Cool game, compared to Valfaris I think the shmup formula works better for the kind of atmosphere they're trying to sell. I still feel like it lacks ambition, it's not really pushing boundaries on difficulty, spectacle (too many reused animations, enemies and patterns, not enough environmental effects despite the really cool art style) or lore (the idea of the world is cool but it's not really going in any depth about it) so it probably won't end up as too memorable. Still it's fun to play at the end of the day and they managed to make melee not feel awful in a shoot'em up so I'd recommend it if the premise sounds appealing to you.

Pretty enjoyable shoot em up, has a more traditional progression with checkpoints and no credits system and is a fairly long as these games go, visuals and music are pretty appealing like the first game was.

I like the upgrade system as a way to encourage clearing enemy waves in lieu of a regular scoring system. There are also a few secret areas that let you unlock extra stuff like weapons which feel cool to find.

Main issues I had were that sometimes the graphics got in the way of the game and stuff would sometimes fly in off screen and hit you in a way you couldn't predict.

All in all, this is just an alright 2.5 shm'up that would've been way better if the devs could stick to just one angle or even just plain ol' 2D. As one other reviewer mentioned, the camera likes to be a PITA and depth perception can be difficult when the game decides to shift gears and shout "hey look it's kinda in 3D!". In addition, the hit detection felt janky when it came to explosive projectiles. Sometimes the outer edges of a blast radius would hurt, and sometimes it wouldn't.

There's still some fun to be had despite these issues though. Mecha Therion is far from a traditional shmup and offers secrets to find on top of an assload of weapons that you can upgrade at each checkpoint. I can appreciate that this is trying to do something different as the market is absolutely flooded with bullet-hells catering only to the most hardcore of shooter fans. You know...the ones who say "shm'up" in person.

Lords of Thunder is still the best heavy metal infused shoot 'em up around, but it was a nice attempt. I'd recommend waiting for a sale if this is your thing.

Finished during beta playtests a couple months back.
I'm not a huge shoot'em up guy, but it was pretty fun, definitely prefer it to the original. The gameplay while still challenging is much more fair, similarly to the level design. The audiovisuals are pretty much just like the first game, except this time the graphics is 2.5D, which I don't like as much, but it doesn't look that bad. From what I've seen most of the issues I've had with the game were fixed so I'm just gonna skip the complaining on this one, but yeah - overall it's a pretty fun time.