Darius Gaiden : Zone M (No-Miss, 1 Scoring Bomb)
Titanic Lance is a dreaded boss, and one that has made the reputation of Darius Gaiden. While I managed to no-miss no-bomb the boss in the past using savestates, I never did it in a full run. As I recently improved on this boss I thought it would be a good idea to my explain strategy against this boss. It's far from being the most optimized strategy in terms of survival (timing out the boss is much better for rank control) or scoring (I miss out on some parts, and many milks), but it's one that I'm satisfied of and that I can pull off somehow consistently although I still need more in-game practice.
Stage (00:00) : The important thing to not pick up the red power-ups, as it will ruin everything. It is however very important to pick all the other power-ups : the two green ones (depending on the route taken you may not get the multi-homing napalm in stage 6 if you miss even one), the purple one, and the two blue ones (turns yout I didn't need the second one as I was already maxed out on the arm and got an unwanted rank increase). I thus try to avoid shooting at the red powers-up, or at least I try to shoot them when they're at the left side of the screen : I go to the top of the screen for that. Once they are away I sweep up and down to make sure I destroy every asteroid containing a power-up (the blue ones can be missed if not carefull). If the red power-ups gets in the way I go to the right, though it makes it easier to miss a power-up.
Titanic Lance :
1st Phase (00:38) : At the beginning I point-blank the boss, then as soon as the arms appear I go a bit above the bottom far-left of the screen and stay still. When it's about to fire the laser I bait the boss at the bottom of the screen and go up while point-blanking. If you've messed up baiting the laser it's safer to cross to the other side (at the expense of a single arm unit) than staying still and risk having the shield obliterated by the laser.
2nd Phase (00:54) : The hardest phase to do without bombs probably. It's hard to put into words how to dodge this pattern exactly. There's several ways you can do it, but overall it's better to not hold one direction for too long while dodging them.
3rd Phase (1:06) : I use a mobile safespot (works at the bottom as well) to trivialize this pattern, it's one that one need to create by drawing him to a certain spot (if done wrong you may end up with less space for dodging). While I'm in the safespot I occasionnaly hit right while hanging to right side so to fire my napalm bombs more vertically, I also go towards the left whenever the missile capsule appears so to herd the missiles.
4th Phase (1:45): Just a big destructible object that self-destructs when reaching a certain point of the screen, just point-blank it before that happens (it may be impossible if powered-down).
5th Phase (1:50) : The upper part yields an arm, and the bottom one a main shot p-up, it's better to go for the arm in most cases. Once the two blocks stop you need to move and go around the part you want to destroy, note the blue balls move back when hit by bombs. This phase may look scary and claustrophobic, but it's quite easy once you get the feel for it.
6th Phase (2:07) : I do some extreme point-blanking at the beginning to finish this phase as soon as possible. Stay left to destroy the missiles safely (it's easy for one to sleep by and hit you), and destroy the amonites before they start accumulating.
7th Phase (2:39) : The tricky part is to avoid the red power-up while destroying the fish. I use a bomb for score during that section since the debris are worth 250k in total, it also makes surviving much easier as they have high hit points.
8th Phase (2:53) : It's very important to reach the head coming from the bottom because you want to get rid of all the drones before proceeding to attack the brain (otherwise they will attack when you do). Normally the first volley is the only one you should dodge : the best strategy for that is to point-blank so to destroy as many drones as possible and then go left when they rush in towars your ship. Destroy the rest of the drones with the rear bombs, then destroy the protection guarding its brain and start attacking it (ideally you want to it with the two lower bombs and the bottom white missile).
9th Phase (3:40) : Probably the second hardest phase of the fight. It's important to move with slow taps while boss fires the 90°lasers, otherwise you'll end up getting trapped without any space to get away. The final Taito lasers are a bit tricky, I find it best to pass above them but depending on the cycle and the boss's position (it can move higher sometimes) I may attack from the upper right, and dodge the lasers by moving backwards (you do less dammage by dodging like that though). This phase's duration may vary depending on your agressiveness, I sometimes manage to destroy the boss before the final lasers firing once.
Played on Darius Cozmic Collection for Playstation 4