Valfaris: Mecha Therion – PS5 Review

Valfaris: Mecha Therion is the latest effort from Texan studio Steel Mantis and it follows on from their work with the heavy metal inspired Slain and Valfaris, the former being a hack and slasher while the latter was a run and gunners.  Both of which had an emphasis on chunky pixels, blood, action and chugging riffs.  Mecha Therion continues some of those traditions but swaps it all out for a shoot ’em up style game.

In terms of what type of shoot ’em up, this is the lesser-seen floating protagonist style of shooter.  Think Side Arms, Forgotten Worlds and Deathsmiles.  And in it you play as Therion as he continues to hunt for tyrannical Lord Vroll.  There’s a bit more of an emphasis on story here compared to other shoot ’em ups, with plenty of written dialogue interspersing the action.  But you’re not here for the story, you’re here for the shooting and it’s almost hard to judge the game on that just because it’s so different to what you normally get from the genre.

There are a few game mechanics to get used to here.  You move about with the left stick as expected but you’ve got a few buttons to contend with. fires your primary weapon, a ranged gun,  is mapped to your melee weapon, controls your special and is a boost move that speeds you through obstacles and some enemies.  And if that’s not enough to think about, Mecha Therion does that thing that everyone hates in shoot ’em ups:  it gives you an energy meter on your main gun.  That means you can’t just spray and pray but if you do get a bit overzealous with it, successful melee attacks will build your weapon energy back up.  We never particularly got on with our special weapons and mostly ignored them and we found ourselves forgetting to boost, apart from in those moments where it’s obvious that there’s no other way forward.

Once you get your head, and muscle memory, around all that, Mecha Therion is pretty entertaining.  We can’t say that’s mainly for the shoot ’em up action though.  It’s fine and we had a good time shooting enemies but, in terms of pacing, this is a bit more like R-Type in that the enemies aren’t exactly frequent and plenty.  You never have that feeling of being under siege and neither you or the forces of Lord Vroll are packing massive firepower.

That said, you do pick up new weapons along the way which you can choose to equip if you want.  These do tend to vary things up quite a bit, which does keep things interesting, but the game does that annoying thing where there’s an upgrade system and if you invest too much in one weapon, it’s hard to then justify switching to a new gun.  That said, the upgrading isn’t particularly satisfying, you don’t feel a massive boost in power, and they are sometimes gated behind parts that you won’t acquire for quite a while.  It’s just a bit faffy, which is something of a theme to this game.

Now, while we’re moaning, the game also commits another cardinal shoot ’em up sin in that there’s no score.  And while that would normally be annoying, here it almost makes sense.  This isn’t your traditional shoot ’em up but rather an adventure driven by shoot ’em up mechanics.  Sure, you don’t get to make choices or influence things but this game is definitely about the journey rather than refining the shooting.

So far we’ve been quite critical but it’s really not all bad news here.  Where Mecha Therion shines is in how it is presented.  The game uses the retro-styled presentation of Steel Mantis’s other games but there’s more of a 2.5D thing going on here and ultimately what it looks like is a PS1 game but one that has been upscaled in an emulator.  A sort of low-res/hi-res combo that really shone for us but younger gamers might not be all that impressed.

The visuals offer up the sort of fantasy/horror aesthetic used by all manner of New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands.  It’s all very Iron Maiden but with more blood and less spandex.  This is all complimented by a soundtrack that rocks out pretty hard.  Sure, it’s all just chug with no real subtlety but this isn’t a series that’s know for that anyway and so it all works really well.

And so, in conclusion, this might not be a game for shoot ’em up specialists looking for a sharp, precise experience but the setting, tone and general craziness of the game makes it stand out and the gameplay still has plenty to offer with plenty of tricky sections that will require you to step up and learn from your failures.  Thankfully, the checkpointing is reasonably generous here and so you should be able to get through it.  That said, it’ll take you over two hours to do so (which is probably why there’s scoring as that’s arguably too long for a score-based shooter).  But it’s a fun few hours and there are a few secrets to discover too, so there’s some replay value here too.  Don’t expect the best shoot ’em up ever but be prepared for some heavy metal mayhem and a lot of demonic fun.