ST: Darius II

For posting and requesting strategic gameplay tips on shmups!
Prickly Angler
Posts: 148
Joined: Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:46 am

Re: ST: Darius II

Post by Prickly Angler »

No reason to feel embarassed, the guide is great, it’s a very personnal take on the matter and it’s always usefull. A lot of the strats can be applied to basically any route so thanks again for the tips ! Don’t know what SD stands for but it definetely belongs in the strategy topics imo 8)

People should definetely go with a good rapidfire for discovering the game first, B/Normal difficulty just takes away power-ups so you’ll never have enough firepower to kill some of the midbosses without it. Again there hasn’t been a single declared 1CC of the two screen version without at least 10hz rapidfire (if you find one please let me know), though it’s definetely something I want to try again sometime, it is doable. It’d be a huge achievement to do it with 5hz.

A/Easy/Original difficulty is definetely balanced for a very reasonnable mashing frequency, or a very low rapidfire if you don’t like tapping. With 30hz it’s definetely too easy and not very challenging for skilled shmupers, so I can totally see your point about the cab being avoided by top japanese players, it’s definetely a shame... :(
This means the shot rate was something around 15 shots per second
So if I understand correctly the rapidfire frequency of the dipswitches settings is something like 15hz ? Despatche said it had either « slow » or « fast » frequencies but EmperorIng told me that they were basically the same. Could you confirm this ?

OT/Self promotion : On May 22 I'll be running Darius II live at the Shoot the Baguette event organized by Juju Kenobi. The schedule can be find there :
https://horaro.org/stb3/stb3

I'll go for an easy clear since I don't have too much experience with live events and the game is already unfriendly enough as it is lol. Feel free to tune in :D :
https://twitter.com/JujuKenobi_Stg/stat ... 1404002309
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ACSeraph
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Location: Tokyo

Re: ST: Darius II

Post by ACSeraph »

Sorry I meant to reply to this weeks ago. I don't actually know much about the exact fire rates or the dipswitches of the PCB, but just from experience with various home versions the default feels something like 15hz. If you've ever played the Saturn version of the game the default auto-fire in that is more or less the same as the arcade versions I've encountered.

On a different note I'm hoping to completely remake this guide from the ground up over summer break with new routes, strategies, video/.gif supplements etc. It will give me a good project for my new capture card. I also intend to finally clean up and publish my Darius 1 guide that's been sitting in a folder unreleased for almost 5 years...
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Prickly Angler
Posts: 148
Joined: Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:46 am

Re: ST: Darius II

Post by Prickly Angler »

On a different note I'm hoping to completely remake this guide from the ground up over summer break with new routes, strategies, video/.gif supplements etc. It will give me a good project for my new capture card. I also intend to finally clean up and publish my Darius 1 guide that's been sitting in a folder unreleased for almost 5 years...
That'd be amazing, can't wait !! :D.

I'd like to write up some subtitle on my runs eventually but I feel it might be better to try to no-miss every final zones instead of commenting only shitclears. Shitclears are sure usefull to comment since it can show what not to do, relate more to beginners' playlevel, etc, and I do plan on commenting some, but I'm not exactly satisfied with most of my runs to say the least. I also want to increase my score (PB is at around 3 300 000, and was surprisingly done more than two months ago at a time when I didn't knew the game that much).

Also can't wait for your Darius I guide (even though I bet you're gonna go with Extra).
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Rastan78
Posts: 1963
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 2:08 am

Re: ST: Darius II

Post by Rastan78 »

A very detailed systems guide of Darius II in Japanese:

http://mdrksg22c.livedoor.blog/archives/20163233.html

And discussion of the rank system here:

http://mdrksg22c.livedoor.blog/archives/21736879.html
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Despatche
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Re: ST: Darius II

Post by Despatche »

This is basically the research I had wanted to do forever ago, thanks for finding this.
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Rastan78
Posts: 1963
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Re: ST: Darius II

Post by Rastan78 »

Cool glad someone will find those links helpful.

Also check out this insane Darius II "low score attack" run. Deserves to have more than the 30 or so views its gotten. The precision of routing is just crazy to pull something like this off.

https://youtu.be/41xVz2ppoMs
Prickly Angler
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Re: ST: Darius II

Post by Prickly Angler »

Amazing find Rastan78, that article was really usefull to me ! :D
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ancestral-knowledge
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Re: ST: Darius II

Post by ancestral-knowledge »

Can someone explain the difficulty settings for a Darius II beginner like me? I have the Cosmic collection and I don't understand anything. I have Easy, Medium and Hard. In addition to that I have this funky "Switch difficulty setting" setting. :?:

Here is a pic.
https://ibb.co/nPyDXd6

I want to play this game on difficulty A when it was first shipped ...

EDIT: I've managed to 1CC the game on difficulty A but with autofire 30Hz. i took the ABDGKPZ' route.

It's very clear when you play the game that the game was intended to be played on difficulty A but without 30Hz autofire or maybe it was intended to include 30Hz but only for the 3-screen version. Maybe 30Hz could have been fine for the 3-screen version where you would have a tradeoff like in Darius 1 but in the 2-screen version 30 Hz wrecks bosses and mid bosses to the point that they become trivial. It's kinda funny that the devs did not learn anything from Darius 1 but maybe it's just impossible to balance out autofire/no autofire and 3-screen/2-screen version at the same time and that's the feeling I got from the game.

For instance I've noticed that Yamato is a completely different fight in the 3 screen version where you have way more space to dodge the patterns. In the 2-screen version there are patterns that are nearly impossible to dodge so it's probably best to point blank autofire on the right side because if the fight continues for too long you probably encounter more of the hard to dodge patterns. You can really feel that there is 1 screen of dodging space missing there.

Another thing is that your ship speed is WAAAAAY too slow to dodge some of the things thrown at you so you need to know the perfect position at all times. If you had the additional screen of the 3-screen version this could be very different. People wrote that the routing in Darius 2 is more strict and I think it stems from this exact problem. (Note: When I switched to Darius Gaiden I crashed into everything for the first couple of days because the ship speed increase in Gaiden. The ship speed increade in Gaiden makes the game way more enjoyable.)

Difficulty B really feels like it was set to default in in the last second to make more money which they even admitted to. You are underpowered the whole game and in combination with your slow speed it just feels like a sluggish terrible design mistake. But on the other hand maybe that change made so much more money that put them into position to make a sequel. Who knows....

I think I've found out what this "Switch difficulty setting" option is. It must be the Dipswitch A-1 that influences rank. When you set it to enabled the rank decreases for every level for Difficulty A (Easy) however for B onwards to D (Medium, Hard, Hardest) the rank gets increased. I don't understand why you would make B, C or D even more difficult because it's pretty insane as it is but well...
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