THE SEARCH FOR THE GREATEST SWITCH SHMUP: EPISODE 38 – Valfaris: Mecha Therion

The Valfaris comeback story was amazing! You might remember the art style from a slightly different game: Slain!. Slain! was a highly anticipated game that, unfortunately, didn’t end up delivering. It was rebuilt as Slain: Back from Hell to address some of the concerns and deliver a better experience, but there was no way to salvage it. I was skeptical about it’s “sequel” Valfaris, given my experience with Slain!, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Valfaris was an incredible game! They took the lessons learned from Slain! and turned them into an action game worthy of standing with the greats.

Now Valfaris is back, and in a new genre to boot! Rather than continuing our run and gun adventure, Therion now takes up to the skies with it’s giant mech to pursue Vroll in a brand new shmup adventure!

Publisher: Big Sugar

Platform: Nintendo Switch

Release date: Aug 29, 2024

Price: $19.99

Valfaris: Mecha Therion is a brand new 2.5D shmup set up in the Valfaris universe. It follows up the events of Valfaris and Therion’s search for Vroll. You might have noticed that this is not 2D, but rather 2.5D, and that’s because the game is now presented with PSX styled polygons. But don’t worry, the heavy metal aesthetic you expect from the game is much definitely present!

A Weekend at the LP Store

When I first saw the trailer for Valfaris: Mecha Therion, I was a little confused about the genre swap. However, after thinking about it, I realized it’s actually par for the course. We started with Slain! being an action game, then to Valfaris as a run and gun, and now we arrive at Mecha Therion being a shmup. Still, even though the genre changes slightly, the essence of the game remains un changed: the heavy metal cover art style!

The way I describe the style is as something you would find on the cover of any heavy metal band’s LP releases. It really does make you feel like you are inside those imaginary worlds that are portrayed on the front covers.

Surprisingly, it holds up incredibly well when turned into 3D! The mix of the coolness of the world with the charm of PSX polygons make this a treat to watch and play. This is especially true for the massive boss fights, which are the highlight of the game!

Valfaris in Space!

The gameplay from Valfaris translates pretty well to Mecha Therion. Your arsenal is very similar, with your loadout including your main weapon, a melee weapon and your destroyer class weapon. However, the ammo management is a little different from Valfaris.

Your main resource is your energy. Energy is used to power both your main gun and your destroyer weapon. Run out of energy, and your main gun will fire diminished blasts while your destroyer won’t be able to fire at all. Energy replenishes slowly, but you can speed up the process by using your melee weapon to kill enemies or destroy projectiles.

Energy management is what makes Mecha Therion’s combat feel dynamic and fluid. You will be firing like any shmup, but low energy will force you to get aggressive and melee your enemies. The melee’s ability to destroy projectiles also make it your main defensive tool, once again giving you the choice of a safe dodge, or a riskier slash that will restore energy.

Shades of Ikaruga

Rather than focusing on scoring like a traditional shmup, Mecha Therion offers mechanics that more closely resemble an RPG. Instead of going for score, defeating enemies will increase your hit gauge. Fill it up and you will gain a blood metal, which is the main currency used for upgrading your weapons.

If you defeat all the enemies in a wave, you will get a score bonus! This makes you focus on destroying wave formations rather than playing defensive. Given that shmup are auto-scrollers, the amount of blood metals you gain will depend on your skill alone, as there is no going back to grind for experience. And if you tack on the energy management on top, you will find a game that requires you not miss a single enemy, but also to know the proper way to dispose of a wave, lest you run out of power to finish them off.

The emphasis on waves reminds me a lot of Ikaruga and it’s requirement of efficient gameplay to maximize score. Your first destroyer weapon is also reminiscent of Ikaruga’s full burst!

Champions of the Realm

While filling out your blood metal gauge, you will also notice the color go from green to red. Once the gauge flashes red, a champion enemy appears! Champions are stronger versions of the normal enemies that sometimes drop power-ups. You want to kill them, but you also want to make sure you aren’t assaulted by a champion at the wrong time.

For a game’s first incursion into shmups, I’m surprised by how thoughtful it was towards the finer details of the genre. All around you will notice small details that I can only describe as friendly towards the player. For example, the asteroids on the first level flash to distinguish them as breakable from non-breakable terrain. Contact damage with the terrain doesn’t damage you, which lets you fly around to try and uncover the secret areas. It’s the little things that show you they paid attention to the evolution of the genre.

Space Rollercoasters

The advantage of being a 3D rendered game is that it can make the levels more dynamic. Mecha Therion has no shortage of wild sequences where the camera angle changes to show you a different perspective… or something blowing up in the back. Some action sequences even feature a slanted camera that puts emphasis on the enemies coming behind you. These dynamic shots help the game feel more alive when it needs to!

The same goes for the enemies! It is commonplace for enemy waves to be arriving from either the background or the foreground. They never become active immediately, so there aren’t any issues with enemies spawning on top of you. Unfortunately, I feel like the timings at which you can shoot them can be a bit inconsistent. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but it doesn’t play nice with Mecha Therion’s ammo system. It can be a little tricky to know when to start shooting, or else waste ammo on an enemy that isn’t active yet.

Crash and Burn

Sadly, I feel like these stylish sections can be very detrimental to the player at times. One example being a sequence where you are being attacked by some massive insect tanks and have to avoid the explosions from their beams. The scene itself is incredibly cool, however, playing through it isn’t. The problem is that, even with the expanded camera angle, the invisible edges of the screen remain and you can’t properly see where they are and where you can or can’t move.

Some of the navigation can get wonky at times as well. Vertical sections feel especially tricky, because even if you don’t take contact damage from the surface, you risk scrolling into an incoming enemy bullet that was off screen. Some of the map polygons are rendered on the foreground, and while it is cool to go under them, it also enables enemies to hit you from a blind spot.

Bossfight

Luckily, many of the criticisms do not apply during boss fights, where the spectacle and style is fully embraced. I found the boss fights to be my favorite in Mecha Therion, mostly because it caters to my admiration of huge hulking beasts with destructible parts! As these giant enemies dance back and forth between the planes, the action never stops and it never ends up feeling unfair.

Even standard sized boss fights are exhilarating! What’s lost in size and destruction, is gained in style. Most bosses at one point will try to melee you and it’s your job to fend them off with melee attacks of your own. Succeed, and you will trigger a QTE where you mash the melee button for a huge counter! The QTE isn’t too hard and, although I never failed it, I feel like it doesn’t require too much mashing to make it work.

Unless we talk about “that” fight where you have to defend an ally. That one wasn’t fun.

The Space Journey

In general, I had a great time playing Valfaris: Mecha Therion! The stages were really fun and I felt like I was constantly accomplishing something like upgrading my weapons or finding new ones. Stages have secret paths to find, so I always kept an eye for those detours. The stages threw bosses at me at the right time, so the action never felt stale.

Though I will say that the final act felt a little too long. From the point it felt like I was reaching the final confrontation to the point where I finally reached it, it felt like there were 3 or more stages.

The latter stages felt much messier than the early ones as well. The coloring of everything becomes redder and bullets are harder to see. That combined with the increased enemy count and the actions becomes too messy to understand. Particles frequently get in the way and it’s hard not to feel like the deaths were cheap. The final stages should be harder, but for the right reasons.

On Difficulty Selection

In terms of difficulty, I’d say Mecha Therion offers a decent challenge on the normal difficulty for casual shmup players. The game is really generous with the checkpoints and the stages are evenly split by them. There is no checkpoint avoiding mechanic here, so there’s no need to play risk reward with checkpoints like Valfaris.

For the seasoned player, the hardest difficulty will be decent enough. You have 1 less hitpoint and the enemy patterns are a bit harder to avoid, but it’s not much harder than the standard difficulty. If true challenge is what you seek, then you have to beat the game to unlock the true hardest difficulty in new game+.

The 1 CC

There’s also an extra “arcade” mode called challenge mode. Challenge mode steps it up and makes you go through the game with limited lives! The way it works is that when you die, you respawn at your last checkpoint with -1 HP. Die after being spawned with 1 HP and it’s game over! You can collect extra lives by reaching scoring milestones. Also, in this mode your weapons are leveled up by collecting power-ups like in any traditional shmup.

Oh yeah, and this time you can destroy checkpoints to get blood of Valfaris! So whether you wanna take the risk without checkpoints or not, that’s up to you! Unless you are on 1 HP, in which case there’s no point in taking a checkpoint and you’re better off busting it.

To be honest, I didn’t find the challenge mode as engaging as the main game. Mecha Therion’s campaign is on the longer side, so trying to 1CC it didn’t feel as fulfilling. Not to mention the late game woes which feel unfair and unfun in a single credit scenario.

Last Words

Despite that, I think Valfaris: Mecha Therion is a wonderful incursion into the shmup genre! The game feels really fun, especially given it’s focus on exploring, killing enemies, and trying new weapons. It is a nice break from other shmups that become too much about scoring. It reminds me of why I got into the genre in the first place and just how cool it feels to shoot giant monsters!

The one thing I wish is that I had played this on PC instead of on the Switch. While there aren’t any glaring performance issues, it does dip a little when the screen becomes too hectic, which contrasts with quiet segments where the game runs buttery smooth. But it isn’t a deal breaker by any means, and the performance is solid.