As soon as Nanostray begins, it starts to impress you. Misturin Jungle, the first level in the game, is amazing—below are lush jungles with lazily meandering streams and occasional rocks. If you can tear your eyes away from those who look to hinder your ship, you will notice greatly rendered environments with movement and particle effects that make visuals like water flowing and mist hanging over the jungle canopy work.

Beauty does not stop at the ground level, though. The enemy forces who want to stand in your way are numerous and varied. Bullets fly everywhere, with bright colors and glowing particle effects abound. Sadly, this comes at a cost: action gets to the point of slowdown sometimes.

To go along with the graphics is a great soundtrack. Nanostray features some appropriately spacey and somewhat relaxing music that combines with the visuals to create an immersive experience.

Going against the maxim, beauty isn’t skin deep. The flaws eventually expose themselves and disrupt an otherwise good game. Potential functions of the touchscreen go wasted, which is the largest problem with the title. Usage of it is limited to two main functions: changing weapons and scanning bosses.

The former is awkward, as it is necessary to switch weapons frequently to gain high scores. Doing so is an exercise of clumsily finding buttons without any sort of tactile response in the middle of a firefight. Imagine weaving and dodging through a crowded highway at a hundred miles per hour while trying to text message someone on a cell phone and you’re close to the feeling of higher-level Nanostray play.

Scanning bosses seems tacked on for the most part. What may be a nod to Metroid Prime, touching the “scan” button on the radar brings up a wireframe of the enemy with a depiction of weak points. There’s no real reasoning for implementing this feature, nor why it is necessary to touch the screen to activate it.

Another annoyance is the viewpoint Shin’en displays. A ¾ view from the rear shows a decent amount of real estate, but it also detracts from the gameplay. You are restricted to a plane that is not parallel to the screen, making a trapezoid-shaped box in which you can fly. It’s strange to be restricted by invisible walls and not the traditional screen boundaries.

Nanostray is a technological marvel that winds up being a fairly large disappointment. I hate to play the game-versus-expectations card, but in Nanostray’s case, I have to make an exception. If Shin’en would have utilized both screens for gameplay to facilitate shmup-tradition tate mode, made it a true two-dimensional view, and allowed weapon changing through mapped buttons; then it would be improved tenfold. As is, it’s a short, beautiful, fun game with awkward gameplay.