Does it get better? Am I missing something? I admit I didn't play for too long, but I found the whole "jump from here to here to here" thing to not be that compelling.
No, if you didn't fall in love with it right away it won't do anything to change your mind during the rest of the game.
I hear TxK is very good from people that like Tempest. I'm not a huge fan of f*cking llamas, but we'll see.