Samus feels super nice. Its pretty linear and it feels like you're just going to place to place a lot because you have to go there and not because you want to. Though Samus is so fun to control its not much of a problem. Its annoying that you need to unlock a power-up before you can use any ammo you find. The EMMI zones are great and are terrifying. They feel otherworldly. My main problem is that the game feels too linear and handholdy. Apparently, there's a bunch of skips hidden away, so if I ever replay this, I'll maybe give those a shot.

Metroid Dread is a superb game



It builds on everything that the previous games established storywise and gameplay wise, the controls are super tight and easily the best the series has to offer, absolutely thrilling bosses, fucking beautiful graphics, and overall just a really great experience.
The one thing I’ll say this fails on compared to the other Metroid games is the atmosphere, it’s still there, helped tremendously by how beautiful the game looks, but what I think holds it back compared to like Super Metroid is the soundtrack, it’s just kinda forgettable, no track really pops up in my mind aside from the intro theme (which is in every game) and the third phase of the final boss theme.
Oh speaking of, I praised Super Metroid’s final boss a lot, buuuuuut this game’s final boss is just far superior in like every way, maybe except for the cinematic aspect (which even then this fight still excelled at that), it’s an enormously challenging fight even for this series standards, I love how this is the first fight in the series where you finally face an opponent who’s superior to you, I mean before the only ones who came close were like SA-X who was just equal to samus at full power, and I guess Dark Samus idk I haven’t played Prime 2 or 3, but this fight definitely proves why this opponent is just vastly superior to you, it’s a three phase gauntlet that never slows down at any point, the only way to win is to focus, learn, and ultimately get good.


Metroid Dread is phenomenal, and a fantastic way to end my adventure into this series’ 2D entries.
Now onto the 3D ones, starting with Metroid Prime.

This was my first ever Metroid game and by golly did I enjoy this game so much more than I expected. 2D Metroid games have always looked boring to me but boy was I wrong, this proved to me that these style of games can be insanley fun.
The controls especially surprised me with how fast and smooth they felt, what I wanted to do happened, I never felt like i had to fight the controls. They just worked so damn well, It felt so good being able to zoom from room to room sliding and jumping, espcially in the EMMI rooms. So damn good.
The Level design was perfect, the game never felt too slow and I never got too far lost that I got annoyed. Items were hidden well and rooms flowed quite well despite how big the areas were and with the amount of backtracking needed.
This game is HARD, which for me was an amazing change of pace. The final boss absolutley kicked my ass! There was points where I thought I would never beat it but I did and it felt amazing! While its hard, nothing seemed unfair, it always felt like my own fault which I think is very important for difficult games.
I could nitpick all the tiny issues i have with this game but i wont, as i feel they are purley my issue and are not objective issues.
If you havn't played this game, please do. Even if you are not a massive fan of metroidvanias, this game truly got me hooked from start to finish.
Absolutley superb.

i miss when metroid wasn't so plotty. i know this is something i should realistically be blaming fusion or even corruption for, but man. this game just does not need all this plot. suddenly samus has midichlorians and her metroid dna is overtaking her chozo dna or whatever and that's why giant robots that completely suck all the fun out of gameplay are hunting her. i enjoy this game in spite of itself. it has a myriad of things that do not work for me, but fortunately, it's very hard to fuck the metroid formula up, though it feels like mercurysteam is really trying to sometimes.

i am mildly shocked that this is an unpopular opinion, but the EMMI are by far one of the worst mechanics ever introduced into the series. they are not scary. they punish exploration (you know, the fundamental thing metroid games are built on). they are annoying. they waste time. what is the point of having this giant "unkillable until the game says so" enemy if it's actively ruining the player's experience? it feels so much like mercurysteam saw the popularity of Mr. X in REmake 2 and said "we should have that" (or maybe it was a nintendo directive, who knows). all i can tell you is that far and away my least enjoyable moments with the game were when i was forced to trek through EMMI zones and had fun moments like transitioning into another room just to run into one of the little cunts and have it instantly kill me. even after learning the melee counter timing, that did not deter me from feeling annoyed and like my time was being wasted any time i had to deal with them. i want to stress how incredibly serious i am when i say that they are the worst mechanic ever added into the series when games like Corruption and Other M exist. it runs so antithetical to what makes metroid work, and it's the very first thing i think of when i think of this game.

at the very least, when you're not dealing with the EMMI, dread is fun to play. melee counter is still poisoning the well but, at this point, it at least feels a little bit more natural in its implementation. some of the upgrades feel a little redundant or otherwise unnecessary, i.e. getting the baby space jump like an hour before you find the real space jump, but otherwise the new stuff here is good (i very quickly went from "i am never going to use this" to "this is vital" on storm missiles). as i've implied before, the game really loses me on the whole chozo lore raven beak stuff. not because it's terribly complex or esoteric, but more because it's so uninteresting. they keep trying to make metroid have dialogue and cutscenes, and they fail to realize the most important and memorable moments in metroid happened in spite of a big rendered cutscene or dialogue (i.e. you know the part of super metroid, the ending of metroid fusion with the omega metroid, the ending of metroid prime 1 where samus mourns the loss of the chozo culture/chozo in general, etc.). i've said it before, but we really just need another metroid prime 2-esque game that's wholly self-contained and not trying to be about some greater lore or story for samus.

overall i would say that i'm happy this game exists, because the meme of "metroid dread will never exist" dying is a good thing. from what i can tell, most people seem to be way more enthusiastic about this game than i am, so i'm glad other people are getting more out of it. hell, i'm open-minded and while i give this a light 3.5/5.0 now, i'm hopeful that i could end up revisiting it and having a better time with it. i'm not sure where the metroid series is going to go, but i am glad that people are still getting joy out of it.

I am absolutely enamored with this game! I love every nearly everything about it! The story is interesting and compelling adds onto the existing Metroid lore very well. The sound design and music are very well executed, but the visuals take the cake! I believe this is one of the most beautiful games on the Switch! The lighting, art design, and especially backgrounds, are all absolutely stunning! But the gameplay, oh my, the GAMEPLAY! It is so fcking smooth!!! If a game has good movement, I am immediately hooked, and this game has really good fcking movement. Samus flows perfectly in the level and has a near instantaneous response to your inputs. Her animations are incredibly fluid, whilst also still feeling like a traditional Metroid game. The boss battles are intense and climatic, with stellar music and even more impressive cinematography! I adore how as Samus fights a boss, the camera will pull around and follow her as she dodges and fights the enemy. What's more impressive is that you can actually control Samus during these "cutscenes" where you must attack the boss during these shots; not only are they just interactive, but incredibly thrilling to watch! The voice acting is also great as well, but my only negative comment I have is having to do with some preferences on the writing. It's so niche, but there a few example where I would prefer some certain sentences to be rewritten. For example, in the opening cutscene, Samus Arin talks about how she "got infected," but I thought it would be more appropriate to for her character to say "became infected." Very specific, but I think some few subtle changes go a long way. While the character voice acting is great, the text to speech choices I found to be poor. It would be more appropriate to the lore of Adam if it was a real voice that was digitized that would be better than a text to speech options. It would allow him to emote more. The voice that says "uploading data" right before you talk to Adam is also a generic text to speech voice that is the main voice found in Satisfactory, funnily enough. Yet, these very specific directorial decisions do not diminish the masterful work that is Metroid Dread! One of the best games on the Nintendo Switch, and goes into my personal canon of one of the best games I've played.