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The first three Captains are the easiest to get, but yeah, I agree the last three are pure luck-based. Its better to refine your no-miss no-bomb and maybe pick up one of the last three Captains by luck to boost your score.

Consistent 7mil is good. With a bit of refinement, you should average 8.5 - 9mil for a no-miss ALL. Good luck!



Yeah, I crash into stuff sometimes. Its hard to keep track of your ship when the background does trippy stuff. ^_-

This game is getting hard to improve now I have noticed that bullets go faster, the more time you milk the bosses.. so it should be best to only destroy all the 30k parts of bosses first.

I'm struggling on the 3rd captain though, either it dies just before you can capture it, or I crash into it

For some odd reason, the score distribution for each stage route is unbalanced - one particular route to V is worth more than another - so in most cases it is very important to get the most out of bosses you can while you figure out the best scoring route.

And regarding your comment in the high score thread, yes, Zone G is worth more than Zone H. However the later stages on the all up route are worth less, and the bosses are unmilkable. The actual experiment I was talking about is dropping down to the Zone V route before Zone G, and it seems to be working, except there is less points in H, and both the stage and the boss itself are massive annoyances.

The most difficult bosses I've found on potential Zone V routes are Neon Light Illusion and Deadly Crescent, as they have very tough, wide attack patterns that can interfere with milking and movement.

For now, ABDGLQV is the optimal (and the easiest) 11mil route, but you have to milk everything, and go for 3 of 6 Captains. ^_-



The third Captain has a simple pattern - it always takes two 'steps' (tracking your position, then stopping, then tracking again) before it stops and does its laser/fireball attack. Knowing this, lure it as low down the screen as you can get it before it fires its laser/fireball attack, then get above it quickly and attack its weak point for MASSIVE DAMAGE (even though its not a giant enemy crab ^_-).

Yeah, I have noticed that AC~V is the best route overall, but Neon Light Illusion just makes me bomb its mostly the first pattern it fires, and the rest is alright.


I've been messing up lots on Deadly Crescent too, just with trying to milk every part of the boss, but its a drop of about 300k if you don't milk it...


Though this is what I do try to do.. I usually get the positioning of my shots onto the weak part wrong, and then its dead

Same here. I'm still trying to find out the pattern for the attack, I'm assuming its aimed and there is a structure to it, but I need to practice the pattern a bit more to find out.



Its risky to get more than 100-150k on Deadly Crescent, as you risk facing that wide laser pattern which is pretty tough to avoid at higher rank. If anything it seems to be easier to destroy the boomerang fins with a fully powered up Shot, but again that has its risks rank wise.



The pattern is easy to predict and influence, I'm sure you can get it easily with a bit of practice. Don't forget that on both D and E the only things you have to worry about initially during the mid-boss are rocks, so take your time and don't hurry.

the first attack really does seem aimed, and so does the other big and small bullets at same time attack. I can't see a proper way to get through it yet

I'm just leaving Deadly Crescent at the moment, and trying to get the rest of the captures, the ones in the last two stages (not the snake one) seem possible, but I have to be on one shot power before the last, and I can do it every other time on practice.

I might leave the game for a while again, since its getting annoying to do a proper run at the moment.

noooo I would have got 11m just then, if I didn't get hit on the end boss

I somehow got 4 captures, which would have put the score to 11.06m...

Damn.
You're very close. Risk Storage does pose a couple of problems - mainly the tail - but I think you should be able to get past it easy with another little push. Four captures is very good, I assume you picked up the third Captain in that run as well as one of the last three?

Good luck!

Also, after experimenting, the ABDG~V route definitely is the easier route to 11mil. ACEH~V will definitely net around 300k extra, but is extremely difficult to hit consistently (obvious problems being enemy patterns in E and H, and Neon Light Illusion.

way too close I'm unsure on what power to have at the end boss, either maxed out, or one before max, which I was on until the end boss.

Yeah, I got the 3rd capture this time, and the 6th (zone V) one too, but that one is based on luck for me

I'll try some more, as I know I can do it ^_^


I agree with that too, I'm having no problems with the zones in the ABDG~V route, apart from trying to get the captures and Risk Storage's Tail...
Bombing out on Neon Light Illusion just takes out most of the bonus for going the AC~V route, so I'll not do that one

I usually come into Zone V with one less than maximum (red Wave and Missiles) and upgrade to maximum with the first red powerup that appears (the one before the stage music starts).

Maximum power is somewhat necessary for Risk Storage anyway, as you can hit the tail no matter where it is, and also because a higher rank keeps Risk Storage alive longer so you can destroy the scales on its body.



Yeah, the sixth Captain is also luck-based for me, but I find it easier to get than the fifth Captain. I just ignore the fourth Captain. ^_^;;



Yeah, one bomb is normally needed against NLI for me too. I did find a Japanese boss guide during a little trawling on Google, I'll post the link up in a sec. IIRC, the guide said that destroying one of the two longer arms as quickly as possible is key to getting past NLI without bombing.

EDIT: Here it is - http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown-Knight/8625/GAIDEN/

could someone please explain the rank system to me? The initial post didn't make much sense. Rank goes up when you power up your main shot, correct? How many power ups per level is safe to grab? Or do you want to play the whole game unpowered up?

In each stage there is a default level of difficulty that is triggered by having your Shot powered up to a certain level, usually by increasing it to the next Shot form - Laser, Small Wave, Large Wave, Red Wave. Now, the rank increase in the earlier levels is a lot sharper than it is in later levels, therefore you want to try and keep the increase in each stage at a minimum.

You can do this by now maxing out your Shot level for that stage - keep the triple shot in stage1 for example instead of going to Laser, not powering up to Small Wave in stage2 and so on.

In short, don't pick up all the Shot powerups in a stage to keep rank at a lower level. And you definitely don't want to have the maximum Shot power before you get into stage7. ^_-

yeah, it does seem that you do need full power for it too, though I had another good run just now, but Risk Storage gave up before I shot off the tail

1) Don't attack Risk Storage with full force when its mouth is open - in those cases, its better to be right above or directly below it to minimise body damage.

2) Attack the tip of the tail - this does two things, one being that the tip of the tail is weaker than the rest of the tail itself, and attacking the tip of the tail will push it away, often forcing it to fire away from you, increasing safety.

3) Try to anticipate the tail's movements, and position yourself so you can attack it before it appears on screen. This also falls back to the above points - playing keepaway and maximising damage.

4) Risk Storage always follows a set pattern with very fixed timing, and only ever attacks when its mouth is open. Once you get the timing down, you can easily anticipate and stay one step ahead of the attacks from the body.

Other than that, its all practice. ^_-

Thank you for the advice I think it is the better idea to do a frontal attack when its mouth is closed, in help of knocking all the parts of the boss and not doing too damage...


I'm doing pretty well on not getting hit much by the tail bullets, it won't be too long till I get the 11m now

I figured out a strategy to deal with the segmented commander that follows you around. If anyone else is having trouble with this guy I can make a video for it.

Everyone's playing this for STGT 2007, figured I should bump this awesome guide. And say cheers to Randorama.

Where the hell is the Extend in Zone Q? I still haven't managed to find that.

from: RQ: Darius Gaiden Extends

Hmm how do you enable autofire on the arcade version? All I can find is the Saturn method :-/

You can't...unless you're running Mame with an autofire option, or you're playing the Special version.

Ah, thanks that was the info I needed :D

Is my autofire con broken, or does the Taito Legends 2 PS2 version not allow you to use autofire? I have autofire on, I'm holding down the button, and I'm firing like I don't have autofire on at all.

TL2 version sucks, bar none. I don't think autofire controllers work with it

Strange. I get full autofire with my super-cheap Thrustmaster arcade stick.

gs68, are you 100% sure that Autofire does not work with other Taito Legends 2 games? Metal Black is a good game to try out.
Are you playing the US version? Maybe Empire Interactive added an autofire blocking mechanism after the PAL release... but that sounds highly unlikely.

read that wrong

This is with the US version of Taito Legends 2 for the PS2...

My own tests showed that when I used a PSOne/PS2 compatible Shadowblade Arcade Stick, autofire works with Darius Gaiden, Gun Frontier, and also Grid Seeker.

That said, it's probably not a good idea to use autofire with Metal Black due to one of the buttons needing to be held down (not pulsed) to charge the beam.

Is Deadly crescent harder than crusty hammer? im trying a 1cc (no autofire) trough route ABEINSY and im not sure if I should switch route S for T.

Odd nobody figured boss strategies yet, I guess the game has a small fanbase.

Deadly Crescent in all his forms is very easy to learn. I use autofire though, so I'm not sure how crazy his later patterns get.

The only time I start to die is when he shoots those small pink lasers in combination with the 3 way bullets and the red slimes. The pink lasers I find them quiter hard to focus my sight and somehow one red slime migh survive my shots and end up killing me.