The most consistent Thunder Force imo, fixing most of the tropes that held III and IV back while iterating in some great new mechanics and a surprising amount of lore that bolsters the franchise's gravitas. I wouldn't say it has a 'story'-ass story but IV's Rynex pulls out some extremely kino moments, and it's one of the few games where the bad ending made me wanna get up and try again instead of pissing me off.

There's still some points of contention, though - namely the poor weapon balance, cheapshots and weird difficulty. III and IV also had these issues, but they didn't feel as gratuitous since they were 16-bit games made by B-teams. V is Tecnosoft's most expensive game by comparison and it just really weirds me out how even at 1997, the game still feels so sorely Not Playtested. V is also a lot more setpiece-focused than III and IV already were; unlike the other games, once I played this a handful of times, I had seen everything there was to see.

But lmao it's fucking Thunder Force this shit is metal as fuck, it doesn't matter how much they fuck up the shmup-related gameplay elements as long as it has that electric spirit.