I'm just going to start off by saying I have nothing but praise for this game. With that said I know most STEAM users are going to look at the price point for this and think, "They've GOT to be out of their minds!" No they aren't This game is packed with so much content that I don't think there's a single game of its kind that can topple. I'll even say that you couldn't even combine 3 or 4 games together to get the amount of content that this game has to offer fans of the genre.

Aesthetically this game brings a simple and clean presentation to the table. The UI for ship combat is clean and simple to understand without too much info bombarding the player while they are struggling to keep their ship from a fiery demise. The 3D models are low in the polygon department, yet beautifully designed. Everything from simple cannon fodder enemies to the enormous bosses look great.

When it comes to blasting things into the next dimension this game brings it home. Every stage I've played so far in CS mode feels satisfying to navigate through while serving a healthy dose of destruction to everything in your wake. The slew of ship models in the game keep everything feeling fresh. Each ship brings something different to the table, be it bombs, options (bits), firing patterns, lasers, devastating counter lasers... You're going to have a different experience trying each one.

Areas feel a bit easy at first, but the difficulty steadily increases with each one you go to. And there's 200 of them in this mode. You'll be forced to learn enemy formation patterns, stage layouts, and boss attack patterns. Also, don't worry about encountering the same boss two or three times. While sometimes bosses look the same, their attack patterns sure as heck are not. Nothing I've encountered so far has felt unfair to me and every death I've had in an area has brought me closer to success on my next go around. This game does a great job of being difficult without being frustrating.

The music is another thing in this game that really caught me off guard. The soundtrack and sound design for this game is just superb. Everything feels new yet very nostalgic. It's as if I've been transported over 20 years back to the past to enjoy some of the older games from back in my youth. It's something that just feels great to experience while going through the game. With that said, the music still sounds fresh and sound effects are of a better quality than what us older people had from back in the day.

The thing that boggles my mind with the game is that I haven't even touch AC mode which contains 3 other modes within it and the original aspect ratio of the arcade version which will allow PC players to enjoy an authentic quarter crunching experience. There's one mode (Chronicle I believe) that has 3000 stages that are unlocked by the community. Each "cabinet" is like its own little universe which players can pick before starting AC mode. The further you and players in that cabinet get through Chronicles the more worlds you unlock. It adds a VERY lite MMO aspect to the game which will keep this game fresh far a good long while.

But for me, I'm content with trying to survive through CS mode. I don't see myself finishing that anytime soon since I'm on the less skilled side of the spectrum when it comes to Shoot'em Ups. Like I've stated in the beginning, your money will not go to waste on this game is you're a fan of the genre and have been waiting for a content heavy shmup to come across the STEAM store. PC has been getting a RIDICULOUS amount of fantastic shooters in the last two years and DARIUSBURST has easily sky rocketed to the top 3 in my opinion. This is a top shelf experience and a title that deserves to be in every shmup fan's catalogue.

The best and most shmup you can buy on Steam.

It's hard to explain how huge this game is. Do you want a lengthy single-player campaign that will take you many hours to complete? CS mode is that. Do you want a classic Darius experience with multiple routes? It has two of those modes: Original and Original EX. Do you want a huge selection of different challenges? Chronicle mode has hundreds and hundreds of challenges with thousands of stages. Even if you aren't the type who plays arcade games repeatedly in order to get higher scores, there's still enough here to occupy you for hundreds of hours.

And how is this gigantic game? In a word: incredible. Dariusburst takes a different tack than many modern bullet hell shooters and instead goes for what I'd call popcorn hell. Huge swarms of tiny enemies and asteroids are everywhere. The bosses are huge, have a large variety of attacks, and are exhilarating to fight. Don't think it's just swarms and bosses, though: there are plenty of bullet-firing medium sized enemies and stage walls to contend with, too. Dariusburst is very much its own thing and doesn't cleanly fit into any of the shmup archetypes.

The scoring system is relatively simple, with a multiplier that ticks up when you destroy waves of enemies and gets reduced when you get hit. Kill an entire enemy wave and the you get a score bonus multiplied by your current multiplier. Kill the final enemy of a wave with your rechargeable laser or bomb and you get that same bonus multiplied by 16. This means the best scoring tactic is to kill everything and try to eliminate the final enemy of each wave with your laser/bomb. This is easier said than done, so there's a lot of depth here in figuring out the ideal movement and timing for killing enemy waves. Bosses fire their own lasers and if you time it right, you can fire your own laser into that laser (like in G-Darius) and counter it for massive damage and large amounts of points if you kill the boss with the resulting counterburst.

The art design is great. It doesn't push a lot of polygons (this is an enhanced port of an arcade game based on a PSP game, after all) but the art more than makes up for it. Backgrounds can be astonishingly beautiful and the boss designs are great. There are also a large number of references to previous Darius games that are cool to pick out. Sound effects are well done. Nothing to write home about (apart from the wonderful boss alert siren), but they get the job done. The music is incredible. The "Freedom" song in the trailer is love-it-or-hate-it (I'm in the latter camp) but it's easily the least good of a long and lengthy soundtrack. The way the soundtrack is perfectly synchronized in the arcade modes is awe-inspiring.

There's only two real flaws with this game. The huge number of modes and missions means that high scores are scattered across a bunch of leaderboards rather than being concentrated and more competitive. Second, there's no practice mode for individual stages and bosses in AC mode. Some of the bosses (looking at YOU, Phantom Castle) have some really mean attacks and it would be nice to be able to practice them in AC mode without going through a series of stages beforehand. CS mode lets you select individual stages, so you can sort of use it for practice, but the aspect ratio is so different that it's not really the same thing as the AC mode boss fights.

All in all, I can't recommend this game enough. The price may be high but it is totally worth it given both the length and quality of Dariusburst: Chronicle Saviours.

Oh, DARIUSBURST. You come so close, and yet you falter mere steps away from the finish line.

Many people will look at the price tag and think twice about it, but if your concern is lack of content, you shouldn't worry. DARIUSBURST is a game that is absolutely stuffed to the gills. There's a full recreation of the Arcade mode in 32:9 (with dual-monitor support!), including Original (choose three stages from a total of twelve in the traditional Darius split map), Original EX (Original but harder), Chronicle (thousands of stages, unlocked collaboratively with other players), and Event (currently unused). There's also a new mode, similar to Chronicle meant for home play on a 16:9 monitor by a single player. There are dozens of enemies and bosses, most if not all of the latter having one or more variants with different attacks. There are eight ships to choose from in arcade and a ninth in CS, all of which have dramatically differing capabilities.

As far as actually playing it goes, DARIUSBURST doesn't disappoint either. The controls are responsive, the ships don't feel too fast or slow as you dodge between volleys of fire and take down enemies, and the battles are all delightfully flashy and impressive in a way that makes it fun to watch despite the average graphics. It's really a great game.

And yet, there's a big red thumbs down at the top of this review. And it's there for a reason. DARIUSBURST doesn't lack for content, and it doesn't lack for gameplay, but that's not all that's important to a game. What DARIUSBURST is ultimately missing to make it woth the full price tag is polish. It's an overall gread experience, that is nonetheless missing things - both minor little pleasantries and arguably key features.

There's no replay functionality whatsoever.

There's no stage practice option beyond finding a Chronicle course that starts with the stage you want to practice.

When playing AC mode on a single monitor, it's letterboxed... with bland black rectangles, as opposed to some of the series' gorgeous art assets.

Without multiple controllers, there's no way to pick the color of your ship.

There's no online multiplayer, when many of the stages in Chronicle cannot be entered at all without a team of two or more.

The arcade loading screens, meant to inform the player about their ship and the bosses, are inexplicably left untranslated from Japanese.

Those are all features that other shmups, cheaper shmups, have provided in the past. Yet DARIUSBURST, a fully-priced retail release, lacks them.

And that's why, ultimately, I cannot click the "Yes" button and recommend it. If there were a Mixed option in addition to Yes and No, I'd cheerfully pick that one, because there's a lot here to like. But if it's got to be one of the two...

DARIUSBURST would be worthwhile at $30. It'd be a bargain at $20. But at $50, I can't recommend it to anyone who would be on the fence and decide to read some reviews. Wait for a good sale, and THEN get it and have a great time.

Arcade game - $10000
Steam game - $49.99

WHAT A ♥♥♥♥ING STEAL

There was a time where if you had mentioned to me that you either had access to DariusBurst Another Chronicle, either via an arcade cabinet or by playing it on an iOS device, I would have given you a weird look. And not just any weird look, but the look that I wanted to steal your soul type of look as I really wanted a chance to try the game, just for once in my life. And with no access to either an iOS device or a Japanese PlayStation Portable, I was forced to merely watch videos of the game in action on Youtube. That is until recently when Degica stated they were porting the game over to not just the PlayStation Vita, but also the PlayStation 4 and the real shocker, the PC. That’s all I needed to hear to get my shmup spirits lifted. Besides Darius, my other favorite shmups, Gradius and Thunderforce, were dead and buried, never to see the day of light again. And while Darius was still being carried on, its existence was always out of my reach, that is until now. “Shoot-’em-up: a fast-moving story or movie, of which gunfire is a dominant feature. Also known as a shmup” DBCS is technically two games in one, which I believe was done to not only bring home that arcade experience but also to build upon it. Within the game, you have the ability to chose between DariusBurst Another Chronicle or AC mode, which includes all of the original arcade modes and original arcade screen ratio (perfect for dual screen or wide-format monitors and DariusBurst Chronicle Saviors or CS mode, which is the updated version of the game. And while you’re free to choose either mode, there are a few differences. In AC mode you have access to the original arcade game modes; Original, Original EX Mode, Chronicle Mode and Event Mode. Original (Easy, Normal and Hard) is what I call the starter zone while Original EX Mode is a tougher version, tailor made for shmup experts (Expect, Extreme and Exceed) . You know, the same people that are able to single credit an entire game.

Chronicle mode however is what stands out here as you are presented with several different missions and objectives to complete, as the systems are broken up into several areas. And speaking of those objectives, they range anywhere from completing an area with just one credit, completing an area with multiple players, playing with a specific set of equipment and so forth. It’s a definite time sink that’s for sure. Thankfully you’re not the only one who’s doing this, as everyone around the world who plays this game can also contribute to the AC progression via cabinets. And just like it sounds, a cabinet is like a global progression save. For example, say everyone from a specific arcade was able to beat several areas, such as one of the specific multiplayer objectives. That objective would then contribute to unlocking more areas in the AC mode’s game, and everyone who is accessing that cabinet can benefit and contribute to that going forward. This allows access to literally hundreds of new levels and even exclusive AC mode only bosses that you likely wouldn’t unlock on your own. And for those wondering, yes this is basically the NESYS / NESiCAxLive Network being emulated at home. Oh, and when I mention hundreds of levels, I actually meant thousands! Yes, Taito is boasting that Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours’s AC mode will include over 3000 total stages. So you’ll be playing this for quite some time. No matter how you choose to play the game; Xbox 360, Xbox One, Dual Shock 4, Arcade Stick, as several other not very known controllers, you’ll be happy to know that the game supports just about every gamepad and joystick. I can attest to that myself as I’ve tested over 10 different configurations and were able to play the game with all of them. And yes, you can even play with the keyboard, if you want to that is. I don’t see why, but at least that option is available.

However in CS mode, the game changes. Similar to the chronicle mode in AC, this is mode is also laid out in a manner that you have set paths to take, after first area is completed that is. And unlike AC mode where you can chose the next stage, once you start the area you’re stuck on until it’s completed. You’re also handicapped to an extent as you will find that some missions will not allow power ups to drop as well as restrict you to a specific ship. However you won’t go into a mission blind as the overlay will tell you from the start what your ship will be, power up status, how many zones make up the area, and stage make-up. Another difference is that while you play CS mode, you accumulate points based on how well you do in the zones you play through. Eventually after accumulating enough points you can trade them in for a new ship which you can then outfit with lasers, bombs and shielding. Using this tactic, you’re no longer forced to use the preset ship, which will make certain levels that may have seemed impossible before a total cake walk with the new ship. However there’s also a down side to this and every time you use that powered up ship, you will consume however many number of points you put into upgrading it. So you’ll have to track how much you have or if you start running low, to take off some of that added power or simply use the preset ship. It’s a nice method to keep you from overpowering your way to the end of the game. Via every transition in CS mode, you’re provided pieces of the on-going story that you’re currently taking place in. And while CS mode isn’t as expansive as AC mode as it pales in comparison of possible stages (200+ vs 3000), it’s still a fun addition and more up-to-date take on the Darius shooter. Also worth noting that CS mode is a single player affair while AC mode will allow up to 4 players.

You want ships? Well you won’t be disappeared here, especially if you’re familiar with the Darius games as there’s a handful of them playable in-game; Gaiden, Assault, Next, Legend, Formula, Origin, Second, Genesis and one ship that isn’t related to the Darius universe, the Murakumo, which is a CS exclusive ship btw. Apparently that ship hails from an older Taito game, one that I can’t quite figure out. And while it’s not directly related to the Darius ships of legend, the Murakumo is clearly a fantastic ship in its own right and is fun to play with, assuming you can afford the points required to pick it up. Fans of G-Darius may be slightly disappointed with the Genesis Silver Hawk as it does not feature it’s capture ball. It’s not a huge deal and it doesn’t detract from the game, but it would have been nice to see it included. Even still, there are subtle differences between the ships, so each one is unique in that retrospect. If you’ve ever played a Darius title, then you should be familiar on how the game functions. You pick your ship and off you go, pretty straight forward stuff. Thankfully the controls of the game are very responsive, and while playing the game I didn’t have any issues as I dodge the incoming fire. That said, if I died it was due to me slipping up instead of the game.

Read the entire review here - http://www.theouterhaven.net/2015/11/61199/