The Japanese developer studio Qute Corporation produces an insider tip for shoot 'em-up fans: Natsuki Chronicles surprises with cool weapon systems and adds a fresh, unique feature to the genre that could set a precedent.
If you start Natsuki Chronicles in arcade mode, you'll experience nine manageably long stages, each with a boss at the end, enjoy the soon to be challenging enemy formations and bullet volleys, collect power-ups for your three weapon systems, and increase your continue count for the next attempt by advancing to later levels, but you'll have to reckon with degraded weapon performance when coming into contact with enemies. In short: He plays a well-designed, but still mediocre shoot 'em-up. And doesn't get the most out of the title - because Natsuki Chronicles shines in the story mode.
However, the story mode doesn't owe this to its story, as you might expect: You can already guess what's going to happen after the second mission, and the boring sequences including spoken dialogues with anime stills characters bore me in terms of presentation. At least the story follows the one of the predecessor Ginga Force and unwinds most of the events before the stages. So no, the story itself doesn't make the story mode the best way to play Natsuki Chronicles, but the much more motivating leveling up and energy system.
And it goes like this: In addition to the nine arcade stages, there are only two tutorials and one very strange level where you pilot a lumbering giant spaceship, but you get significantly more out of the stages with the expanded weapon system. Before each attempt to complete a level or improve your high score, you can freely configure the three components of the armament - old home computer bunnies even feel a bit reminded of Rainbow Arts' X-Out here. The primary weapon in Natsuki Chronicles fires forward and can be equipped with a typical Vulcan scattershot, but also with lasers, bombs, or a Kringle cannon.
Conclusion
Like its predecessor Ginga Force or Treasure's cult shooter Radiant Silvergun, the clever, diverse and customizable weapon system makes this shoot 'em-up a strong representative of its guild. And that despite the graphics, which can admittedly be called utilitarian. Especially in the story mode, unlocking and trying out the diverse weapon systems is enormously motivating - even mastering the many variants of the defensively and offensively usable special weapon needs to be learned. The option to display the trajectories of enemy bullets in a helpful, rarely disturbing way is a fine little innovation in this, one of the oldest video game genres. The fact that it's not enough for an overall score in the "super" segment despite these advantages is due to the largely unimaginative bosses, the boringly modeled enemies, and the lack of boom when firing.
