0 Introduction
This is my first attempt on an ST. There are still some gaps. Hopefully some of you will be able to fill them in. If you have any suggestions to make, any mistakes to correct, feel free to post them. Enjoy.
1 Basics
1.1 Ship Selection
There are two different craft to chose from in the arcade version of Trizeal. The Dreamcast port features two more, bringing the total number to four. (You can play with the ships from XIIStag, Triangle Service's previous game, which are included as a hidden secret, in the DC version.)
P1 Ship (red): This is the standard ship in Trizeal. Nothing to note here.
P2 Ship (yellow): To play with this ship, use the controller on the 2P side of the cabinet or plug your pad/stick into the second controller port on your Dremcast. The ship on the 2P side differs slightly from the standard ship. It moves a little faster, which can be very useful in the dreaded rotating turrets section of stage 5 (more on that later) and, more generally, when trying to keep your medal chain going. However, it also has some disadvantages. Its laser weapon is a lot narrower than the one of the P1 ship, which forces you to aim more precisely. The wide shot spreads a little wider, which makes it more difficult to point blank enemies. Also, since the 2P ship has a smaller wingspan than the 1P ship in most of its transformation states, it's a little bit more difficult to pick up medals, because you can't just collect them with the tips of your wings. The hitbox for collision detection concerning enemies and bullets seems to be the same as with the 1P ship, though, so no worries.
P1 XIIStag Ship (blue): To play with this ship, press right, left, left and 12 times the shot button at the title screen of whatever mode you want to play. [I have no experience with the XIIStag ships. Hopefully someone can enlighten me.]
P2 XIIStag Ship (orange): Same as the blue one, also a little faster.
1.1.1 Weapons and Powerups
There are three weapons you can use in Trizeal: Wide, Missiles and Laser. By pressing the transformation button you can change the weapon in use as needed. You can always see which weapon you currently have in use as well as the power level of all weapon systems in the bottom part of the screen.
1.1.1.1 Weapon Types
Wide (red): Your standard widespread vulcan. It is moderately powerful and can be used to easily clear the screen of lots of small enemies. Additionally, you can do a lot of damage to stronger enemies by point-blanking them with the wide weapon, as the shot frequency will go up when you get very close to an enemy and make sure all shots of your spread hit it.
Missiles (green): These are homing missiles. They are actually the most powerful weapon in the game, but their shot frequency is low and they move only slowly. If you manage to point-blank an enemy with missiles selected as your main weapon, you can deal enormous amounts of damage.
Laser (blue): The laser is the weakest weapon in the game. It shoots straight up, covering less than the width of your ship. What makes the laser useful after all, though, is its piercing abilty. Its beam passes through all enemies and obstacles, which makes proper usage of the laser a necessity in some keyspots. If powered up to the highest level, the laser shoots additional bursts of energy, which are quite powerful. However, there's only ever one of these energy bursts on screen. Another one isn't launched before the previous one has disappeared. The bursts slow down while passing through an enemy, so they never stay on screen equally long. This causes the frequency of the energy bursts to be difficult to predict.
1.1.1.2 Powering Up
Each of the weapons starts at power level 1 and can be powered up 4 times until it reaches level 5. Every fifteenth object you destroy leaves behind a powerup capsule. Upon collecting it, the currently activated main weapon will go up one level. If your main weapon is already at level 5 you will get 1,000 points for collecting a powerup capsule. Once a weapon reaches level 4, it will stay in use even when you switch to another weapon. It will then act as a level 1 secondary weapon. A level 5 weapon will act as level 2 secondary weapon. For example, if you have all weapons powered up fully, you can have a lvl 5 laser, lvl 2 wide and lvl 2 missiles firing at the same time.
1.1.1.3 The XIIStag Ships
The XIIStag ships have totally different weapons. They have a standard straightforward shot which can be powered up to level 5 by collecting powerup capsules. Wiggling the joystick or pressing the rapid trans button on your DC pad triggers very powerful side attacks and there's also the possibility of killing smaller enemies with a back attack. [Again, lots of stuff missing here, as I have no experience with XIIStag, so please fill me in.]
1.1.2 Bombs
By pressing the bomb button, you set off a bomb. (How unexpected!) The bomb in Trizeal is pretty much your standard fare. It kills all smaller enemies on screen, cancels all bullets and renders you invincible for a short timespan. It doesn't do much damage to bosses, though, so make sure you use your invincibility window to point-blank bosses in case you are forced to set off a bomb during a boss fight.
You start the game with two bombs and you can collect five more during the cause of the game. However, the maximum number of bombs you can carry is 5, so you shouldn't be reluctant to use them. If you have a full bomb stock, each additionally collected bomb icon is worth 1,000 points. At the end of each stage, you get 10,000 points for each bomb you have in stock. If you die, you'll have two bombs in stock, regardless of how many you had before.
The XIIStag ships have a bullet cancelling barrier instead of a bomb. [XIIStag experts, feel free to explain the way it works.]
1.2 Scoring
The scoring system of Trizeal is not overly complicated. It's based on building medal chains, shooting down as many enemies as possible and collecting various bonuses. That's it, in a nutshell.
Keep in mind that scores in Trizeal, due to the game not having an elaborate multiplier-based score system, tend to seem low in comparison to other games. Every single point in Trizeal is hard-earned and you will learn to appreciate even the smaller score boosts. Don't underestimate the score you can get from simply shooting down enemies.
The score you get from destroying a boss is the stage number multiplied with 100,000. This gives you 2.1 million points for shooting down bosses alone. This is more than half of my own ALL score (which is just above 4 million). The game encourages you to destroy all and everything, so you better do that, right? In some spots, you can make more enemies appear by shooting others quickly enough. I'll tell more about that later.
1.2.1 Scoring Basics
Each enemy (or enemy part) you destroy (not necessarily each object), drops a medal, which will fall straight down to the bottom of the screen. The value of the medals increases one step each time you collect one more of them until it peaks at 1000. If you miss a medal, the value will drop to the lowest level again. The progression of medal values is as follows:
10 --> 20 --> 30 --> 40 --> 50--> 100 --> 500 --> 1000
The value of the medals changes the moment you collect one, not the moment you shoot an enemy. So for example if you shoot down a row of 8 enemies roughly at the same time, they will all drop medals worth 10 points each (provided you don't have a medal chain going on already). If you collect all of those, the medal the next enemy shot down produces will have a value of 1000, though. You see, the position in the progression chain of medal values is dependent only on the number of medals collected in a row, not on the value of the last medal collected. Quickly collecting another one of high value after you missed a medal to keep the chain going (Giga Wing style) will not work in Trizeal.
When using wide or missiles, you will have a hard time keeping your medal chain going, because you'll inevitably hit some enemies at the edges of the screen and collecting the medals they drop will prove difficult. If you want a good medal chain, you might want to keep rank down and use the laser weapon exclusively. However, this method requires a high level of mastery and it is unlikely that you will be able to reach the 100% shotdown ratio (see below) at the same time.
1.2.2 Bonuses
Besides the medal chains, the other big source of points in Trizeal are various bonuses, most of which are given at the end of each stage. At the end of a stage, a percentage value for your enemy shotdown ratio is displayed in the format n.nn%. This percentage value will be multiplied with 1,000. So if you finish a stage with a shotdown percentage of 89.01%, for example, you will be awarded 89,010 points. If you manage to achieve a shotdown ratio of 100%, another additional 50,000 will be added as a "perfect" bonus. For each bomb left in stock you will get 10,000 points at the end of a stage. You will most certainly not be able to reach the 100% if you don't powerup your wide shot and missiles, which, as I mentioned before, in return means that it will be hard to keep a perfect medal chain going. You have to have a medal chain of 50+ if you want to get the same score from medals you get from the "perfect" bonus. Most of the time it's just easier to go for the 100%, as at least in stages 1, 3 and 4 it isn't too hard to achieve. Some objects you can destroy have no influence on the percentage value (example: the asteroids in stage 4) while some smaller boss parts (example: the little cannons on Scarab's wings) do count and have to be destroyed before the boss is taken out.
The maximum stage bonus you can get is:
100,000 (100% shotdown ratio) + 50,000 (perfect bonus) + 50,000 (5 bombs in stock) = 200,000
It's impossible to get the maximum stage bonus earlier than stage 3.
In theory, the maximum score you can get from just shooting everything down (not counting any chains) would be:
1,170,000 (perfect stage bonuses) + 2,100,000 (bosses) = 3,270,000
There are some minor bonuses, which are worth getting too:
- Each surplus powerup capsule is worth 1,000
- Each surplus bomb icon is also worth 1,000
- Clearing a "break out" scene (see "secrets" section) gives you a huge super medal worth 10,000
- Secrets (see there) are worth 10,000. The only exception is the secret in stage 5 which can be worth up to 50,000
- In the lifting game in stage 2, you can rack up loads of points (further explanation in the stage guide). Upon contact with the stone you will be awarded 10 --> 100 --> 1,000 --> 10,000 points and after that, each additional contact is worth 10,000 points.
1.3 Rank
Rank in Trizeal is pretty simplistic. There are only two states: rank on and rank off. The game starts with rank off. The moment the power levels of all of your three weapons combined are 11 or higher, rank is switched on. This means that you can have one weapon fully powered up and another one at level 4 (5+4+1=10), or two weapons at level 4 and the third one at level 2 (4+4+2=10), or one weapon at level 4 and the other two weapons at level 3 (4+3+3=10) and the rank is still off.
Rank in Trizeal is a two-edged sword, really. When keeping rank down, your weapons might seem too weak, especially later in the game. I normally only play stage 1 with rank down and power up as quickly as possible in stage 2, because I think the benefits you get from good weaponry outweigh the higher difficulty, which comes with more and faster enemy bullets, by far.
Obviously, there are no special techniques required to control rank. If you want it to stay low, just stop powering up when you've reached the maximum level allowed. Once rank is switched on there's no way of resetting it other than dying.
2 Special Bonuses
Special bonuses are granted if you perform certain actions at key points in the stages.
2.1 Bonus Bombs
In each stage, there's a bonus bomb you can collect. As mentioned before, collecting a bonus bomb when your bomb stock already holds 5 bombs will give you 1,000 points instead of an additional bomb. The places where you find the bombs are as follows:
Stage 1: Clear the break out scene. When the words "Break out!" are displayed on the screen, destroy all of the mid-sized purple ships in the following few waves. This is most easily done with a fairly powered-up wide shot. Point blank the enemies and they are gone in no time. However, in order to get the 100% it is a better idea to use the laser throughout the stage. Unfortunately, this makes killing the purple ships a bit trickier. To destroy the formations of four ships before they escape, always shoot the middle ones first. Trust the energy blasts from your level 5 laser to hit them and move on, destroying the right ship second, the left one third. If you manage to destroy all purple ships, the bonus bomb will appear.
Stage 2: Scare away the bird. Near the end of the stage, just before the scrolling stops for the fight against the twin turrets where also the lifting game takes place, you will see an obelisk standing in the middle of a pool. On the very tip of the obelisk, there's a pigeon sitting. Hover over it for a few seconds and the bird will fly away. When it reaches the top of the screen, the bonus bomb will appear.
Stage 3: Destroy the big turrets. On the front side of the big battleship, there are two huge rotating turrets that shoot nasty spreads of bullets, one turret on the left, the other one on the right. Destroy both of them to make the bomb icon appear.
Stage 4: Clear the break out scene. This is quite similar to stage one. The only difference is that the break out scene is much easier to clear. If you have some decent weaponry (I recommend using missiles or laser or both combined) the bluish carrier-type ships should pose no problem. Just memorize which ones move faster than the others, so you take them out in the right order. After all of the carriers are gone, the bomb appears.
Stage 5: Shoot the train. In the scene where you descend down a shaft and the roads start getting in the way, there's a little orange train speeding past on the third road/bridge thing. Destroy it and it will leave a bonus bomb. This is quite tricky, because there seems to be some randomization regarding the train's exact position and/or speed. The best way to destroy it is the laser, because the laser won't bounce off the road, so you can hit the train for a split second longer. In theory, it is possible to get more than one bomb here, because there are more little orange trains farther down the shaft. Kiken has managed to produce up to three bonus bombs from them. However, it seems to be impossible to hit the other trains with normal weapons, so you can only get an additional bomb when sacrificing one. For an easy extra bomb, just bomb at the entrance of the shaft when two trains are on screen. You'll get back the bomb you dropped and get an additional one.
Stage 6: Kiken found out how to trigger the bonus bomb in stage 6: "You have to press Start (yeah, you have to Pause) during a 25-frame window as Trydine (the midboss) extends his right hand. Just begin tapping Start like mad when he gets out of his seated position and you should trigger him giving you the gift."
2.2 Secrets
Little secrets are hidden in each stage of the game. Trigger them for fun and score.
Stage 1: At the very beginning of the stage, press your trans button exactly 12 or 24 times, no more, no less. You don't have to actually transform that many times, you only have to push the button. This has to be done before the cloudy part of the stage ends. If you don't have the right weapon (probably the laser) selected after the button-pressing, use your rapid trans button to switch to the desired weapon system, as pressing the rapid trans button won't count in this context. If you performed everything right, at the end of the cloudy part, just before the clouds disappear, one (if you pressed the button 12 times) or two (if you pressed 24 times) little orange UFOs will appear, speed across the screen and then fly away. You will get 10,000 points, it doesn't matter whether you summoned one or two UFOs.
The second secret in stage one isn't really a secret. If you clear the break out scene you will be awarded not only with a bonus bomb, but also with a huge super medal that's worth 10,000 points. You will also unlock some very nasty additional enemy formations, but I'll tell you about those later on in the stage guide.
Stage 2: At the beginning of the stage, just after the first two rows of tanks you can see a little red car speeding by from right to left on the road below. (This is probably a homage to Raiden.) When the car reaches the left edge of the screen, you get 10,000 points. To trigger the car, you have to hover over one of the pillars on the right for a couple of seconds (very much like triggering a Miclus in the Raiden games).
Stage 3: Near the end of the stage, while approaching the big battleship for the last time, a spinning blue thing flies quickly towards the lower left corner of the screen. This thing is worth 10,000 points. To trigger Gamera (the aforementioned flying, spinning turtle) you must get up to that point No Bomb, No Miss and have a full bomb-stock.
Stage 4: The first secret is another super medal you get along with the bonus bomb after clearing the break out scene. Clearing the break out scene also unocks a nifty little homage to Space Invaders (more about that in the stage guide).
The second secret can be discovered in the asteroid field. On the right side of the screen, an arrow-shaped rocket appears. After a few seconds, its tip goes off and 10,000 points are added to your score. Unfortunately, the conditions to make it appear are unknown again, but it appears more frequently when I use the wide shot in the asteroid field as opposed to the laser. My guess is that the rocket appears when you destroy many asteroids in a short time. But that's just speculation.
Stage 5: Near the middle of the stage, just before the part with the shaft and the roads, you can see some corkscrew-like ships flying underneath. There are always as many ships as there are bombs in your stock (0-5). You get 10,000 points for each of them. Should motivate you to enter stage five with a full bomb stock, shouldn't it?
Stage 6: There is no secret in stage 6 I'm aware of.
3 Stage Guides
These stage guides represent the strategies I use. They are by no means the best strategies, so fill me in if you have something to add.
3.1 Stage 1: Cloudy Today, Again!
First hit the trans button 12 or 24 times to trigger the secret later on. Then use the rapid trans button to switch to the laser. Just stand still and wait for the little enemy ships to fly into your laser beam. Collect all the medals and powerup icons. Wait for the next wave of enemies to fly into your laser, too. Don't move too much. After the clouds have cleared try to catch all the little enemy ships in the next wave. Don't let any of them escape. You will most certainly lose your medal chain here, but don't worry, the 100% shotdown ratio will compensate for that. When the words "Shoot them quickly!" are displayed, do just that. Point blank the mid-sized ships as soon as they appear.
Next up is the "Break Out!" scene. Destroy all the purple ships before they escape. If you're trying to build a medal chain, you can shoot off their wing cannons seperately, but by doing so you won't be able to clear the scene. To actually do that, concentrate on the two middle ships of each formation of four first and move on to the next ship (preferrably the right one) immediately after your laser has released its energy blast. Don't worry, the blast will destroy the ships. Wait for the next blast to be released, then move on to the last ship in the formation. If you destroy all the ships in the break out scene, you will receive a huge super medal and a bonus bomb icon.
By clearing the break out scene you also trigger a bonus scene. Snake-like dragon enemies will appear from four directions and they will immediately start shooting at you. If you don't move (regardless where you are located on the screen), the shots will miss you. However, you will want to destroy all of the dragons, because otherwise you won't get the 100% shotdown ratio. The easy way to kill all the dragons is to position your ship at the bottom of the screen so that your left laser beam is exactly in the middle between the nose of your ship and the right edge of your weapons gauge. Just stay there and you will destroy all the dragons. However, you will lose a lot of scoring opportunities that way. The dragons are good material for some great medal chains. To chain some medals you must move around and actually dodge the dragons' shots (dammit!). Try to destroy the dragons when they are on the left side heading down, because then all the medals will fall down in a more or less straight line, so you won't have to move much to collect them. Take a look at Rydeen's site to see how it's done. (Scroll down and click on the link named Trizeal stage 1 warning.)
3.1.1 Stage 1 Boss: Scarab
First destroy the little sliding cannons on Scarab's wings. They count for the shotdown total. It's essential to use the laser here, as the other weapons will hit the wings instead of the cannons, thus causing Scarab to change to his second form before you have the opportunity to destroy the cannons. The second form is easy. Stay in the middle and dodge the occasional bullet heading your way. When Scarab starts spinning, pay attention to the yellow boomerangs and avoid them if they come in your direction. Make sure Scarab doesn't corner you with his normal shots. Keep shooting and Scarab should be history soon.
3.2 Stage 2: Ancient City
In all the other stages the best way to obtain a good score is to aim for the 100% and try to build as many medal chains as you can along the way. Stage 2 is different in this regard. The best way to score well here is simply to try to build a medal chain as long as you can. Reaching a 100% shotdown ratio is nearly impossible anyway. The main enemies in this stage are tanks. In good shooting game tradition, they consist of two parts. You can blow up the rotating cannon on top first, then destroy the base separately. Each of the parts drops a medal, so you get two medals from each tank you destroy. This is obviously great for chaining, but it's easy to miss a tank base, because there's always a lot going on on screen.
When entering the stage wait for the first group of tanks to show up and destroy them. Immediately head to the right and destroy the vertical row of waiting tanks. Then go left, ignoring the tanks in the middle of the road, and destroy the row on the left side. A short while later, when the huge tower appears in the middle of the screen, concentrate your fire on it to deactivate its guns. Then kill the tanks left and right. Choose your path in the very last moment, otherwise you won't be able to hit all the tanks. Be careful not to crash into the big building, it's the only obstacle in the stage. When you see an obelisk in the middle of a pool, hover over its tip for a few moments to make the little white bird fly away. A bonus bomb icon will appear. Kill the helicopters quickly. If you kill them too slowly, there will be only two of them, but if you take them down fast, you can make up to four appear. When the scrolling stops, take out the shooting towers one after the other. If you have powered up missiles, you can greatly keep the tanks at bay, making this scene rather easy. If you want to get a good score, however, you should try to milk the towers. Wait for the tanks to come out until they form a vertical row, then take them all out and collect the medals they drop. Then fly over to the other side and repeat, then back again, and so on.
After the towers are destroyed, the android in the middle of the screen will throw a rock up in the air. What you are supposed to do at this point is to play hackysack with the rock. Just place your ship underneath the rock and it will bounce off it. Try to keep the rock in the air as long as possible. Every contact after the third is worth 10,000 points.
3.2.1 Stage 2 Boss: 6-Foot
None of the attacks of this boss are really difficult to dodge. The only exception is when he fires his nasty spread while at the same time the side cannons fire inwards. This attack gave me a lot of trouble until Ghegs told me a strategy to cope with the problem so obvious I could have kicked myself for not thinking of it: Just destroy the side cannons before everything else. The boss won't start shooting his spread before his front shield is destroyed. You can even milk the side cannons a bit if you shoot single shots by tapping the shot button whenever they shoot their missiles. You can collect quite a few medals that way. So all you have to do is destroy the side cannons first, then shoot off the front shield. After that stay in the middle and dodge the spread and the fast bullets. The missiles work best here if you're going for a quick kill.
3.3 Stage 3: Dark Shadow
This is the mandatory 'destroy the giant battleship' stage. There's not much noteworthy here, as for most of the stage no real strategy is needed. The only exception are the huge rotating turrets on the left and right front sides of the big ship. You should concentrate your fire on them as soon as they come on screen and hopefully you can destroy them before they even start shooting. As Kiken found out, you can also sit right ontop of them without getting hit, but then the little normal enemy ships will cause you a bit of trouble. I recommend using the wide shot throughout the stage to earn an easy 100%.
3.3.1 Stage 3 Boss: Trineme
The first part of the boss fight has you facing a couple of turrets. Some of them shoot spreads, some of them shoot aimed shots. If you detroy one of them, another one will replace it. You must destroy each turret several times until it doesn't come back again. Use the wide shot and try to stay in the middle of the bottom of the screen as much as possible. Make only small movements to dodge the attacks. If you fly around a lot, you might get cornered. If you're in trouble, it's perfectly acceptable to use a bomb here.
The real boss is a huge turret that shoots criss-crossing lasers and, once you damage it a bit, circular spreads. If you want to kill it quickly, I recommend using missiles (which also take care of the two helper turrets left and right) and getting close to Trineme. That way, you are able to destroy the boss even before it starts its circular missile attack. This attack is actually the only difficult bit of this fight. When you start circling the boss, a missile launcher will open up on its left side and a bunch of missiles will come out. You should try to destroy them all (the laser works best here) before they leave the screen, because the missiles you have missed will come back and attack from all sides at once. If you don't want to get hit, you must retreat to the bottom of the screen, just a bit left or right of the middle.
If you want to squeeze some extra score out of Trineme, don't shoot it at all at first. Instead, wait for it to rotate, then easily take out all the starting missiles without having trouble to dodge Trineme's spreads at the same time. That way, you can get a bunch of medals from the missiles. If you use this strategy, you should pretty much point blank the huge turret afterwards, because you won't want to come out on its front again after flying the full circle around it, or you'll have to cope with the circular spreads and the criss-crossing lasers at the same time. Not nice.
3.4 Stage 4: Prologue to Revenge
The blue rotating ships in the second wave of enemies only shoot back when you hit them with your wide shot. If you use the laser, they don't offer any resistance and can be destroyed easily. The break out scene in this stage is much easier to clear than the one in the first stage. Use laser or missiles and you shouldn't have any problems. Your reward are the usual super medal and the bonus bomb. In addition you unlock a neat-o homage to space invaders. Only that you obviously are the invader this time. Use the laser to be able to hit the cannons behind their shields. If you destroy a cannon, the whole row of shields it was hiding behind will blow up. Be careful, the cannons have a habit of hiding on the edges of the screen. If you manage to destroy all the cannons, an UFO will appear and the bonus scene is over. Next up is the asteroid field. You have two options here: Use the laser and cut a road through the asteroids or use the wide shot and destroy all and everything. Both strategies have their advantages and disadvantages. If you use the laser, you won't have much debris flying around, which makes the scene considerably easier. If you use the wide shot, you will create some annoying debris but also some slowdown, which in turn makes the scene easier too. Only the missiles are quite useless. They will only create unpredictable little rocks that will get in the way. Watch out for the ships that hide inside the asteroids. If you can't hit them, try to scroll them out of the screen (left or right). They only shoot when they are visible. The annoying blue ships that come from behind always fly a little way up the screen far below in the background and then retreat before they come back to cause you trouble. Before they come flying on screen they also stick out their noses first , so you can see where they will appear. Don't say you haven't been warned.
3.4.1 Stage 4 Boss: Tattoo
I use missiles for this boss. They do great damage and they have the advantage of destroying the rocks and ships that come in from the sides and from the back. The first form of the boss is quite easy. He will shoot a spread patter from one of his arms and a straight line of shots from the other. Just fly a zig-zag course through the spread pattern and you'll be fine. The trouble starts when the boss detaches the four gunpods. If they alone weren't bad enough, suddenly lots of asteroids appear too. The best strategy is to take on the gunpods one at a time, but, honestly, I usually just use a bomb here, as that will get rid of all the gunpods at once. After that it's just a matter of navigating through the spread patterns between the two huge laser beams. If you use the missiles, they will take care of any threats from the outside or from the back.
3.5 Stage 5: Fortress "Trizeal"
The blue ships that come in formations of four at a time can shoot some nasty patterns if you don't take out at least two of them as quickly as possible. Always try to get right in front of the lowest one, so you have a little room to dodge as soon as it's destroyed. However, the exact position of the ships seems to be subject to some randomization, so that might not always be possible. When you descend down the shaft, keep to the left side first and use the laser, so you can get the bonus bomb from the little orange train on the third bridge. When the formations of orange spinning ships appear, use the missiles and point blank them. Always start with the middle or right one and destroy the remaining ones counter-clockwise.
Next up is the nastiest scene of the game, the rotating turrets of doom. You have to fly through an awfully long passage with rotating turrets. It roughly looks like this (the arrows depict the direction in which the turret rotates, clockwise (>) or counter-clockwise (<)):
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If you survive this scene you get to a gate. Through two openings, little circular ships pour out. If you want to play it save, you just have to use the wide shot, which will easily cover both openings and destroy the ships the very moment they appear. That way you won't get any points from them, though. This is a key spot if you want to score well in the game. You can literally rack up hundreds of medals here. Unfortunately, it is quite risky to do. You'll have to place yourself in front of one of the openings and shoot down all the ships coming out of it while avoiding the ships from the other opening and their shots. This is not too hard if you're playing with rank down, because the ships will shoot a two way spread at you which won't hit you if you just stay where you are. With rank up, however, they will shoot single aimed shots at you.
3.5.1 Stage 5 Boss: X-5
First shoot down the flying discs. Then try to get near one of the two turrets on the right and try to get as many hits with your missiles in as possible. Retreat when the turrets start to shoot. Be careful not to get caught between two streams of bullets that intersect in an undodgeable way. Use a bomb if necessary. The last two forms of the boss are particularly nasty. If he opens up his right side, everything is quite okay, as the black holes the right arm spits out are only dangerous if you feed them with shots from your wide weapon. The left side, however, is really tricky. It will spit out loads of small yellow boomerangs that move awfully fast and are hard to dodge. Kiken thinks he has found a safe spot:
"When the boss is further up the screen, hiding directly below the center of the arm that shoots the boomerangs at the bottom of the screen is a safe spot (from the boomerangs at least). If the boss moves closer in, the safe spot ends up being about 1 ship wing-span to the right (you could try going left.. but you wouldn't have much room to maneuver) of the center of the boomerang arm."
Rydeen, on his site, suggests that you are quite safe if you stay at a 45° angle to the right in front of the boomerang gun. I, however, haven't been able to confirm either of those safe spots. Considering that the annoying central cannon will interfere with staying at a safe spot anyway, I found the best strategy to stay low on the right side of the screen and try to dodge any boomerang coming my way. Sometimes I just have to bomb, though. Unfortunately, the boomerangs don't disappear when you bomb, but you can use the small invincibilty window to point blank the boss with missiles and shorten the fight considerably. After the main gun is gone, pairs of those flying hexagonal discs will appear which burst into circular spreads if you don't destroy them quickly enough, but this is actually easier than the boss's previous form. If the right arm is open, you can just ignore the discs and point blank the boss with missiles.
3.6 Stage 6: Epilogue
The stage itself is very short. Just a few easy enemies to power up and then a gate. Just make sure you are through it before it closes.
3.6.1 Stage 6 Sub-Boss: Tridyn
His first attack is easy to avoid. Watch out for gaps in the bullet spam he throws at you next. There are usually quite big ones. His third attack (the fast spread) will always be aimed directly at your position, so move quickly to the side, but don't move too much. After that the android will start spinning, but again, the patterns are easy to navigate. Next he will follow you with a stream of bullets. Circle him, so you don't get hit. If you used fully powered missiles, the android should be dead by now. If not, just repeat the whole process over again.
3.6.2 Stage 6 Boss: Core
The last boss fight is nothing short of epic. First you see the core covered by four shields and four support parts beneath them. The shields shoot slow bullets which are easy to avoid. Try to destroy the support parts without hitting the shields. This can be done easily by point blanking the support parts with missiles. If you destroy the shields before the support parts, you will be unpleasantly surprised by the fast bullets from the support parts. When the support parts are destroyed, stop shooting. After a fixed time, a ring of 12 outer shields will appear. They shoot slow bullets inwards, which makes navigating inside the ring tricky. Additionally, the radius of the circle varies constantly, so you will be forced to get between them and the inner shields sooner or later. However, you can also use the outer shields to protect you from the bullets the inner shields shoot.
Wait for the outer shields to appear, navigate carefully and destroy the outer shields one by one by point blanking them with missiles. It's important to get rid of the outer shields before destroying the inner ones. I'll tell you why later on. If you have destroyed all the outer shields, go for the inner ones to reveal the core.
The core is a rotating thing with two turrets near its center and two on the outer edge of its body. All turrets fire intersecting spreads of bullets which make the place pretty much hell. Use the laser here, because then you will always be able to hit the core, no matter what else might be in the way. If there were any of the outer shields left by now, you could use them to hide behind, but after you damaged the boss a bit, they would turn around and shoot outside and this would result in guaranteed death. I also find the patterns from the boss more 'readable' when there are no shield blocks in the way.
After you destroy one of the turrets near the core's center, the core itself will start to shoot, making everything worse. The only advice I can give you is to dodge the best you can and bomb when you are in trouble. Always use the small invincibility window after bombing (or dying) to attack the core directly and point blank it with missiles or wide.
Note that you don't receive any bonus for remaining lives at the end of the game, so if you are about to finish off the core with less than two bombs in stock and if you still got surplus lives left, you should suicide, so you can get the 20,000 points for your two fresh bombs in the end.
4 Additional Stuff in the DC Version
In the DC version, the Ships from XIIStag are playable. To use them, press right, left, left and 12 times the shot button at the title screen of whatever mode you want to play.
You can also unlock an exclusive omake stage and a bonus game.
4.1 Omake Stage
The omake stage is unlocked by completing stage 6 in arcade mode. You are allowed to use any number of credits for this.
4.1.1 Stage Guide
[Coming soon.]
4.2 The Lifting Game
The lifting game is the hackysack part of stage two as a standalone game. It is unlocked by completing stage 2 in arcade mode.
5 Other ports
5.1 Shooting Love ~Trizeal~ (PS2)
The PS2 port is mostly identical to the DC version. It has a little more slowdown in some places and a little less in others. There's a new option for quicker autofire, which makes the game a tad easier. Also, you can map the Da-da-da-shot (the rapid cycling through the weapons) to a single button, which is also very helpful. The PS2 port lacks the omake stage of the DC version. You get a neat little shooting skill test instead.
5.2 Shooting Love 200X: Trizeal Remix (XBox360)
Trizeal Remix comes on one disk with the full arcade version of the shmups skill test (as opposed to the proto-version found in the PS2 port of Trizeal) and its own successor Exzeal. Slowdown has been removed entirely. The weapons seem a little stronger than in previous versions, especially the piercing laser, so boss finds tend to be quite a bit shorter.
6 Links
Triangle Service
GD topic on this board.
High score thread on this board.
Rydeen's site.
7 Thanks
Many thanks to Kiken for his help.
Great thanks also to Hydeux for pointing out my mistake regarding weapon levels and rank.
) But as this is a "bonus" ship you can play via a code, can we consider this as the actual world record ?
