokuzu Depths is one of the most beautiful SHMUP levels I've ever seen. Graphics leave almost nothing to be desired.
The sound is also top notch, with an incredibly high sampling rate(Still one of the best on this system.), catchy technoey tunes, and awesome audio affects. On rare occasions, sound-affects aren't all that great, but for the most part, they're awesome. I honestly love pretty much every track in this game. Shin'En really knows how to make an awesome soundtrack, as was made apparant by Iridion II, which made the best use of tone'n pitch sound I've heard since the NES days, with Castlevania. The soundtrack leaves little to be desired. Some more tunes would be nice, as well as the ability to listen to the boss themes and other such songs whenever you want, like you can with the level themes. If they released a soundrack of this game in North America, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Replay value is good, especially for someone competitive, and into score racking. There's an online ranking, which will have you addicted in no time at all. I've had this game pretty much since lauch, and I still play it fairly often, even with Reds, Mario Kart, Puzzle Bobble, and so many other games to take up my time. There's also Challenge mode, where you'll be limited in some way, such as no smartbombs, no subweapons, or no rapidfire. By compleating one of the challenges, you unlock things in your unlocked content menu.(This is how you get those enemy models, and level BGMs.)
I'd say the replay is some of the best I've seen in a SHMUP. Still, it's not a long game, and if you're not into replaying levels to perfect your scoring technique, this won't last you long.
The core game system is solid, and works well. The bosses are a little simple, and there's no difference of enemy placement between dificulty settings. Your basic shots won't kill just any enemy, so you need to subweapon or smartbomb some of them, or simply leave them be. There's also a few times where you'll just think "That was cheap", or "What a joke that was". The final boss, for example, in his second form, is pretty much little more than a time consuming blob of polygons. He's also pretty ugly.
In the end, gameplay is pretty damn good. Some of the better stuff I've seen. The core system is beaten out by RayCrisis, though, which, despite being rediculously easy, save for some unballanced bosses, has one of the best core systems I've seen.
I have a special place for this game in my heart, just because it really brought me into the genre, which has become one of my favorite. It's also a dieing genre of game, and very undercredited. You'd be surprised what you can do with a SHMUP, and I think a lot of people turn a blind eye to the genre in favor of slower, easier games, like Final Fantasy.