A cool doujin shmup that kicked off the Tale of Alltynex trilogy. The gameplay is very similar to Taito's RayForce, as you can fire at enemies in the background using your rechargeable, screen-wide auto-locking lightning attack. In addition, you can fire the powerful Lightning Katana, which does a ton of damage deletes bullets, and looks fly as hell. As both attacks use the same resource, the scoring system revolves around balancing your use of each weapon and appropriately timing your lock-on's for the highest bonus. The game is pretty easy to clear in pure survival runs, but like any good shmup, higher scores require riskier plays and tighter routing.

KAMUI's presentation is strong as hell too. The spritework is great, and the soundtrack is comprised of energetic, yet somewhat somber tunes match the overall melancholic tone of the setting and story.

Speaking of story, I know people love to discount the plot in shorter games (arcade games especially), but as a fan of insane narratives with a touch of mythology, KAMUI was especially captivating in that respect. As KAMUI is chronologically the final game in the series, compared to the next two games, it acts as more of an almost self-contained epilogue. If you're interested, I recommend checking out the official guide book, which fills in most of the details that couldn't fit into the game.