Here you'll find all the tricks and tips you need to get through this massively challenging game. Well, what're waiting for? Let's get cooking!!
--When you think you're about to die, switch back to your normal weapons (i.e., Twin Shot or Back Shot) so you won't lose your additional weapons.
--Pay close attention to the color of your CRAWs. They change colors depending on how long you use your over weapon(they start out as blue), so if your CRAWs are red, that means you can't use your over weapon until the CRAW changes back to green or blue and to do that, you'll have to stop shooting for a while or pick up some more CRAWs(You must stop shooting for them to recharge).
--In order to play the game effectively, you must experiment with all the weapons. Who knows? One or two of them cam make some of the harder stages in the game a little easier to traverse.
--Positioning is often key to winning shooters and since most of the melee comes from the right, it's best to stay to the left side of the screen in order to make it through. Be careful though, sometimes staying on the left side of the screen doesn't always work because in some stages enemies come at you from behind as well.
Next, you take to the skies, but before you do, heat-seeking missles garrote you from behind. Take out the missles with the Back Shot. Now it's on to the skies. A bunch of planes will come swarming you up and down, so when you see the word "Danger" and an arrow pointing up or down, go opposite that direction, wait until they're close, back away and shoot them.
Does the miniboss of this stage look familiar? If it does, it's from Thunder Force IV. Attack the glowing red ball relentlessly and dodge the homing lasers. After the miniboss, you encounter some spinning green things that shoot at you when they're destroyed. A whole bunch of them appear on the screen at one time, so if you destroyed a bunch of them, move carefully past the bullets. Next, you go back to the ground and take on some more motorcycle vehicles and then sit back and relax until the boss arrives.
The second phase is a battle cruiser that does some of the same things as the first phase, except now it locks onto you before it shoots its lasers. The bottom portions of the screen are very dangerous, so the safest spot is at the top right of the screen. Again, use Free Range.
The third and final phase is a flying battleship with pincers and is IMO, the easiest of all the phases. Its attacks consist of a beam attack, bullet barrage, and grabbing you with the pincers. When it moves its pincers back, that means it's about to fire the beam. The safest spot: bottom left using Free Range. You can use Twin Shot, Wave, or Hunter if you have them, though it'll make a more challenging fight. Once you destroyed this phase, the Armament Armed Arm will be no more and you can fly to the next stage with a smile on your face.
When you reach the bottom, you'll pass through gates. Some of them do nothing at all while some trigger alarms. When you do trigger an alarm, an object with a couple of reflectors will come at you from behind and shoot you with lasers. To my knowledge, there's no way around this, so you'll just have to grin and bear it.
The next section is pretty simple: shoot yourself a path. Now here's one of the few sections of the game where the Wave comes in handy! Just blast your way through the falling debris, being careful not to get smashed by the stuff and avoiding anti-aircraft guns. A 1-Up appears here, so be on the lookout for it. Now it's boss time!!
Like the A3, this boss has another form too. It turns into a robot and start spraying your area with bullets. Soon after it's finished spraying, ol' GK will pull out the big laser. Then it has this one attack where it casts out balls which shoot thin lines. These lines indicate where the 'Knight will swing (the lines themselves can also kill you, but not before they turn white). Do not be surprised if it swings without those lines. As always, attack with the appropriate weapons and it'll be subdued, but wait! Just when you think you've beaten him, he'll pull out this mega-huge laser beam that takes up most of the top half of the screen in a desperation attempt to end your flying career, so don't let your guard down yet. Once the Guardian's Knight is outta the picture, you can relax and wait for the next stage.
The second phase is a little harder, but not overly difficult. It starts out behind your ship, so you have to use Rail Gun in order to do any kind of damage to it. VO's second phase starts off with two huge mega beams that have a gap in the middle. If you're in the middle, don't move until the lasers dissipate. After they're gone, just keep shooting and dodge anything that comes your way. Just maintain your composture and the second phase will be dust.
The third phase is perhaps the easiest of all of them. It may go behind you at times, but other than that, you don't have much of anything to worry about.
The fourth and final phase is a huge dragonfly and probably the most difficult of the phases. It shoots everything from heat seeking lasers to spread pulses. Look out for all of them, but keep a close eye for when it goes off the screen. It will go into the background for a few seconds, then it will zoom back in going up and down a couple of times and on its final wave, it'll fire rows of energy pulses in your direction. During this moment, the top and middle sections of the screen are extremely dangerous; you'll die almost everytime you in those areas. The best place to dodge the onslaught is a little niche in the bottom center of the screen. Once it completes it's little roll, it'll go back to its first pattern and do that zoom in thing again until it's destroyed. When you destroy the final phase, the Vasteel Original goes with it.
You first meet a series of snake things that take the forms of square, triangle, and circle. These things follow you around the screen trying to run into you. The best way to take these out is to go counter-clockwise around the screen using your Blade and Rail Gun weapons. Hit these hard and fast 'cause if all three show up on the screen, you're in for a tough battle.
You'll soon encounter 4 red rings. If they line up, you better move quick! Huge beam coming! Unfortunately, you can't destroy these things so the best thing to do is to avoid its laser blasts until it flies off the screen.
Your next encounter is with a fan-type blade. When it turns into a circle, it bounces around the screen in hopes of crushing you. When it turns into a blade, it sort of follows you around the screen too, and its last form is a twirling thing that uses a suction to pull you in the trajectory of the laser beam it will shoot out a few seconds afterward. The strategy to beating it is not to let it get too close to you and shoot at it whenever you get an opening. Don't worry if you don't kill it; it'll just fly off the screen and leave you to the rest of your troubles.
The last section consists of going through a wave of green rocks. The medium sized ones fly toward you and are difficult to destroy and the huge ones are stationary and break into little pieces when destroyed. You're probably thinking, "How am I going to survive through this?" Well, I'll tell you. Since a lot of the stuff is at the top and middle portions of the screen, stick to the bottom and blast anything that gets in your way. Most of the stuff you blow away will zip right past you. It worked for me, so it can work for you too. Oh yeah, I almost forgot...not only do you have the rocks to contend with, but also some flying thing-a-ma-bobs that shoot at you in all directions. If you can somehow make it through all of this without a scratch, a shield powerup gladly waits for your taking in preparation to meet the boss.
This one's kind of frustrating because it throws everything and its mama at you, but like every boss in the game, it has a pattern it goes by and if you can interpret it, it won't be so hard.
Move to the bottom of the screen once it appears; it also throws everything towards the top and middle sections of the screen. It takes a break for a few seconds in between blasts, so once it takes its break, give it all you got until it starts shooting again. You'll want to destroy the rings first 'cause those are the things that are shooting at you. Once you got all of them destroyed, shoot the body until it explodes, dodging and weaving whenever appropriate.
During the battle, you'll want to keep a close eye on the rings you see; they change color in accordance to the time remaining to defeat the boss. If they appear red, you better haul butt and kill the sucker fast 'cause time is almost up. Okay, enough of the schemantics, on to the boss itself.
The boss will first attack you with blue amoeba-like things then shoot out some purple ones, which are faster. The next thing it'll do is gather bullets in each hand and throw them at you, first downward, then up. After that, it will either start the amoeba thing over or shoot beams at you while moving either up or down. The latter is harder to avoid 'cause you don't know what direction it'll move until it actually moves. When it does start moving, go between the pulses to avoid the blasts. Now at this point it'll do this pattern once again, mixing up the attacks a little to throw you off track, but after the third time or fourth time, it pulls out a sword and attempts to blast you with a charged beam, so when you see the boss ready his sword, tear butt to the safest spot(often the bottom of the screen). It'll also slash at you with it as well, so just stay out of range when it does. If you had survived the previous onslaught with the Free Range intact, now is the best time to use it. Your other weapons will hardly do any damage to it. Depending on if you destroyed it or not, you will get either a good ending or a bad one.
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