Dariusburst: Chronicle Saviours is a side-scrolling shooter released back in November 2015 for several consoles. As someone who spends a majority of their time playing RPGs and first-person action games, a shooter like Dariusburst was never on my radar. After picking up a PlayStation Vita, however, and realizing how many great twin-stick and side-scrolling shooters there were on the platform, I decided to give Dariusburst: Chronicle Saviours a shot (no pun intended).

While I believe the gameplay here is incredibly solid and the boss/enemy designs are fantastic considering they are based on various aquatic life, the gameplay loop can get rather stale fairly quickly. While the enemy and boss designs are great, there aren't that many to defeat before they begin to repeat as a reskin of a previously vanquished foe. Furthermore, the level variety is basically nonexistent after a certain point where you spend the later levels just replaying the previous ones with an amped up difficulty. This makes the overall experience feel rather shallow and disappointing once the surface level enjoyment of side-scrolling shooter action wears off. This really makes Dariusburst: Chronical Saviours a great game to pick up and play for short periods of time, but not one to try and master.

This one's for the mothers, alongside the brothers: can't count myself amongst the lovers of Dariusburst CS. On the surface it seems like there's a lot of content here with all the various arcade and story and EX and hyper burst limit reverse and whatever modes, but all these actually mean is that you're going to be spending a lot of time replaying the same stages with the same enemy patterns, fighting the same bosses, over and over again. The whole thing just feels kind of shallow and listless - not helped by the somewhat sterile visuals of it all. Look, maybe it's unfair to compare everything to Darius Gaiden, maybe it's unfair to say that a game isn't particularly good because it doesn't match a crowning achievement of the human race, but this isn't as good as Darius Gaiden, is it?
I do think it's cool how there are ships from other famous shooters as DLC. I of course think it's cool that you can fight a giant Darius fish as Opa-Opa from Fantasy Zone and collect coins from its stinkin' carcass. Obviously the music is still good, even if it doesn't weave in with the gameplay the way Gaiden's does (sorry). Love that boss track that sounds like Yakuza 2 battle music! Overall, though, this is just Okay, which is sometimes more disappointing than being Bad. At the very least, it's reinforced how much I would like to sit in a big wide Darius cabinet, so that's something!

While being a really fun game at times, The game is extremely padded out. Despite the numerous amount of missions, all of them consist of only a couple stages and bosses (with several reskins). Not to mention the UI is extremely clunky and looks unfinished. The controls take some time to get used to, and each ship has it's own controller settings which need to be configured individually. Also lots of input lag on a controller.

This is a 2015 game being sold for $50. If you want a better Darius experience, get the Cozmic Collection or G-Darius HD when it's on a good sale.