This guide introduces how to play DARIUSBURST Chronicle Saviours (or DBCS), starting from basics.

The Very Basics
From the main menu, use arrow keys to highlight a choice and Z to select it, X to back out.
Choose AC mode (just like the arcade) or CS mode (campaign).
For your first game, pick AC mode, then keep pressing Z to select default everything.
Fly around, shoot everything, don't get hit, pick up the floating colored balls.

Controls
The default controls are:

• Arrow keys to move around
  
• Tap or hold Z to shoot (main gun fires ahead, plus bombs to the sides). When you're first learning the game, just hold this down.
  
• Tap X to switch directions (turn to the left, or turn back to the right)
  
• Hold C to fire your burst. This does very high damage, cancels most enemy bullets, and helps get a high score...but it depletes your burst meter very rapidly.
  
• Press V (or tap C twice) to drop off your fixed burst. Tap C or V to cancel the fixed burst (and stop spending burst meter)
  
• Press Enter to continue if all lives are lost

As you destroy certain enemies and hidden spots, items will drop and float toward the left, gently spinning. The power-ups are:

• Red - Main weapon power.
  
• Green - Bomb (sub-weapon) power
  
• Blue - ARM (shield) power.
  
• Silver - Points
  
• Gold - Damage all enemies on screen

Usually the enemies that drop a power-up are be a different color (e.g. a red enemy drops a red power-up, while the rest of its group will be gray).
You can see your power level at the top left

If you crash into enemies or their bullets, your ship takes damage. Your shield (ARM) can absorb some damage. Once your shield is depleted, one more shot destroys your ship. (There is a metallic clunk sound when you take damage; you will come to know and dislike this sound) Picking up blue power-ups refills your shield. As you level up your shield, each pickup gives 1, 2, or 3 ARM units.

In CS mode, your remaining shield (ARM) is shown at the top. In AC mode, the number isn't shown during the stage, but you get a small "ARM bonus" at the end of each stage, and this shows you the remaining ARM strength.

You get three lives in AC mode, and there are no extra lives. You get a "NO MISS" bonus if you clear all three stages without losing any lives. In CS mode most levels give you three lives but some give fewer. You can continue by pressing Enter if all lives are lost. This is useful for practicing later stages. If you use a continue, your final score will end in a 9. (So, it's easy to see from the scoreboard which plays were a 1cc = one credit clear)

You can see your burst meter next to your ship in AC mode, or at the bottom left in CS mode. The burst meter charges up as you destroy enemies or cancel bullets. It charges up quite quickly as you take out large swarms of small enemies, so in several places you can leave your fixed burst active for many seconds.

Hold C to fire your burst. This does very high damage, cancels most enemy bullets, and helps get a high score...but it depletes your burst meter very rapidly.

Fixed burst
Press V (or tap C twice) to drop off your fixed burst, which sits in place fires a laser. This does high damage and cancels most enemy bullets, but depletes your burst meter. Press C or V to cancel the burst unit (and stop spending burst meter).

Fixed burst is very effective for defense. In many cases it effectively nullifies enemy attacks by blocking all of them (or creating a safe place for you to hide). As you start to get the hang of using it, boss battles that seemed impossible can become easier.

While you hold the fire button, your fixed burst keeps pointing in the same direction. If you are not firing, your fixed burst turns to face away from you. For example: Drop the fixed burst and move slightly down and left, stop firing for a moment, then start firing again. Now you have a fixed burst firing diagonally up and right. This is useful in many places, like asteroid fields, where you want to kill or block lots of things flying across the screen.

Burst meter recharges as the fixed burst beam blocks enemy bullets. It recharges very fast if the fixed burst beam hits a beamed enemy laser, like the blue laser from Hyper Jaw or Phantom Castle.

Burst counter
Most bosses fire a burst attack. You can tell this is coming by an ominous red glow and a couple of ping sounds; the burst fires on the third count.

If you time your own burst to start just as the enemy beam hits you, you'll fire a counter burst, an even stronger golden burst beam. This does huge damage and blocks the enemy burst.

Here are a couple of ways to time counter burst:

• Point-blank: You can sit right in front of the enemy at point blank range, fire your burst just as the enemy fires. (The two pings are counting one, two and you fire on three). This is easiest on bosses like King Fossil where things are calm before the enemy burst.
  
• Cut-in: Move up or down into the enemy burst beam, and fire your burst just as you enter the beam.

If you miss the timing on counter burst, you'll probably take multiple hits. The timing takes some practice. Once you get the hang of it, it's a huge help in boss battles.

You can see the current level of your main gun at the top left. The four red rectangles will fill up as you get red power-ups and power up your gun; the next power-up switches your gun to the next firing mode.

You can have a few shots on the screen at once. (If you go to the far left and hold down fire, you'll notice that you fire a group of shots, then there's a pause, then as the first shots disappear at the far right you fire some more). Because of this, if you are close to the enemy, you'll fire at maximum rate and do more damage. Point-blanking bosses with both shots and bombs (at the times when that's safe) can be super effective.

The first gun (missiles) cancels enemy bullets. The second gun (laser) pierces enemies and cancels enemy lasers. The third gun (wave) is a thicker beam which pierces walls.

In some cases, you might want to skip collecting red power-ups. Sticking with missiles or lasers lets you keep their shot canceling power. And your attack is temporarily weaker when you switch to the next weapon type. For instance, I find Phantom Castle (the boss of stage F) easier to kill using a fully-powered laser than a level 1 or 2 wave.

The bomb (green sub-weapon) levels up from a 1-way bomb that drops forward and down, to 2-way bombs (forward diagonals), to 4-way bombs (all 4 diagonals)

From the menu you can choose a couple of game modes.
AC mode is the arcade mode. Once you select AC mode you can choose Original Mode (standard three-sage arcade game), Original EX Mode (same, but with remixed harder stages and bosses), or Chronicle Mode (liberate unlock many different stages together with everyone else on the same cabinet).

CS mode is a single-player-only campaign. Each level is a fixed (non-branching) set of stages and bosses; you unlock more levels as you go. Most of these are combinations of stages and bosses from original or original EX mode, but there are some new stages and bosses mixed in.

You can select one of three stages (A, B, or C) to start with. At the end of each stage you choose whether to turn up or down to the next stage. In all you will play through three stages (and fight their three bosses). In general, stages higher up are easier (so ADH is the hardest route), and stages lower down are harder (so CGL is the hardest route).

Original EX mode is the same idea, but with a new set of stages (O through Z) and bosses.

The difficulty curve can be bumpy, so if you're having trouble with a particular boss (like Ancient Barrage, the turtle on stage E, or Phantom Castle, the blowfish on stage F), don't despair - sometimes the next level will be easier.

CS mode is a single-player-only campaign, not part of the original arcade game. Each level is a set of stages and bosses. Icons at the bottom left show you what to expect, and the hexagon icon at the bottom under "HI-SCORE" lists exactly how many stages + bosses to expect.

As you complete each level, you unlock more levels - the levels are laid out in a tree, where the root of the tree is the first level and the branches spread out. The levels in CS mode start out quite easy (easier than the ADH course), especially because you start with lots of shields. But as you get farther away from the first level, the CS levels gradually get quite difficult. (Boginzu is a difficulty spike, because it sends you into a boss rush with no shields to start with)

Each level has a preset ship, but you can also select a different ship. Each CS level you clear gives you points to use as a currency to unlock things - if you score X points you get X/10 unlock points. You can unlock each ship for a one-time cost. And you can buy power-ups for one-time use in attempting a stage. You need to use the preset ship to submit a high score, but the custom ships let you try different things if you get stuck on a level.

In addition to the default Silver Hawk ship, Legend, you can select from several others. Some are easier to survive with. (I find ones with a fixed burst easier for survival). Some are easier to get high scores with - apparently Assault is high-scoring.

• Legend - The default ship.
  
• Next - The bombs are homing bombs. The fixed burst beam turns toward you instead of away from you.
  
• Origin - No burst attack or fixed burst available. (Get good at dodging!) The attack button fires just the main gun; tap or hold the burst button to fire bombs.
  
• Formula - Powerful but short range. The missile shot only travels about halfway across the screen on AC mode, the wave only about a third of the way.
  
• GAIDEN - Instead of burst, fires a black hole bomb which does lots of damage and cancels bullets.
  
• Second - The ship from Darius 2. No burst attack or fixed burst available.
  
• Assault - Homing bombs. Burst attack fires a lightning attack that does damage and absorbs bullets in a ring; tapping burst again cancels the attack. This burst attack can still do counter burst. Assault does a lot of damage,
  
• Genesis - Has two "options". Tapping the burst button changes their formation (following, or sitting to the sides). Holding then releasing the burst button fires the full burst charge. If the options get blown up, your burst meter loses charge. Genesis features very easy counter burst - you don't have to time it carefully, just fire your burst into the enemy burst.
  
• Murakumo - Available in CS mode only. Like Genesis, has "options" - up to four, depending on your burst meter charge. Like Genesis, features very easy counter burst. Murakumo's options change formation if you tap C, and they also change shot type (bullet vs. laser), which makes it great for shot cancelling.

Ships also have different speeds. From slow to fast, the ordering is something like: Legend/Next, Origin/Second, Gaiden/Assault, Genesis/Murakumo(?), Formula.

Each stage features a boss battle with giant mechanical sea-creature. Many bosses have variant forms - for instance, Thousand Bullets is a more difficult variant of Thousand Knives. Some bosses are only found in CS mode. Most bosses have destoyable parts which weaken their attacks, or at least score extra points.

The bosses may look very difficult at first - and they are! But many of them also have "safe spots" - places where you can position yourself to avoid their attacks easily; watch for tricks like this.

• Stage A - Iron Fossil. (Harder variants: Knight Fossil, King Fossil)
  
• Stage B - Hard Wheel. (Harder variant: Mud Wheel)
  
• Stage C - Hyper Jaw. (Harder variant: Trident Jaw)
  
• Stage D - Lightning Claw. (Harder variant: Lightning Flamberge; easier variant: Lightning Prison)
  
• Stage E - Ancient Barrage
  
• Stage F - Phantom Castle. (Easier variant: Mirage Castle)
  
• Stage G - Brightly Stare. (Harder variant: Insane Stare)
  
• Stage H - Violent Ruler. (Harder variant: Golden Ruler)
  
• Stage I - Thousand Knives (Harder variants: Thousand Edge, Thousand Bullets)
  
• Stage J - Hungry Gluttons
  
• Stage K - Dark Helios
  
• Stage L - Great Thing

EX mode bosses:

• Stage O - Knight Fossil
  
• Stage P - Glassy Stare
  
• Stage Q - Dark Flare
  
• Stage R - Lightning Flamberge
  
• Stage S - Trident Jaw
  
• Stage T - Thousand Edge
  
• Stage U - Heavy Gluttons
  
• Stage V - Golden Ruler
  
• Stage W - Dual Spin
  
• Stage X - Dreadful Whip
  
• Stage Y - Slash Shell
  
• Stage Z - G.T.V.

Some tips for fighting some bosses. Details in spoiler tags, you might have more fun if you defeat them using your own technique.

Ancient Barrage - During one phase, he moves back and forth along the bottom of the screen while firing lasers and bullets. If you fire a fixed burst above him, then fly around above the fixed burst beam, you can move around mostly safely. (Your fixed burst will block all the yellow bullets...except when it is blocked by the purple stop-and-go lasers)

Phantom Castle - This blowfish can be frustrating, because in his second form (after all armor is destroyed), he fires groups of red homing lasers that are tough to dodge. During his first form, blow up just part of the armor on each side, keeping things symmetrical. Doing this lets you do a lot of damage to the center of the boss before he enters this form, so that he dies too quickly to fire homing lasers.

Brightly Stare / Glassy Stare / Insane Stare - During his first attack and parts of the second, you can safely point-blank him by shooting him right in the eyes.

Hungry Gluttons - There's a phase where he goes into the background, and summons little piranhas who swim in from the right hand side. In AC mode (but not in CS mode!), you can get behind him during this attack and face left, drop a fixed burst, and just hang out and shoot at him.

Great Thing - He throws a lot of attacks at you at once - but on the bright side, all those bullets will help keep your fixed burst charged. At the start of the fight drop your fixed burst near the bottom and get it pointing diagonally up + right; you can hide behind its beam and just worry about dodging the pink beam lasers.

Dreadful Whip - When Dreadful Whip is in the background, the tentacle he waves is the side where the bullets will spawn. After the attack that spawns rings of yellow shots, before his big beam attack, you can position yourself behind him for lots of easy damage - probably enough to finish him off if you can just survive up to that point.

Here are the basics of scoring. (You'll probably want to view a superplay video to really learn how to get high scores)

You get points for destroying enemies.

You get a formation bonus for killing every last enemy in a group. (Points pop up on screen when this happens).

There is a score multiplier, displayed at the top left, applied to the points you gain. This multiplier seems to build up based on killing lots of things fast, especially with fixed burst or standard burst. Multiplier drops whenever you get hit.

Killing an enemy or formation with standard burst also multiplies score by a 4x (3x for assault) multiplier, and counter bursting boosts score by 6x (or 7x for genesis or assault). Killing as many things as possible with standard burst is good for high scoring.

You get a NO MISS bonus of 10 million for clearing all stages without losing a life (damage ok, losing a ship not ok)
You get a time bonus for killing a boss quickly
In AC mode, you get a small ARM bonus after each stage (it's not significant, but it's handy for seeing how many shields you have left)
In CS mode, you get a Silverhawk bonus for remaining lives (5 million each)

Some other sites I've learned about DBCS:

Official webpage[darius.jp]

DBCS thread on the shmups forum[shmups.system11.org]

DBCS arcade version page from the Game Grid Arcade in Salt Lake City[gamegridarcade.com]

STG Weekly - discussion and replays

Darius series wiki[darius.wikia.com]