Review: Dariusburst: Chronicle Saviours

Posted by Curtis H on December 9th, 2015 | 0 Comments | Tags: Dariusburst Chronicle Saviour

A few minutes into my time with Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours I found myself going up against a robotic-seahorse equipped with a missile launcher. The aquatic organisms theme gives the game a personality that makes it standout to me. On top of that is a game that is filled with content that’ll take a community of dedicated players a very long time to finish.

Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours is split between AC (Another Chronicle) and CS (Chronicle Saviours) modes. Another Chronicle is a faithful port of the arcade game. It features the standard Original and EX Modes as well as Chronicle and Event modes. Original and EX are more traditional game modes where you’ll progress through a bracket with various routes to take. Taking the high route will lead to easier enemies while the lower route is much harder. Chronicle mode coincides with a specific cabinet that you were assigned when first booting up the game. Each cabinet features hexagonal grids with challenges to complete. Some challenges limit power-ups while others might require two-players. As you complete these challenges you’ll liberate an area and unlock a new space on the grid. This is done as a group as each cabinet of players work together to unlock more and more challenges. At this moment it’s hard to know exactly how many challenges there are, but the word is that Chronicle mode features 3000+ stages.

Another Chronicle takes advantage of a 32:9 aspect ratio. This means that playing on PS4/Vita will lead to large black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. This fits with the arcade aspect ratio and also leads to much more real estate for enemy patterns. It has a totally unique feel compared the resolution you’ll find in the CS mode. Unfortunately on PS4 the text, especially in Chronicle mode, can be really difficult to read. I still enjoy AC mode a lot, but I did often find myself wishing I could try out the PC version with two monitors setup side-by-side.

Chronicle Saviours is a brand new story mode for Dariusburst and works like a single-player version of Chronicle Mode. This mode features around 200 missions to complete that retell the history of Darius. Each mission is of varying length, difficulty, and play-style. Some missions require you keep enemies from reaching the left side of the screen and in others you’ll need to complete the area before the timer runs out. This mode also allows you to setup your own ship load-outs instead of using the preset ship. If you have enough points to use you can even setup a load-out that’s seriously overpowered. Which is kind of nice on some of the long and difficult missions.

Gameplay across both AC and CS modes doesn’t change that much. You’re blasting away enemy ships, picking up power-ups, and taking on a wide variety of bosses. There are 16 bosses total and each of them have their own variants that introduce new attack patterns. Just when you’ve learned the pattern of one boss you’ll find yourself up against a new form that changes things up quite a bit. It didn’t take much for me to fall in love with the design for each boss. Going up against giant turtles, whales, sharks, and other aquatic life makes for many memorable encounters. Unfortunately, due to the sheer number of stages in the game, the bosses do repeat quite a bit even with so many different variations. This is mainly an issue because some bosses can take a really long time to take down. So seeing a certain boss for the fifteenth time, knowing that the fight would be a long one, got to be a little annoying.

I can’t possibly finish this review without mentioning how incredible the soundtrack for Dariusburst is. It’s the kind of music that just gets you pumped up every time a stage starts.

I found myself completely sucked in to Dariusburst within just thirty minutes of playing. For someone with little experience in the genre this served as a lesson in just how much fun these games can be. Dariusburst is perfect for short play sessions and the crazy amount of content in the game means it’ll probably take me months to see everything.

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here.

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