Nanostray impressions!!!!

sethsez · Post by **sethsez** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 9:31 pm

This game is prettier than it has any right to be.

Aside from that, it's a very nice little shmup. Nothing outstanding, but miles ahead of Iridion II.

animefanjr · Post by **animefanjr** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 12:11 am

Ya it is a really good game, I can't stop playing it!

I am currently #8 on the championship board. Good players there!

sethsez · Post by **sethsez** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 12:16 am

The more I play it, the more it feels like a mix between Ikaruga and SnSII to me. Not for any particular reason, really... just some intangibles that cause me to think of those games.

Kind of like how Iridion II made me think of Viewpoint, when it didn't really have anything in common beyond a few superficialities.

GIANT SQUID · Post by **GIANT SQUID** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 3:49 am

what do people feel about the weapons system? how often do you use the heat seeking weapon? i kinda thought the weapons were kinda lame, but they look very cool.

FatCobra · Post by **FatCobra** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 5:47 pm

I was thinking of buying a DS and maybe this game to go along with with it. From the sound of it, it seems like a good shmup.

What do you mean by "invisible walls" however? You can't go onto the top screen or something?

LAshujin · Post by **LAshujin** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 5:51 pm

The invisible walls mean you can't move as far as the image goes to the left or right. It looks like you can go all the way up against the left or right edge, but you can't

sethsez · Post by **sethsez** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 8:42 am

GIANT SQUID wrote:what do people feel about the weapons system? how often do you use the heat seeking weapon? i kinda thought the weapons were kinda lame, but they look very cool.

Few days late, but meh.

After playing this for a while, I think the weapons are actually very well balanced. I use the lightning gun, heat seeker and standard shot all about equally, and even the side shot has its uses. Any of them can be used for survival, and scoring well at least partially relies on knowing when to use what (at least in my experience).

As an aside, this is the first shooter I've played where the lightning gun doesn't piss me off.

Anywho, I have to say that I agree with most of the complaints people have, but I also think that there are some truly great things here as well. Nanostray 2 (or Iridion III or whatever) could be fantastic if these were cleaned up, because the actual level design and game mechanincs are extremely solid and mostly hold up under close scrutiny (the invisible walls being the biggest blunder).

And I have to say, I'm really warming up to the lack of a standard game playthrough. It's a good idea in some ways, and reminds me a lot of racing games. Nobody cares what position you finished the Grand Prix in, what really matters for competition is individual track times. Since these levels actually have some depth, it holds up far better than Iridion II's attempt at this style.

iatneH · Post by **iatneH** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 1:59 pm

Yes, how could I forget.... as 5parrowhawk said, objects in the foreground obscuring your ship/enemies/ENEMY FIRE. This is UNFORGIVABLE.

I'm starting to hate this game more and more by the day. Nintendo is lucky that this game is the only shooter on the DS, or else I'd sell them both.

GIANT SQUID · Post by **GIANT SQUID** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 3:26 pm

yeah, i like this game, but it does ave it's flaws, oddly enough, the walls don't get on my nerves much. neither does the isometric view. but like i said, the inability to use secondary weapons in score attack is silly, but whatever...also, can't you do a play through for complete score in the adventure mode? it counts lives and continues all the way through...how is it the nanostray score boards have a rankign for complete games? is that just the sum of all the scores for the individual levels? anyway, it doens't bother me.

sethsez · Post by **sethsez** » Wed Aug 03, 2005 8:50 pm

iatneH wrote:Yes, how could I forget.... as 5parrowhawk said, objects in the foreground obscuring your ship/enemies/ENEMY FIRE. This is UNFORGIVABLE.

This is why I barely play Sunahara Desert. It also happens for an extremely short period in Hibashira Plains, but it doesn't bother me there for some reason.

Does it happen anywhere else? Those are the only two places I remember it happening (though it does make Sunahara a complete pain in the ass).

FatCobra · Post by **FatCobra** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:32 pm

I have $30 burning in my pocket, and my paycheck comes on the 26th, is Nanostray totally worth blowing $30 on? EGM gave it 5 out of 10, but what do those biased hacks know?

Hopefully, this game saves scores. Iridion II did not save the high scores, I heard. I mean, c'mon, how cheap do you have to be to not put a flash ram into your game in this day and age?

bcass · Post by **bcass** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 8:52 pm

FatCobra wrote:I have $30 burning in my pocket, and my paycheck comes on the 26th, is Nanostray totally worth blowing $30 on? EGM gave it 5 out of 10, but what do those biased hacks know?

Hopefully, this game saves scores. Iridion II did not save the high scores, I heard. I mean, c'mon, how cheap do you have to be to not put a flash ram into your game in this day and age?

Good question. Does it save the scores?

sethsez · Post by **sethsez** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 12:12 am

Yes, it saves scores.

And although I like the game for some reason, EGM was right on. It's slow, generic, easy and flawed in some fundamental ways. It's fun in the sense that the genre itself is inherantly fun (which is also what EGM said), but there's really nothing to it beyond a scoring system you probably won't care about for more than a week, if that.

There are better games to spend your money on, but if you're in the mood for a generic shooter, go for it.

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 2:20 pm

Valor is tied to how many shots that are fired and the use of the coin magnet. In other words the more you use either button (held down or otherwise) then the lower the score will go down.

For the shooting this means you can not waste ammo by doing the normal things you like to do in most shmups like holding the shoot button down reguardless of their being any enemies on screen because for every shot fired the valor bonus will do down.

The valor bonus system is supposed to make the player think before pressing the shoot/magnet buttons but as someone mentioned before most of the score is in fact gained by collecting the blue coins in sucession while having a full energy bar.

edit: sorry a bit late with this but I felt it needed pointing out!

thechop · Post by **thechop** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 8:02 pm

If anyones interested amazon.co.uk are selling the game for 11.97 GBP,not a bad price in their 2 for 24GBP offer.(if your in the uk of course)

iatneH · Post by **iatneH** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 8:24 pm

I totally forgot about this thread and this post:

iatneH wrote:Nintendo is lucky that this game is the only shooter on the DS, or else I'd sell them both.

And this I did a few months ago :p

Aiyah... I still cannot understand how "Ikaruga" and "SnSII" can appear in the same sentence as "Nanostray" and mean praise.

I'll admit that I had my 3 days of fun while I was still hyped up and doing a good job of convincing myself that I was playing a good game.