Dariusburst: Chronicle Saviours Trophy Guide & Road Map

Dariusburst: Chronicle Saviours
Dariusburst: Chronicle Saviours Trophy Guide

Roadmap

Overview:

Estimated trophy difficulty: 9.5/10 (Platinum Difficulty Rating - PlaystationTrophies.org)
Offline trophies: 32 (18, 8, 5, 1)
Online trophies: 0
Approximate amount of time to platinum: 60-120+ hours (extremely skill-dependant) (Estimated Time to Platinum - PlaystationTrophies.org)
Minimum number of playthroughs: 1 route in Original mode, 1 route in Original EX mode, 3 missions in Chronicle mode, about 220 missions in CS mode
Number of missable trophies: 0
Glitched trophies: 0, providing you do not use Restart in the pause menu
Does difficulty affect trophies?: No difficulties to select
Do cheat codes disable trophies?: No cheat codes

Introduction
Welcome to Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours, a wonderful shmup developed by Chara-Ani Corporation and published by Taito. Trophy-wise, the game is demanding and features one of the hardest trophy sets ever seen for shmups. The trophy Bird of Legend will likely require 30-50 hours of practice for most players and requires a flawless run through QUZ route without getting hit, which is extremely challenging. Eye of the Hawk is another hard trophy, as there is no in-game tracker for it and you can’t see the bosses’ health. It is also a time-consuming due to CS mode, which includes about 220 missions and will take around 50-60 hours to complete, assuming you are working on Eye of the Hawk from the beginning. Most importantly, as of version 1.04, a Restart option was included in the pause menu and allows you to restart your current mission or route without having to go through all menus, however do not use it in CS mode and whenever going for any trophy in AC mode, as it glitches a few trophies, including the hardest one! (Credit to KanonFodda for pointing this out)

Before starting the game, you may want to remap the controls as outlined in the Guide Supplement thread.

Useful links
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...xmn3S4gfJfyrga – all videos used for this guide
Guide Supplement Thread – contains extra info such as explanations for some of the game’s mechanics and a boss checklist with locations along with videos on how to Burst Counter-kill the hardest ones

Walkthrough
Step 1: complete ADH route in AC Original mode and ORV route in AC Original EX mode
Choose any ship you want and use all Continues you need. This step’s purpose is to get a feel for the game and the Original mode and Original EX mode complete trophies, which only require to clear a route per mode.

After this step, you should have:
Original Mode Complete!
EX Mode Complete!
Iron Fossil
Violent Ruler
Lightning Flamberge

Step 2: complete CS mode while working on miscellaneous trophies
CS mode is made of about 220 missions (including Alternate and Warning routes) and it’s going to be a very long journey. Make sure you buy the Murakumo ship as soon as possible and work on all miscellaneous trophies listed below. It is very important you start working on Burst-Counter kills towards Eye of the Hawk right away to avoid having to go back to already completed missions, thus wasting unnecessary time. For more info about CS mode, read Perfect Saviour description.

After this step, you should have:
Mud Wheel
Mirage Castle
Hungry Gluttons
Thousand Knives
Brightly Stare
Hyper Jaw
Ancient Barrage
Dark Helios
Great Thing
Solid Claw
Azure Nightmare
Gigantic Bite
Planet Saviours
Piece Destroyer
Bravest Pilot
Proco
Absolute Defender
Rushing into Next Zone
Perfect Saviour
Silverhawk Collector
Tiat

Step 3: Burst-Counter kill the last few bosses left
If you have been diligent in CS mode and Burst-Counter killed all bosses you can find there, you should be missing 4 bosses: Dual Spin and the 3 Whip bosses, all found in AC mode. Check the Guide Supplement thread for their location and tips for countering them.

After this step, You should have:
Massive Whip
All Nothing
Eye of the Hawk

Step 4: complete QUZ route in AC Original EX mode without getting hit!
This is it, the last and hardest step of the game. Clearing QUZ route without getting damaged requires an unyielding will, skill, smart and safe strategies, a bit of luck along with more than 30 hours of practice for the average shmup player. For detailed and helpful info about this titanic task, check Bird of Legend description.

After this step, you should have:
Captain Neo
Bird of Legend
Chronicle Saviours

[PST Would Like To Thank ThanatosNinja2 for this Roadmap]

Chronicle Saviours

Earn all Trophies in DARIUSBURST Chronicle Saviours. Great work!
One of the most rewarding and challenging s for shmup fans. Congratulations on getting it!
Original Mode Complete!

Complete original mode.
Original mode is part of AC mode and is made of several routes with each route having 3 stages to complete. Simply complete 1 route to get this trophy. You can use all Continues you want if you select “Default Ship Entry” or you can just select “Infinite Ships Entry” for infinite lives (your score won’t be uploaded to the leaderboards in this case though).

Keep in mind this trophy pops after watching/skipping the ending AND returning to the AC menu, therefore do NOT quit the game after completing the route!
EX Mode Complete!

Complete Original EX Mode.
This trophy is exactly the same as the above trophy, except for the fact that Original EX mode features harder routes.

Keep in mind this trophy pops after watching/skipping the ending AND returning to the AC menu, therefore do NOT quit the game after completing the route!
Iron Fossil

Defeat Iron Fossil.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Mud Wheel

Defeat Mud Wheel.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Lightning Flamberge

Defeat Lightning Flamberge.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Mirage Castle

Defeat Mirage Castle.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Hungry Gluttons

Defeat Hungry Gluttons.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Thousand Knives

Defeat Thousand Knives.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Brightly Stare

Defeat Brightly Stare.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Hyper Jaw

Defeat Hyper Jaw.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Ancient Barrage

Defeat Ancient Barrage.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Massive Whip

Defeat Massive Whip.
(1)
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Dark Helios

Defeat Dark Helios.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Violent Ruler

Defeat Violent Ruler.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Great Thing

Defeat Great Thing.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Solid Claw

Defeat Solid Claw.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Azure Nightmare

Defeat Azure Nightmare.
Refer to Gigantic Bite for more info.
Gigantic Bite

Defeat Gigantic Bite.
You will find all of the above bosses in CS mode, made exception for Massive Whip, which is found in AC mode. I highly recommend checking the Guide Supplement thread for a boss checklist with locations for each one. In order to get this set of trophies, you need to defeat the bosses without any particular conditions.

A word of warning for Gigantic Bite: this boss is the hardest of the game and is found in 8 missions in CS mode. Make sure you note them down and always select Murakumo with at least 70 Arm (maxing it out at 98 is recommended though, especially for the longer missions) when you have to clear a mission where this boss is waiting for you.
Captain Neo

Complete the QUZ route in Original EX mode without dying.
This trophy will pop naturally while practicing for Bird of Legend , whose description contains much more info. If you are specifically going for a no-death run though, select Formula and play it safe. Make sure you pick up all blue orbs you come across as they increase your ship’s resistance and will allow you to get hit several times without dying. Also, pick up red orbs until you have a lv.4 Laser weapon (you start with a lv.0 missile weapon; keep upgrading it to unlock the Laser weapon and stop at lv.4; after the Laser weapon there’s the Wave weapon, which is actually weaker on Formula and not recommended). Watch the videos under Bird of Legend to know what awaits you.

Keep in mind this trophy pops after watching/skipping the ending AND returning to the AC menu, therefore do NOT quit the game after completing the route!
All Nothing

Defeat all bosses and their variants.
There are 47 bosses to kill in the game and the majority of them is found in CS mode, whereas 4 of them can only be fought in AC mode. This trophy requires to kill all of them. If you need help locating the bosses, use the checklist in the Guide Supplement thread. Also, it is highly recommended you kill the bosses with a Burst Counter since you’ll have to do this for Eye of the Hawk .
Planet Saviours

Watch the ending in CS Mode.
The ending you need to see for this trophy isn’t the one you get after clearing the last mission called Kyokkuho; instead, it is referring to the ending you’ll get after clearing a mission named Suriaha, which you will probably unlock long before the last mission.
Piece Destroyer

Defeat a Castle type boss after destroying all of its parts.
There are 2 Castle bosses: Mirage and Phantom Castle. You will have to face them countless times in CS mode and this trophy will almost surely come naturally. If you want it right away, play the Toriporopesu mission, made of a single stage with Phantom Castle. The boss shows itself as a sort of flying fortress. If you look carefully, you should be able to see a pufferfish inside it. That’s the real boss. In order to get this trophy, you need to totally destroy the fortress before the boss gets rid of it. Be careful not to damage the pufferfish and balance the damage more or less equally between the parts or else the boss will show itself too quickly and send the fortress flying before you are done. Another strategy would be to play very aggressively and destroy everything but one piece right away. When the boss starts spinning destroy the piece(s) remaining. Murakumo’s Burst + explosion cycles work well for both strategies.

The video below shows the 1st strategy:
Bravest Pilot

Defeat GTB by making it self-destruct.
Although G.T.B can be found in Tihai’s and Arenjikka’s last zones in CS mode, it's much easier to get this trophy in Chronicle mode, since you have infinite Continues there: press until the last planet system and twice to find a planet named Benain, where a mission named Roruo has G.T.B (thanks to Blue Tree for this method). The boss will self-destruct if you take too long to kill it and, since in Chronicle mode you can die endlessly, you can leave the game idle until you get the trophy.
Proco

Score more than 250,000,000 points on any mode.
Check Tiat for more info.
Absolute Defender

Complete a Defender rule stage on CS Mode with your gauge at 100%.
This is a very easy trophy and should come naturally on the 1st Defender rule stage. To keep the gauge maxed out, you simply need to destroy every enemy capable of going to the left side of screen. It’s much easier than it sounds.

Do note that this trophy will glitch if you use Restart while attempting it!

If you are having trouble, please watch the following video:
Rushing into Next Zone

Complete a Scramble rule stage on CS Mode with a time under 4 minutes.
This trophy is troublesome if you don’t know what to do. I recommend playing the Matarikutsu mission with Murakumo, being as fast as possible with bosses (Burst + explosions cycles are the fastest way) and avoid getting hit, since you will get a 3-seconds penalty on your timer for each hit you take.

If you are having trouble, please watch the following video:
Bird of Legend

Complete the QUZ route in Original EX mode without taking damage.
This is by far the hardest trophy of the game. QUZ route is found in AC Original EX mode. I recommend using Formula and watching the videos below when learning the 3 stages and practicing. In order to get this trophy, you need to clear the route without getting hit. I’ll list a few helpful reminders:
- as explained in the Guide Supplement thread, you are not invincible during a Burst Counter: you can get hit by enemies, bullets and other obstacles from the bottom, above or behind; the only thing that can’t damage you is the enemy’s Burst and you should actually let it hit you to keep your Burst gauge maxed out for more time (that will make your Burst Counter last longer);
- Heavy Gluttons (Zone U’s boss) is the hardest part of the run: as you can see in the video, I do NOT Burst-Counter him because I have trouble activating it, however you really should learn it, as it will make his comeback phase easier and shorter;
- Zone Z is hectic and it’s easy to get hit here, especially when dealing with the turrets and the big snake at the beginning; as for the snake, you want to lure it into rotating around as I do in the video or else it’ll slow down and hit you; as for the rest, I highly recommend sticking to what I do, since it’s the safest way to reach the boss;
- G.T.V will be challenging but practice will make it easier; there are 3 very important things to remember: 1st of all, you may want to mute the BGM because you need to hear an audio cue throughout the whole battle, which is the “beep-beep” that anticipates the purple beams (trust me, it’ll save you from failure); secondly, when you are behind your F Burst shooting at the boss, you should stay really close to it, because going farther to the left increases the risk of getting hit by a wide margin (move away only if the boss’ spear attack is reaching you but be VERY careful); thirdly, be on your toes when the boss is about to use the 1st red Burst and place your F Burst as shown in the video to avoid getting hit and do keep in mind that you can still get hit even if you placed it perfectly;
- pick up Red orbs until you have a lv.4 Laser weapon, as explained in Captain Neo ; blue orbs are useless here since you cannot get hit here but pick them up if you want; green orbs can be useful to add more damage to the gray bullets of your ship, but don’t go after them if the situation is too risky;
- Do note that this trophy will glitch if you use Restart while attempting it and keep in mind this trophy pops after watching/skipping the ending AND returning to the AC menu, therefore do NOT quit the game after completing the route!
With all that said, remember that perseverance and lots of practice are needed to get this trophy. Below you can watch my run:

Below is KanonFodda’s run:
Eye of the Hawk

Defeat all bosses and their variants using Burst Counters.
This is another very challenging trophy and I have dedicated a lot of time to writing down a boss checklist and posting videos for the hardest Burst Counters in the Guide Supplement thread. You need to kill all 47 bosses in the game with a Burst Counter, which is daunting mainly because you can’t see how much health the boss has. It is highly recommended you Burst-Counter kill all the 43 bosses in CS mode with Murakumo, as you won’t have much of a headache activating the counters with it. When you Burst-Counter kill a boss correctly for the 1st time, make sure you check the top-right corner of the screen to see if the red Warning icon pops at the results screen (it goes away very fast, so pay attention); check the videos in the Guide Supplement thread to see this icon. 4 bosses can only be found in AC mode.

There are 2 indicators you can use to roughly guess how much health a boss has left:
- upon starting a boss battle, shoot the boss and you should see some of its parts flashing white while you hit it; as the battle goes on, these parts will gradually flash light purple and then dark purple: when you are seeing dark purple, it means that the boss has little health left (this indicator is good but not overly reliable, as there are bosses that don't flash a darker purple when dying and bosses where seeing the parts flashing is quite complicated);
- when a boss has very little health left, you might be able to spot small sparks of reddish light around it (they last for just a few instants and keep appearing over time): they are easier to notice when you are not hitting it and it means that you should stop shooting if you can as one Burst Counter will likely be enough to bring it down (this indicator is very reliable but harder to see and some bosses don't seem to have it).
I am not sure if you need to complete the entire mission for the Burst-Counter kill to count or if you can lose all your lives in the same mission after countering a boss, however my opinion is that the game makes a quick save right when that icon pops and registers the kill, therefore you “should” be allowed to quit the mission or die. Most importantly, I do not know if Restart glitches the Burst-Counter kills along with the trophy hence why you should NEVER use this option in CS mode.
Perfect Saviour

Complete all areas in CS Mode.
CS mode is where you will spend the majority of your time for trophy purposes and, although the game maps 186 missions to clear, you will have to clear about 220, because some missions have a normal route and an Alternate Route and others have a normal route and a Warning route.

Each mission is made of several stages (with boss fights counting as a single stage as well), whose number you can check at the bottom of the screen while selecting the mission. The game also lets you see the 1st 8 stages of the mission at the bottom. Stages can be 1 to 24 per mission. At the beginning of the mission, you can choose how to play it: the game offers you a Preset ship and a specific rule for that mission or you can buy and upgrade your favourite ship (the rule is always the same and cannot be changed). Playing with Preset ships makes CS mode extremely arduous in quite many missions whereas being able to play with an upgraded ship of your choice makes most missions very easy. If you play with Preset ships, you will also be able to upload your score to the game leaderboards however, if you only want to complete this mode to get all related trophies, you should just buy Murakumo when you have 1500000 money (the money you receive is calculated by dividing the score you get after completing the mission or even after dying by 1000) and upgrade it as needed at the beginning of each mission (which also costs money).

For the most part, I recommend using Murakumo and upgrade its weapon to Wave lv.4 (max allowed) and Bomb to max. Whenever you tackle a mission made of bosses only, Laser lv.4 and Max Bomb will suffice. The Arm you want to buy depends on how long and hard the mission is and also on the rule (you may want to consider buying more Arm if the mission’s rule doesn’t make blue orbs drop). Arm is basically the health of your ship and it depletes by 1 for each hit you take. You can buy 98 at most, however you can also replenish it by picking up blue orbs during the mission and I have tested you can reach over 200 Arm. With this set-up, you should be able to clear most missions on your 1st try and the only real trouble will be the last mission (Kyokkuho, made of 24 stages) and the other 7 missions where Gigantic Bite is, which I have noted down in the Guide Supplement thread.

The 2nd ship you will absolutely need is Second: this ship allows the multiplier score to reach very high values and is pretty much a must to unlock Alternate routes easily (thanks to KanonFodda for pointing it out).

There are 3 types of missions: normal missions where you just proceed by killing all the baddies and the bosses; Defender rule missions where you have to defend a gauge on the left side screen from enemy assault and avoid it reaches 0% (each of these missions ends with a boss fight where the gauge disappears and you don’t have to defend it anymore); Scramble rule missions, which work exactly as the normal ones made exception for a timer that decides part of your score (each hit you take will add 3 seconds as a penalty; do not worry though, because you can take all the time you want to finish them).

Each mission has a normal route and, after completing most of them, the game will mark the mission as complete. About 34 missions have also another route: the Warning or the Alternate route. The Warning routes are triggered and unlocked by completing specific missions on the map, whereas the Alternate routes are unlocked by reaching a certain score by the end of the 2nd zone (the game tells you which score is required, it’s usually 60-65M). As stated above Second is the ship you want to use if you are going to unlock the Alternate route; most of them are extremely easy to unlock with this ship, except for one, which is still easy but might require a couple of attempts. The mission I’m referring to is called Uinda and below is a video showing how to reach 65M by the end of the 2nd zone (or, if you prefer, 4th stage, since the 1st 2 zones end with a boss fight each):

Keep in mind that when a mission has 2 routes you need to clear both for the mission to register as complete. The order and the ships you use don’t matter providing you simply clear both routes.

After clearing each mission on the map, you will unlock the last secret mission called Kyokkuho, which is the hardest and longest mission in CS mode even if you use Murakumo with everything maxed out. Tough bosses like Gigantic Bite, G.T.V and Savage Ruler are waiting for you here, therefore be ready for trouble. Also, there is a boss named Double Claw which can only be found here on the 12th stage and needs to be countered for Eye of the Hawk , so make sure you Burst-Counter kill him on your 1st try if you plan on not repeating this mission again . Here’s a video showing how to counter this boss:

After clearing this atrocious mission and watching the ending, the trophy will pop.
Silverhawk Collector

Purchase all ships in CS Mode.
This trophy will come naturally while completing CS mode. The 1st ship you should get is Murakumo, since it makes short work of everything, but you’ll also need Second to score enough points to unlock Alternate routes. If somehow you manage to complete CS mode before being able to afford all ships, farm the remaining money in any mission made of a few easy bosses, such as Nikkufuesu.
Tiat

Score more than 350,000,000 points in any mode.
This trophy is easily accomplished by playing Kaganawa Warning route with Second (thanks to KanonFodda for the tip). Max out its weapon and bomb and buy 50 Arm (you could even make it with less). The trophy will pop upon reaching that score, so you are not even forced to clear the whole mission if you had already succeeded before.