Did you know? It's well documented that first lady Hillary Clinton was an avid player of the Game Boy during her husband's presidency. However, what isn't as well documented is how she loved the handheld system so much that she bought two of them to give to George Bush and Dick Cheney before their inauguration as a symbol of goodwill among the two parties. Bush and Cheney reportedly loved Metroid II in particular so much that the game's plot about the Galactic Federation making up some bullshit about dangerous weapons and sending Samus to SR388 was what inspired the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

It's better than it's predecessor. Having a save feature was a big help. But then again i played this game through Nintendo Switch Online, which means if i played this on original hardware i would definitely dislike it. However, it's much more acceptable then the first game, this game really is a big improvement. You don't really get lost if you compare it with the first game, but i still strongly recommend using a map. Anyway, i prefer this game over the first one and every Metroid fan should at least play it once.

In my opinion, Return of Samus, despite being on the GB, is significantly better then the first game in everyway. As with the first game, I felt as if they where trying to do too much with the game when they couldn't on NES hardware. But here, Nintendo was able to completely translate the concepts of the first game and make something that feels much better for the GB hardware. I am not going to finish it however, as I will instead play the remake; but understand through my good amount of playtime here, that it is quite a good game.

I saw The Geek Critique’s recent video on Metroid II: Return of Samus, and I decided… eh, fuck it, might as well finally beat it myself.

Metroid II is a little rough around the edges and shares some of the same flaws of its predecessor, namely the lack of a map and some copy-pasted room layouts. However, the smaller overall map size, more streamlined progression, decent enemy variety in each area, and even the simple ability to aim down while shooting make this LEAGUES better than its archaic predecessor. Not to mention the ending is absolutely beautiful (which makes the endings of Super and Dread hit even harder).

Metroid II peaks in Area 3, wastes the player's time with the next two mini areas, and then gets mean when Zetas are introduced. Before finally being cruel and insisting on several Omega bouts back to back with 0 ammo stations nearby and the only way to acquire missiles without backtracking for a while being to farm one specific enemy. If Metroid II didn't engage in such bullshit I'd heartily recommend it, instead this one is only for series enthusiasts.
Great sense of tone though. Much moodier than either of its remakes.
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I just realized that the Omegas are probably tuned as such in order to punish players that didn't pick up all 22 Missiles. It incentivizes collecting everything in order to more easily meet the 3hr par time.
The highpoints of Metroid II are engrossing and I believe that it's a triumph as an artistic piece, so it's a shame the second half trends toward being a slog. It's a rough gem for sure.

La base del juego es buscar a los 47 Metroids existentes, en ciertas areas habrá un numero determinado de estos a destruir para poder abrir nuevas secciones, en el segmento final deberás cazar otros 7 metroids y al jefe final. En el transcurso del juego podrás encontrar mejoras para poder acceder a nuevos sitios, mejorar tú arsenal o para aumentar tu vitalidad y misiles.
El problema principal de este juego es su base de buscar a los Metroids, se hace cansada muy rápido al no tener tanta variedad en cuanto a los combates de estos y que la mayoría del tiempo estarás caminando sin muchas interrupciones ya que hay una gran escasez de enemigos comunes dan como resultado que la exploración se haga tediosa, el pequeño rango de visión ( más con el sprite de samus aparcando demasiado espacio en pantalla) y la falta de un mapa se suman como problemas , aunque esto ultimo no resulta tan molesto al ser un juego algo lineal así como bastante corto de duración.
En los apartados tecnicos, los sprites de los personajes están llenos de detalles representando bien lo que son (especialmente los sprites de Samus y de las ultimas fases de Metroids que resultan bastante impresionantes) aunque varios carezcan de animaciones, los escenarios igual cumplen en representar un ambiente desolador de cavernas pero resultan bastante repetitivos teniendo pocas diferencias en ciertas secciones; En el apartado sonoro tiene un algunos temas bastante destacables pero la mayoría de música del juego se compone de chirridos o pitidos molestos que tratan de imitar un sonido ambiental provocando mas de una vez que le quites el sonido al juego.

Metroid 2 termina siendo en un juego interesante que puede entretener un poco si tienes la suficiente paciencia, pero tiene bastantes carencias aún considerando la época y sistema donde salió, solo seria recomendable como una curiosidad de la franquicia Metroid

Metroid 2 is a notable step up from its prequel, and is generally a much more functional game. However, it still suffers from some faults that return from the original, such as a general lack of even the smallest amount of player guidance, similar looking locations (understandable as it was on the game boy), and repetitiveness. However, as it is a much shorter game, around 4 hours, it can be forgiven for most of these problems as they don't weigh on you quite so much. Overall, it's worth playing.

Once again keeping the ‘’trying to get everything in a Metroid game but then leaving two or three missile tanks behind because I can’t be bothered’’ tradition going, even in a game so different such as Metroid II, it’s heartwarming to see that some things never change, like extremely hidden collectables!

The original Metroid is, even to this day, a pretty big deal, not only because it spawned a series that in spite of admittedly quite noticeable lows —looking at the general direction of a certain Wii game whose name shall not accurse this review— has given some of the most beloved and impactful games of… well, of the entire history of the medium, but it also catapulted its entire world design style to genre-defining status, so much so that half of its name its derived from this series. Metroid may not have been the first one to pull it off, not by a long-shot, but it was the first game to pull off the ‘’Platform-Adventure’’ idea in such a well-designed, fun, and awe-inspiring way; Metroid crafted an entire world in a console that could barely run bigger than normal sprites, let alone to allow the luxury of having backgrounds, and year the planet of Zebes and its pirate infested caverns, even on its first iteration, feel alive, distinct and brimming with secrets and upgrades, by all accounts it’s a marvel, both technically and progression wise.

Metroid 2: Return of Samus not only had to follow up in what the original had done, but also do it in a console with even weaker overall hardware with a screen that couldn’t allow more than a few shades of green, and it what other conditions could this team produce anything but such a incredibly interesting and, in a ton of ways, unique game.

Metroid 2’s own nature revolves around the system is on, yes, but at the same time I think its fitting that such a different adventure is presented in such a different way; whereas Zebes felt mechanized, deeply corrupted by the pirate influence, each room calculated in such a binary way for the sake of stopping intruders and with the last bastions of nature being few and far between, the caves and passages of SR388 feel the complete opposite; no empire nor company has set afoot in these lands for a very long time, this is a land only taken by wildlife and nature, and even in a black and white world, it feels exactly like that. Not every single being in this game is out to kill you, in fact most enemies don’t have direct attacks, with the more aggressive fiends (aside of the Metroids) being the old abandoned machines, which I don’t know if there was any intent behind that, but it seems like a genius purposeful move. The landscapes of SR388 feel wild, untamed, each not existing not as an alien-made space, but as a true bastion of wildlife; rock passage-ways that reach the depths of the planter inhabited by fish that walk on land and strange mole creatures, acid lakes that get emptied by the quakes of a furious Metroid Queen after the killing of their spawns, strange bubble towers that fill the rooms and the most forgotten mast of the planet, and ancient abandoned structures overrun by what the Chozo left behind and animals seeking shelter; this is all on a fucking Game Boy ant it feels natural, it feels like a real world that was left behind, one that doesn’t follow the conventions of the pirate bases of old.

There are still some missile doors here and there, but most of the obstacles you face are not left on purpose, they are a byproduct of the decay in structure and bloom in life that the planet has seen, and so doors stop being that common of a way to stop your progress and turn into a signal of were a new upgrade is located, and now the powerups you’ll use the most to proceed will be things like the morph ball jump, the spiderball and the super jump. But even with these systems still at play, I’d be hard-pressed to call this a ‘’Metroidvania’’, Return of Samus reminds me much more of a divided by areas open world, since your advancement is only delimited by if you have killed the current set of Metroid or not, a change that serves a design and even narrative purpose; Samus’ objective isn’t to stop a big final menace, she’s here to exterminate every single one of the remaining bio-weapons that put the galaxy at jeopardy in the first game, and there’s a long list to go through.

Samus starts the game much more armed than in the first iteration, with the morph ball already on toe and with some missiles right out the gate, and the game overall seems to be far more centered on combat than it ever was; every single ability, even the previously mentioned ones, serve a ton in the fighting and evading process, even the beams are now just a change a change of weapon rather than actual tools, and with the game’s field of vision being much more closer to the character and the sprites being far more detailed than ever, there’s clearly a deliberate attempt to encourage fighting even when there’s no real moment in which you are trapped with a enemy; with every Metroid, even the final boss, there’s always the option to run, which not only helps if you ever get overwhelmed (which is pretty easy considering how aggressive your main enemies are), there’s always the opportunity to retreat and revaluate your options; you are fighting against terrible weapons after all… even tho now they feel more than that.

The Metroid go for just really scary bio-arms to actually terrifying animals, we get to see their evolution, their grow process, how they change and adapt, evolving from their known forms and reaching the enormous sizes of the Omega variant. They are threatening beings, not only because they can only be damaged by your most powerful tools, but also because the way they presented; the little animation that plays on some of them as you witness their evolution, the music changing to their theme as they charge against you, how memorable some of them, like your first encounter with an Alpha Metroid or battling a Gamma Metroid in a sand tunnel. This encounters don’t feel epic or grand, they are grounded and tense, this is not a space epic anymore, it’s a hunt that only ends after your list marks the number 0 and the Metroid Queen falls, and only then, after the adventure is over, no countdown for the explosion starts, it’s just a last stroll, accompanied by the baby, and you cannot get the thought out of you head that maybe what you were hunting were actual animals and no simple killing machines, you didn’t really save the galaxy, you just turned a massacre into routine.

Metroid 2 is unlike any other Metroid game, and not only because of the way it plays or its presented, but also because of how it incredibly handles its world, how it’s done in such a perfect way that traversing it stops being an act of adventuring and more of a slow voyage and contemplation, which is something I can’t say expected to feel about Metroid but on Game Boy. However, this attempt at bringing what can be done on this console to new heights and shattering its own conventions comes at pretty clear prices; even if I can’t stop gushing about how the planet is designed, the way SR388 is designed clearly suffers from WhereTheFuckDoIGo-itis, not only you don’t have a map, the new paths that open are all over the place and aren’t clear at all at first, meaning that unless you really know where to go, prepare to go around in circles for a while until you find something you believe wasn’t there in the first place, which it isn’t helped about the small little problem that is copy-pasted rooms: this was excusable in the original, but in a game with no color and filled with the same rocks and pebbles it turns into a huge problem for finding out where you exactly are.

The save points are also a huge hiccup; if you are going to do a game with few places to save, fine, but one thing is to that and other to make them feel like they are placed unevenly, with huge chucks without any place to save and others with two extremely close to each other, and on that note, while the health and missile refills are incredible additions, I wished they were more common, there are far less infinite enemy respawning tubes this time around so I wish a way to gain health back was given after every major encounter or at least most of them.

The Metroid battle themselves are extremely simple yet overbearing in the worst way and I think there’s an overabundance of Alpha and Gamma variants which get old real quick, the beams are handled in a way that even if it’s the best thing they could have done I just wish they where done differently and didn’t act as direct replacements of each other, the music for the most part isn’t that memorable (even if the Queen Metroid theme and Surface of SR388 are incredible), going back to some places only to return to you where before can be brutal… It has its moments and upgrading and certain battles was still enjoyable, but Metroid II is a case of a game I love everything about except for actually playing it, but when some of its problems come because of its own conditions and even the positives, I cannot be mad for too long.

Metroid II was the return of Samus in a brand new way, a return that allowed for experimentation, that brought back a spirit of wonder and ingenious I didn’t think possible considering the circumstances; I could say many more things about Metroid II that irk me the wrong way, but I don’t think it’s fair to focus on that when it managed to do something so impossibly difficult. This isn’t my favorite Game Boy game, not by a long shot, but it’s the most fascinating and daring, and if that itself doesn’t have value, I don’t know what does.

I'm gonna be honest, it's not worth playing. It's probably the worst aged game on the entire Metroid franchise. You can make excuses for the first one (Because of that) and Super was a masterpiece, but this one is just... boring. Fighting primely metroids is a good concept, but falls flat the moment you have to defeat more than one of each class, the second time onwards there's no surprise or challenge, is just another number needed to progress. Also, this game would be 10 times better with a map, because good luck trying to understand what to do if you stop playing for a couple of days