Not as great of a videogame as Ikaruga but if you're looking for an entry point to Treasure shmups this is definitely the better place to start. There's still a lot of depth to the mechanics but it's a lot easier to manage than Ikaruga. The "story" mode added for the Saturn port isn't perfect insofar as what it sets out to achieve but as an experiment in translating arcade game design to home consoles, it is incredibly cool and a great way to ease into playing shmups for a beginner. It's longer than an Arcade playthrough, with more stages and more bosses, but in return, you maintain your weapon upgrades after death and gain more and more credits the more you play. What you get is a mode that's more punishing in the beginning (since your weapons also level up much slower than in Arcade mode) but gradually opens up to you as you get better at the game in general. The problem is that Story mode makes it very easy to push through the game without having to learn the chains and bonuses you basically need to know to get decent weapon levels in Arcade mode, so it's better treated as its own separate version of the game than as an easy mode to practice in before playing Arcade (considering all the Story mode exclusive content this seems to be Treasure's intention for the mode as well). If you've played ZeroRanger, which is one of the best games of the past decade, some of this probably sounds familiar. It's clear that Radiant Silvergun was a big inspiration on that game and from the story mode to the bosses and weapons it was cool to see all the stuff ZeroRanger was referencing. I couldn't grasp much of the actual story here since I've been playing the untranslated Saturn port but from the little bits I picked up on, it seems to have influenced ZeroRanger's story as well. I do really need to play through the story mode again on a translated version, I only just started to notice some very cool metatextual stuff during like the last stage and I'd like to see what it actually meant. Outside of that, while I'm not the sort of person who commits to 1ccs in shmups (usually I'm happy if I can clear the game at all), I think I'll stick with Radiant Silvergun a little while longer, at least to check out the Arcade mode some more. It doesn't have the level of depth and complexity you'll get out of Ikaruga but it's still challenging, fun, and incredibly well made.