"A few thousand years passed, an unidentified ratio wave was received from somewhere out of the galactic system. Once, Proco and Tiat left the ruined planet Darius for a better world, and they built their brave new world on the planet Oruga. Descendants of Proco and Tiat left Oruga for the galactic system immediately with the highly tuned spaceship "Silver-Hawk" sensing by instinct that the radio wave was an SOS call from the people of Darius."

"Reactions on the radar! Recognized code cc30. Distance 12000 DAL! 3rd and 4th thrust engine, ignition! Main engine energy level, 20% increase! I always wanted a thing called Tuna Sasimi. Tree..... Two...... One...."
So it starts Darius II; game keeps most of the features of the previous game, it introduces only a few news in the gameplay, but the final result is certainly much better.

Once again we'll drive Silver Hawk, in 2 player mode you'll play at the same time. Our ship is armed with missiles, lasers, and bombs, and you can upgrade these weapons by picking up the shields that are left over after you kill a few enemies: red shields increase your missile power; green shields increase your bomb power; blue shield increases your defense and the yellow one increases your laser. In short, your missiles will become double beams, your lasers will shoot out of the top and bottom of the ship and sometimes diagonally. Bombs double out of the bottom of your ship when the power is increased. If you increase your defense, you will have a shield around your ship resistant to a certain number of enemy's bullets. In some of the stages there is a sort of atomic bomb positioned on the ground, shoot at it and it will explode destroying and eliminating any enemy on the screen at a time.

Enemies can appear from all sides of the screen; there are enemies appearing in formations, ground cannon, missiles launcher's vehicles, medium size spaceship shaped as seacreatures and lots more...
At the end of each level we'll have to front enormous battle ships, usually sea creatures shaped (among all the bosses of end of level we'll mention two original ones: one is the copy of a giant Silver hawk, and the other one is the Yamato, already met in the reviews of Bubble Bobble 2 and Akkanvaders.

Game starts from Sun zone, once you've finished the level you'll go to Mercury zone, divided into two schemes and you'll have the possibility to choose the one you want to front: each planet you've free the following one will increase of one scheme to choose and so on until the last one, Jupiter with seven available schemes. In total 7 planets to free and 28 schemes marked with a letter. More that score as many points as possible the aim is to reach Jupiter and then finish the game. Depending of the chosen letter we'll have different endings (picture and text).

"The war was over, Proco Jr. and Tiat Young returned to the planet Oruga after finishing their duties. It has been, however, passed several thousand years in Oruga and no Darius inhabitants remain living and only the jungle was desolated there. What a matter... Darius inhabitants nave been already ruined......"

This is one of the story we can see after finishing our mission, but, is everything over or another sequel is coming again?