Samus Returns me mostrou como a Mercury Steam aprendeu nesses últimos anos para fazer o Dread, aka meu favorito da franquia. A gameplay incrível daquele jogo também tá aqui, só que mais simples e com alguns sistemas (como o parry) bem mais travados, o que não é um problema, só um toque pra ver o quanto eles cresceram.

Acho que o maior problema do jogo pra mim é a progressão, cara esse jogo é muito extenso e MUITO massante, eu curto demais a ideia de caçar os metroids (inclusive gostei bastante do metroid 2 original de gb) mas aqui eles expandiram até demais em tamanho, e ficou bem massante.

Os puzzles não tão lá a coisa mais intuitiva do mundo principalmente em alguns chefes que me fizeram ter que procurar vídeo no youtube. Os chefes são bem desafiadores, alguns chatões mas boa parte bem daora.

A dificuldade também não me agradou muito, boa parte pela telinha do 3DS ser muito pequena, quase sempre esbarrava em uns inimigos que tiravam um quadradinho de vida inteiro completamente de graça, a tela é muito pequena, atrapalha legal, principalmente nas descidas.

Enfim, não é o melhor metroid, mas um bom jogo, e com certeza consagrou a melhor desenvolvedora para Metroid, espero que continue com a franquia daqui pra frente.

This is the second Metroid game I've beaten in full, and I gotta say, I'm really impressed! Another very quality remake of an older title that had a lot of passion and love put into it. Unfortunately, I don't like it quite as much as I do Zero Mission, but I still had a great time.

I'll address my main complaints first before I talk about the good parts. I get why people are hard on this game, when I first played it coming right off Zero Mission I was initially turned off by game feeling more slow/not as tight as Zero Mission as well as completely changing the control scheme to be very different and not as intuitive at first. I also wasn't a fan of how much you had to rely on the counter to actually kill anything at the start of the game, that was annoying.

The big thing that I see be a turn off to most people is the repetitive nature of this game, especially compared to ZM (and I imagine other 2D Metroid entries). It's the same cycle of explore an area in full and kill all the Metroids in it, rinse and repeat with most of the Metroid fights being pretty identical to each other. This also ties into my other complaint of the theme of the game being pretty not great given it's basically saying "Yeah, it's okay for Samus to commit genocide on an entire species!" Pretty wild (and messed up) for something from Nintendo, not that I don't think Nintendo can't and hasn't made dark games in the past, but this did really surprise me, and I can't say I really agree with it personally. That said, the fact Samus does very much regret and repent for doing this later (and also get bitten in the butt by her actions of doing this) does make up for it to me.

Now, onto the good parts! There's a lot to love about this game as a follow up to Zero Mission gameplay wise. Like I said before, I did initially not like how the game played at it felt like a slog, but I decided not to give up and kept playing several hours over the course of 3 sessions, and eventually the game finally clicked with me control wise, and I started really enjoying it!

I do think that the general sense of item/power up progression in Metroid helps alleviate the repetitiveness of the game. I know one of the big complaints in the game is how you need the counter a lot, which I get, but something people never mention is that as you get stronger through the game, you need it less and less as the adventure goes on, which helped alleviate my issue there. The Metroid fights were tough at first, and learning the general patterns did help me not find them as boring as the game went on, plus the later fights are a lot tougher as the Metroids evolve and change to combat Samus. The remake also added two new boss fights (which I won't spoil and say what they are) that were very unique and challenging, and also barely use the counter mechanic at all, which was a nice change of pace.

The new power ups and items this game had were also really interesting, I was surprised to see Shinesparking not make a return here given it seems to be a staple of most of the 2D ones, but I didn't mind that. The Grappling Hook, Spider Ball, Phase Shift, and so on were all welcome new additions along with the returning power ups from Zero Mission that I thought added a lot of new cool depth to the game.

The other thing I really adore about this game is all of the amazing Quality of Life changes they added! Being able to aim in 360 degrees is incredibly helpful, the scanner saves a lot of time (and if you want to play with more traditional Metroid of figuring out everything for yourself, you don't have to use it), the teleporters make backtracking so much easier (I actually got 100% with collectibles thanks to this!) and being able to attach markers to points on the map to remind you what's in that area was super helpful too. I'll have to adjust to not having these again when I play Super and Fusion, but I hope these QoL features return in Dread when I get to that game at the end of my Metroid 2D binge.

The game is fairly story light again like ZM, but the last few cutscenes and ending were all really good and have me excited for future games! All in all, I had a really fun time with this game even if I didn't love it the way I did ZM, and I look forward to playing the very heavily praised Super Metroid next.

Total playtime (including game overs according to my 3DS Playtime Activity): 19 hours and 10 minutes.

Total playtime from in-game file counter: 13 hours, 55 minutes.

Item Collection Rate: 100%

I don't know what to think of Samus Returns, because it's the definition of all I hate about remakes, while simultaneously a pretty great game on its own. SR looks at Metroid II's identity and doesn't hesitate to throw it in the bin. Gone is the atmospheric, minimalist exploration, here's a high-octane action game, we hope you like it. Zero Mission does the exact same thing but y'all aren't ready for that discussion.

But, damn it, I do like it. I really want to be mad that you just completely ruined the ending for the sake of shoving in a fanservice boss fight but fuck if it's hard when the boss is so cool. That aside though, I think Samus Returns is pretty exemplary of the flaws of remake culture. Even a remake takes the original's place and erases its legacy with its own, and it just leaves me going "yeah, it's good, but..."

After playing so many Metroidvania games in recent months, playing Metroid: Samus Returns is like coming home. Everything in this game clicks so well. The exploration is rewarding, the Aeion powerups add some excellent depth to the original game, and aiming a full 360 degrees is perfectly satisfying. Fighting similar bosses 40 times does get a little bit repetitive, but the areas are varied enough for this to not be a major detraction. This was the last game in the main Metroid series that I hadn't played, and it certainly holds up well amongst the best games in the series.

I never got very far in the original, but I'd say this game does a fairly good job of transforming it into something more modern in the same way Zero Mission remade first game. Unfortunately, whenever this game tries to do things that are original it often falls flat.

The new parry system is a neat idea but they also made the cannon beams do barely any damage so the only viable way of killing monsters is to stop and parry every monster. It really seems like each monster is designed solely to waste your time in each their own unique ways than to be a threat, but if you do get hit you'll take tons of damage. It sometimes makes getting around a chore especially since the map is way scaled up from the original without adding much new stuff to justify it.

The graphics are alright. The models look good and there are some varied and interesting environments in there but the majority of the game is just yellow cave and purple cave. The music wasn't bad but it all just blends together for me (except for the tracks from Super Metroid, but why are those even in here?). The new aeion abilities are fine, just clunky to use and the controls are smooth as butter, I'll say it.

All in all, it has everything a good Metroid game would have, and then some other stuff. It is a good game, but it is the worst Metroid game since Metroid 2.

giving up 'cause this game is boring as shit LMAO
I can only fight the same enemies in the exact same way so many times. Everything about Samus Returns has just been a drag, go on a DNA hunt, clear the area, do it again. Parrying was pretty cool until I realized there was basically no point to not using it, making every encounter nothing more than sit there, wait for the glow, hit the button, one shot.

Big 🛌 game, looking forward to playing Prime or Dread much more. 4/10. Either I finish those and maybe give this one another chance, or I abandon it completely and play AM2R instead or somethin

Metroid: Samus Returns returns (haHAA) us to the classic Metroid style, which was a long time coming, no doubt about that. The decision to reimagine Metroid II was an interesting and welcome one. Metroid II was...not great, let's just say. It seems like AM2R put forth the idea of how well a Metroid II remake would do and how much fans miss the classic style. The aeion abilities added fun and interesting mechanics while also doing interesting things with the usual abilities. I had much fun with this one and I do place it highly within my favourites.

Encounter an enemy
Stop
Wait for flash
Parry
Kill
Repeat

Truly elite combat on display here

Okay I’m being a little harsh here because I do like the bosses a lot but the general combat is way too clunky and poorly paced for its own good.

At its core it's pretty good game, but with some annoying problems.

Firstly, it's too long. By the time I got to the last level I wanted to be done with it.

The bosses are pretty boring in two ways. Firstly, most of them fell into one of few templates and are almost exactly the same. Secondly, they take pretty long to beat (although I should probably use more specials) and even if challenge otherwise isn't that big, couple of small mistakes can make you go through the whole thing again.

Also that one part where you need to run quickly is just the worst. The controls for this game were just not made for this.

Samus returns is good. The gameplay is much slower paced than other 2D metroids which makes it a harder to revisit, especially after dread.

Game is still classic 2D metroid so it's very high quality. Bosses are fun enough (the metroids that constantly run away from you are obnoxious) and some of them are really challenging and rewarding to take down.

It's probably the weakest of the 2D metroids, but a weak 2D metroid game is still really good!

The addition of 360° aiming and more fluid movement overall makes this game the best controls of a Metroid game (pre-Dread). Other than that the game suffers a lot of issues.

The largest problem in my opinion is the world design. The game is split up into 8 seperate areas which you complete and move on to the next with little reason to return. This removes the annoyance of backtracking but at the expense of feeling like you're exploring a real world, slowly unravelling it's mysteries and mastering it's environments until you can blaze through them with a mental map of every pathway and enemy placement. The bland design of most areas in the game doesn't help it's case either. Due to a combination of a lack of creative vision and hardware restrictions of the 3DS, this is easily the worst looking game in the series (besides maybe the NES original and it's gameboy sequel). To me an integral part of Metroid's identity is it's thick atmosphere, a huge contributer to it's themes of isolation and dread. I won't say that this game has no atmosphere, because it does, however those feelings are significantly weaker than they are in other entries.

Besides my issues with the world design it's worth saying that it's still a fun game, it's still a good Metroid and it's definitely not worth skipping.

this game has equal amounts of cool stuff and total lame-o bullshit. combat is awesome, 360 degree aiming and parrying is super cool, and traversal is pretty awesome. unfortunately a lot of dumb shit bogs it down, like recycling the same few bosses throughout the whole game and teleports/aeion/health/missile stations being separate. a lot of these are the same mistakes from the gameboy version that they thought they didnt need to modernize, which is a little disappointing, but it's still a fun time overall.