Chaos Field

I had this game briefly and enjoyed what little I played of it, but didn’t really have the time to get into it enough to have much of an informed opinion about it. Can anyone here give me a little summary of what they think of it and how it compares to the competition (‘Border Down’, ‘Ikaruga’, ‘Bangai-0’, and so on)? Also, I’d rather own the Dreamcast version as I’m a bigger fan of the console, but would it be a wiser idea to get the cheaper American GameCube version rather than the original Japanese DC one? If there’s a significant difference between the two or if the English text actually helps, or if it’s simply just not particularly worth the £30 or so that the Japanese version costs, then I’ll get the US GC version instead. Thanks for the feedback! :D

Chaos Field is not a patch on the competition. Ikaruga stands out as the best (followed by Gradius 5 on PS2).

Bangai-0 is a great game too, and you can pick it up dirt cheap here too (us and europe)

Thanks for the responses! I've been hearing from a lot of hardcore shooting fans that 'Chaos Field' isn't nearly as good as some of the other 2D shooters available on the market, so I'd probably be better of using the money to get 'Under Defeat' or something instead. Maybe I'll pick up the U.S. GameCube version of Ebay for a couple of quid sometime down the road instead of getting the Jap Dreamcast verson.