There have been multiple times in my life where I would sit down and say "You know what? I'm gonna play a Metroid game from start to finish!", and I would get decently far into it before eventually getting lost and forgetting about it. This happened with both the first game and Super Metroid, and while I do remember having more fun while playing the latter game, I always wanted to beat the first game in this franchise before any of the other ones, so I decided to finally play Metroid from beginning to end.
A lot of the issues that Metroid has are shared with other games on the NES, namely The Legend of Zelda. It's an often bafflingly cryptic game that is impossible to beat without either a guide or the endless amount of free time that kids back in 1986 probably had. It's definitely impressive that they managed to get a map this big and seamlessly interconnected on a system that was as limited as the NES, and having the player literally feel lost greatly adds to the sense of isolation that this game tries to sell alongside its atmospheric music, but even then, having some sort of map in the corner of the screen or something would've helped. Because of how similar all of the areas and enemies are, you never feel like you're making very much progress aside from finding the occasional upgrade, especially when you end up having to backtrack to an area that you've already been through for what feels like the thousandth time. I understand making the player go back to a previously inaccessible part of the level with their newly earned upgrades, but most of the time, I had no clue what had changed in each level, as I was just going through it like how I normally did.
Metroid and Castlevania both led to the creation of the aptly titled Metroidvania genre of games, but unlike the latter game, the main character of Metroid actually feels good to control (although my opinion on this will probably change once I play Super Castlevania IV). Moving around as Samus Aran feels great, even if the more precision-based platforming that shows up later in the game proves to be a bit too much for her to handle with her vaguely inconsistent jump arcs. Some of the enemy types ended up being really annoying to fight, but none of that frustration even compares to the hatred I have for this game's final boss. Shooting dozens of missiles at Mother Brain while being bombarded with unavoidable lasers and Rinkas was extremely frustrating, especially with how you get knocked back every single time you got hit like in Castlevania. I didn't think that Metroid aged well at all, but that isn't to say that it's a bad game, even if I wasn't a big fan of it. I've heard that this game's GBA remake, Metroid: Zero Mission, fixes a lot of the problems that I had with this game, and while I might get to that game at some point, I want to play Super Metroid first.
A lot of the issues that Metroid has are shared with other games on the NES, namely The Legend of Zelda. It's an often bafflingly cryptic game that is impossible to beat without either a guide or the endless amount of free time that kids back in 1986 probably had. It's definitely impressive that they managed to get a map this big and seamlessly interconnected on a system that was as limited as the NES, and having the player literally feel lost greatly adds to the sense of isolation that this game tries to sell alongside its atmospheric music, but even then, having some sort of map in the corner of the screen or something would've helped. Because of how similar all of the areas and enemies are, you never feel like you're making very much progress aside from finding the occasional upgrade, especially when you end up having to backtrack to an area that you've already been through for what feels like the thousandth time. I understand making the player go back to a previously inaccessible part of the level with their newly earned upgrades, but most of the time, I had no clue what had changed in each level, as I was just going through it like how I normally did.
Metroid and Castlevania both led to the creation of the aptly titled Metroidvania genre of games, but unlike the latter game, the main character of Metroid actually feels good to control (although my opinion on this will probably change once I play Super Castlevania IV). Moving around as Samus Aran feels great, even if the more precision-based platforming that shows up later in the game proves to be a bit too much for her to handle with her vaguely inconsistent jump arcs. Some of the enemy types ended up being really annoying to fight, but none of that frustration even compares to the hatred I have for this game's final boss. Shooting dozens of missiles at Mother Brain while being bombarded with unavoidable lasers and Rinkas was extremely frustrating, especially with how you get knocked back every single time you got hit like in Castlevania. I didn't think that Metroid aged well at all, but that isn't to say that it's a bad game, even if I wasn't a big fan of it. I've heard that this game's GBA remake, Metroid: Zero Mission, fixes a lot of the problems that I had with this game, and while I might get to that game at some point, I want to play Super Metroid first.