This review contains spoilers
For reference, I’m a long-time, hardcore Metroid fan who’s played and beaten nearly every game in the series, of which my favorites are AM2R and Super Metroid. When it comes to action games, I’m a big fan of complex level and world design, routing and movement, complex and mechanically challenging encounters, and thick atmosphere. I finished Metroid Dread in just under 9 hours, with roughly 50% completion. I won’t be discussing the story here, both out of fear of spoilers and because story analysis is not something I’m good at, but I very much enjoyed it, it had some cool twists, and I thought it made for a solid conclusion to the arc beginning with Metroid 1.
Going into Metroid Dread I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I wasn’t overly fond of Samus Returns, MercurySteam’s 2017 remake of Metroid 2 for the 3DS, and the trailers for this game made it look like a refinement of the ideas that went into that game. I didn’t like how reliant the enemy design was on the melee counter, I disliked the inclusion of teleporters, and while the one-off boss fights were decent, I didn’t particularly care for the Metroid encounters. The pre-release gameplay and interviews for Metroid Dread made it look and sound like a significant improvement, and I ultimately went in cautiously optimistic. I still had my doubts about the melee counter’s centralizing nature, and the potential presence of teleporters.
My fears were mostly unfounded, though. Within the first hour of gameplay I was having the time of my life. The movement in this game is exceptionally fluid and responsive - in that respect it brings back fond memories of 2016’s fan remake of Metroid 2, AM2R. Both of these games have movement that feels incredibly slick and satisfying on a basic level, and is fast enough to allow room for optimization to be a challenge. Though I’m somewhat disappointed by the lack of a single-wall jump, the game allows for infinite bomb jumps, and the rest of the movement feels so snappy that it’s hard for me to be especially torn up over the single wall jump’s absence.
Having said all that, I do still feel that the melee counter is too strong. It one-shots every normal enemy upon whom you execute a successful counter, which causes some of the larger, more intimidating normal enemies to end up feeling underwhelming. As a result of this, movement through levels with normal enemies is not much of a challenge in and of itself. Normal enemies end up functioning more like obstacles, and the primary challenge, rather than being to kill them, instead lies in trying to get past them as quickly as possible.
Framed in this manner, the enemies work fairly well. The inclusion of a running counter as an offensive move, as well as an aerial counter which doesn’t deal damage, make it so that enemies are at worst a non-factor. They no longer bring the pace to a screeching halt like they did in Samus Returns, and in some cases they can actually present interesting challenges, especially when encountering an enemy without counterable attacks. Mid- and late-game areas have a number of these, and they are a refreshing change of pace, even if the damage they deal is rarely a significant threat due to the abundance of health pickups dropped by enemies - this is something I hope is improved by Hard mode.
Moreover, my fear regarding teleporters was completely unfounded. In fact, this game’s teleporters function more like elevators than teleporters because they’re one-to-one, which means that instead of negating the world’s structure, they actually add to it. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Metroid Dread has the single most topologically complex game world in anything I’ve ever played.
Most metroidvanias with a world this complex end up including fast travel. This actually simplifies the topology, and reduces the capacity for routing challenges, as the fastest way to get from one point to another is usually through the fast travel system. Your route boils down to “go to the fastest portal, teleport to the closest portal to your destination, go to your destination”. There is rarely any larger-scale routing optimization to be done, so the interconnections between areas don’t really end up mattering.
Metroid Dread does not fall into this trap. Because the teleporters are one-to-one, they effectively add an extra interconnection to the map. There are quite a few areas in this game, and those areas have lots of interconnections between them in the form of these teleporters, the series’s traditional elevators, and horizontal-moving trams. I can only imagine that routing for a speedrun is going to evolve considerably as new tricks and optimizations are discovered.
Somewhat unfortunately, the game’s critical path almost never stresses this routing potential. The intended route is very straightforward and almost never asks you to backtrack more than one area, so the fastest route is usually pretty obvious. In the end I’m more impressed with the overall routing challenge of the critical path in something like Super Metroid, but there’s potential in Dread that may very well emerge with the advent of alternative routes and sequence breaks, a number of which have already been confirmed to be present in the game. I look forward to seeing how the routing evolves over time.
The individual levels are also structurally interesting. The very first area of the game has you loop back through about 70% of it a second time after obtaining a powerup, the final 30% instead being filled by a smaller loop that shoots off from the main one. Cool little structural elements like this occur repeatedly throughout the game, occasionally spanning more than one major area. I greatly enjoyed this aspect of the game, and there were several moments during my exploration when I started grinning from ear to ear as I figured out where the game was going to take me.
Dread has a fairly typical set of abilities for Samus to collect. All of the 2D Metroid staples are here: Morph Ball, Missiles, Varia Suit, Space Jump, etc., but I want to specifically comment on this game’s iteration of the Speed Booster, a classic upgrade introduced in Super Metroid. Simply put, it’s phenomenal. The game now allows you to perform wall jumps while speed boosting, much more readily allowing you to traverse vertical areas while maintaining the boost. The shinespark returns, of course, and the game features a number of optional puzzles that do a fantastic job of challenging your ability to use it. Many of the other abilities have new quirks, and almost all of them are used in very clever ways for progression throughout the game.
Onto the main selling point of the game, relative to other entries in the series and the genre: the EMMI. It’s a stalker-type enemy that patrols specifically designated zones of the map. It cannot be killed through normal means, and if it detects you in its cone of vision, it will lock the zone exits and aggressively pursue you by climbing on any available surface. Should it ever come in contact with you, you have two chances to perform a randomly-timed, very tight counter move, before being instantly killed. There are seven EMMI in total, though the first one functions largely as a tutorial and does not pose a significant threat. Each EMMI introduces a new ability. I won’t spoil what they are.
I will, however, say that the EMMI on the whole are a stroke of genius. Moving through the zones that they patrol was easily my favorite part of the game. The EMMI themselves create a lot of tension and atmosphere, but I particularly love how they work on a mechanical level. Taking any action, moving, shooting, or even crouching, within a certain radius of them will “soft” alert them to your presence, and they will begin to move towards where they last detected you. After the first actually threatening EMMI encounter, the game gives you access to the phantom cloak, which will render you undetectable by the EMMI, though if you come in direct contact with them they will still catch you.
The dynamic that emerges as a result of this is nothing short of brilliant. I again won’t spoil everything the EMMIs are capable of throwing at you, but because the EMMI’s position is shown on your map, you’re encouraged to route on the fly to avoid its detection radius for as long as possible. In the almost inevitable event that they do detect you, you need to think and move quickly to reach a hiding spot or an exit before they see you. If they do see you and start chasing, the game quickly spirals into an intense sequence requiring precise movement and quick thinking in order to evade them. As you play, you start to learn little tricks and jukes you can use to exploit their AI and make your escape after being seen.
Eventually you’ll gain access to the Omega cannon after a short miniboss battle, which will allow you to destroy the EMMI. The first step is to break their faceplate, which requires prolonged fire (the EMMI’s movement is significantly slowed during this period), and the second step is to destroy their head, which requires you to charge the cannon up before firing it. This requires you to find a spot where you can put some distance between yourself and the EMMI so that you have enough time to fire it before it catches you. Some people have reported issues with the aiming during these segments, but I didn’t run into any issues on my playthrough.
There’s a lot going on here and I love all of it. The EMMI stress both your basic movement and your routing abilities in a way that I didn’t realize I wanted until I encountered them, but now that I’ve seen it, I want so much more of it. I absolutely love this element of the game.
I should at this point mention what is probably my overall biggest complaint with Dread. Much like Samus Returns, the game provides invisible checkpoints at various points, usually after interacting with an important mechanic, upon entering an EMMI zone, or before a boss fight. This does have somewhat of a tendency to deflate the tension of the game. It’s not a huge deal for me personally, but I think for some it might significantly impact the tone and challenge of the game in a negative way. I think it would have been better to have an easy mode with the checkpoints, and remove them on normal, or at least to remove them on hard mode. This only had a minor impact on my experience, but your mileage may vary. I think it was most noticeable with the boss fights, for most of which the checkpoints were decidedly unnecessary.
Speaking of boss fights, this game has some seriously solid ones. I’ve always said that MercurySteam actually has a pretty good handle on boss design; Samus Returns demonstrated that they were at least baseline competent with bosses like Diggernaut and the final boss of that game, which were an excellent foundation to build off of, even if they weren’t amazing fights in their own right. Dread takes many of these ideas and refines them into what I consider to be the strongest overall boss roster in the official Metroid series. While I still wish they would go further with most of them, and there were a few things I was hoping for that the game didn’t end up including, I thought the roster was pretty strong overall.
The bosses themselves can be heavily punishing when they hit you, often taking off a full energy tank or more, but their attacks are all very reasonably avoidable. The challenge, of course, lies in avoiding them consistently, as these bosses by and large do not die quickly. Certainly not as quickly as those in Zero Mission or Metroid 2, but I also think they’re notably bulkier than those in Super and Fusion. They get bulkier and their attacks get harder to avoid as the game progresses - the difficulty curve is really nicely tuned with regards to bosses. There are a couple spikes, but nothing egregious, and I enjoyed almost every boss battle.
The game does reuse a couple of minibosses several times throughout the game, but they were enjoyable, so I didn’t particularly mind it. That being said there was one fight in particular that got a little ridiculous towards the end, on what I’m fairly certain was its fifth or sixth encounter with minimal changes.
I won’t go into too much detail on the bosses themselves because I want to avoid spoilers, but there are a few bosses in the final third of the game that I consider to be easily the best fights in the series, even if there are a couple quirks. Both my favorite fights have a mechanic that I did not figure out on my own, and which is borderline necessary if you want to defeat the boss. Having said that, the actual mechanics of the boss fights are exceptional. The game’s final boss is a multi-phase showdown that’s pretty tough and very satisfying to beat, and has a pretty crazy number of attacks, all of which need to be dodged in different ways, and none of which make the boss invulnerable while they’re happening. I keep saying that I want MercurySteam to go further with their boss designs, and this is an example of what happens when they go all out. It’s easily my favorite boss in any metroid game, possibly even surpassing AM2R’s best fights, and is an incredible capstone for an already great game.
A few stray thoughts before I wrap up this review: several sequence breaks and quick kills for bosses have already been found, and I’m really excited to see what else the community can come up with in the coming days. I absolutely adore the visuals and art direction, but that seems to be a divisive topic amongst the community. The music isn’t as memorable or melodic as previous entries, but it’s wonderfully atmospheric and I think it does its job very nicely. This seems to be an unpopular opinion.
Overall, I absolutely loved Metroid Dread. It’s not going to be for everyone; it’s a good deal more challenging than your average Metroid title (though I found it easier than Hollow Knight and Environmental Station Alpha), the EMMIs stress skills that aren’t usually stressed in this genre, and it has flaws that are going to be more severe to some than to others. But for me? This is the best official Metroid game. And being that Metroid is among my favorite series, that makes me really, really happy.
Going into Metroid Dread I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I wasn’t overly fond of Samus Returns, MercurySteam’s 2017 remake of Metroid 2 for the 3DS, and the trailers for this game made it look like a refinement of the ideas that went into that game. I didn’t like how reliant the enemy design was on the melee counter, I disliked the inclusion of teleporters, and while the one-off boss fights were decent, I didn’t particularly care for the Metroid encounters. The pre-release gameplay and interviews for Metroid Dread made it look and sound like a significant improvement, and I ultimately went in cautiously optimistic. I still had my doubts about the melee counter’s centralizing nature, and the potential presence of teleporters.
My fears were mostly unfounded, though. Within the first hour of gameplay I was having the time of my life. The movement in this game is exceptionally fluid and responsive - in that respect it brings back fond memories of 2016’s fan remake of Metroid 2, AM2R. Both of these games have movement that feels incredibly slick and satisfying on a basic level, and is fast enough to allow room for optimization to be a challenge. Though I’m somewhat disappointed by the lack of a single-wall jump, the game allows for infinite bomb jumps, and the rest of the movement feels so snappy that it’s hard for me to be especially torn up over the single wall jump’s absence.
Having said all that, I do still feel that the melee counter is too strong. It one-shots every normal enemy upon whom you execute a successful counter, which causes some of the larger, more intimidating normal enemies to end up feeling underwhelming. As a result of this, movement through levels with normal enemies is not much of a challenge in and of itself. Normal enemies end up functioning more like obstacles, and the primary challenge, rather than being to kill them, instead lies in trying to get past them as quickly as possible.
Framed in this manner, the enemies work fairly well. The inclusion of a running counter as an offensive move, as well as an aerial counter which doesn’t deal damage, make it so that enemies are at worst a non-factor. They no longer bring the pace to a screeching halt like they did in Samus Returns, and in some cases they can actually present interesting challenges, especially when encountering an enemy without counterable attacks. Mid- and late-game areas have a number of these, and they are a refreshing change of pace, even if the damage they deal is rarely a significant threat due to the abundance of health pickups dropped by enemies - this is something I hope is improved by Hard mode.
Moreover, my fear regarding teleporters was completely unfounded. In fact, this game’s teleporters function more like elevators than teleporters because they’re one-to-one, which means that instead of negating the world’s structure, they actually add to it. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Metroid Dread has the single most topologically complex game world in anything I’ve ever played.
Most metroidvanias with a world this complex end up including fast travel. This actually simplifies the topology, and reduces the capacity for routing challenges, as the fastest way to get from one point to another is usually through the fast travel system. Your route boils down to “go to the fastest portal, teleport to the closest portal to your destination, go to your destination”. There is rarely any larger-scale routing optimization to be done, so the interconnections between areas don’t really end up mattering.
Metroid Dread does not fall into this trap. Because the teleporters are one-to-one, they effectively add an extra interconnection to the map. There are quite a few areas in this game, and those areas have lots of interconnections between them in the form of these teleporters, the series’s traditional elevators, and horizontal-moving trams. I can only imagine that routing for a speedrun is going to evolve considerably as new tricks and optimizations are discovered.
Somewhat unfortunately, the game’s critical path almost never stresses this routing potential. The intended route is very straightforward and almost never asks you to backtrack more than one area, so the fastest route is usually pretty obvious. In the end I’m more impressed with the overall routing challenge of the critical path in something like Super Metroid, but there’s potential in Dread that may very well emerge with the advent of alternative routes and sequence breaks, a number of which have already been confirmed to be present in the game. I look forward to seeing how the routing evolves over time.
The individual levels are also structurally interesting. The very first area of the game has you loop back through about 70% of it a second time after obtaining a powerup, the final 30% instead being filled by a smaller loop that shoots off from the main one. Cool little structural elements like this occur repeatedly throughout the game, occasionally spanning more than one major area. I greatly enjoyed this aspect of the game, and there were several moments during my exploration when I started grinning from ear to ear as I figured out where the game was going to take me.
Dread has a fairly typical set of abilities for Samus to collect. All of the 2D Metroid staples are here: Morph Ball, Missiles, Varia Suit, Space Jump, etc., but I want to specifically comment on this game’s iteration of the Speed Booster, a classic upgrade introduced in Super Metroid. Simply put, it’s phenomenal. The game now allows you to perform wall jumps while speed boosting, much more readily allowing you to traverse vertical areas while maintaining the boost. The shinespark returns, of course, and the game features a number of optional puzzles that do a fantastic job of challenging your ability to use it. Many of the other abilities have new quirks, and almost all of them are used in very clever ways for progression throughout the game.
Onto the main selling point of the game, relative to other entries in the series and the genre: the EMMI. It’s a stalker-type enemy that patrols specifically designated zones of the map. It cannot be killed through normal means, and if it detects you in its cone of vision, it will lock the zone exits and aggressively pursue you by climbing on any available surface. Should it ever come in contact with you, you have two chances to perform a randomly-timed, very tight counter move, before being instantly killed. There are seven EMMI in total, though the first one functions largely as a tutorial and does not pose a significant threat. Each EMMI introduces a new ability. I won’t spoil what they are.
I will, however, say that the EMMI on the whole are a stroke of genius. Moving through the zones that they patrol was easily my favorite part of the game. The EMMI themselves create a lot of tension and atmosphere, but I particularly love how they work on a mechanical level. Taking any action, moving, shooting, or even crouching, within a certain radius of them will “soft” alert them to your presence, and they will begin to move towards where they last detected you. After the first actually threatening EMMI encounter, the game gives you access to the phantom cloak, which will render you undetectable by the EMMI, though if you come in direct contact with them they will still catch you.
The dynamic that emerges as a result of this is nothing short of brilliant. I again won’t spoil everything the EMMIs are capable of throwing at you, but because the EMMI’s position is shown on your map, you’re encouraged to route on the fly to avoid its detection radius for as long as possible. In the almost inevitable event that they do detect you, you need to think and move quickly to reach a hiding spot or an exit before they see you. If they do see you and start chasing, the game quickly spirals into an intense sequence requiring precise movement and quick thinking in order to evade them. As you play, you start to learn little tricks and jukes you can use to exploit their AI and make your escape after being seen.
Eventually you’ll gain access to the Omega cannon after a short miniboss battle, which will allow you to destroy the EMMI. The first step is to break their faceplate, which requires prolonged fire (the EMMI’s movement is significantly slowed during this period), and the second step is to destroy their head, which requires you to charge the cannon up before firing it. This requires you to find a spot where you can put some distance between yourself and the EMMI so that you have enough time to fire it before it catches you. Some people have reported issues with the aiming during these segments, but I didn’t run into any issues on my playthrough.
There’s a lot going on here and I love all of it. The EMMI stress both your basic movement and your routing abilities in a way that I didn’t realize I wanted until I encountered them, but now that I’ve seen it, I want so much more of it. I absolutely love this element of the game.
I should at this point mention what is probably my overall biggest complaint with Dread. Much like Samus Returns, the game provides invisible checkpoints at various points, usually after interacting with an important mechanic, upon entering an EMMI zone, or before a boss fight. This does have somewhat of a tendency to deflate the tension of the game. It’s not a huge deal for me personally, but I think for some it might significantly impact the tone and challenge of the game in a negative way. I think it would have been better to have an easy mode with the checkpoints, and remove them on normal, or at least to remove them on hard mode. This only had a minor impact on my experience, but your mileage may vary. I think it was most noticeable with the boss fights, for most of which the checkpoints were decidedly unnecessary.
Speaking of boss fights, this game has some seriously solid ones. I’ve always said that MercurySteam actually has a pretty good handle on boss design; Samus Returns demonstrated that they were at least baseline competent with bosses like Diggernaut and the final boss of that game, which were an excellent foundation to build off of, even if they weren’t amazing fights in their own right. Dread takes many of these ideas and refines them into what I consider to be the strongest overall boss roster in the official Metroid series. While I still wish they would go further with most of them, and there were a few things I was hoping for that the game didn’t end up including, I thought the roster was pretty strong overall.
The bosses themselves can be heavily punishing when they hit you, often taking off a full energy tank or more, but their attacks are all very reasonably avoidable. The challenge, of course, lies in avoiding them consistently, as these bosses by and large do not die quickly. Certainly not as quickly as those in Zero Mission or Metroid 2, but I also think they’re notably bulkier than those in Super and Fusion. They get bulkier and their attacks get harder to avoid as the game progresses - the difficulty curve is really nicely tuned with regards to bosses. There are a couple spikes, but nothing egregious, and I enjoyed almost every boss battle.
The game does reuse a couple of minibosses several times throughout the game, but they were enjoyable, so I didn’t particularly mind it. That being said there was one fight in particular that got a little ridiculous towards the end, on what I’m fairly certain was its fifth or sixth encounter with minimal changes.
I won’t go into too much detail on the bosses themselves because I want to avoid spoilers, but there are a few bosses in the final third of the game that I consider to be easily the best fights in the series, even if there are a couple quirks. Both my favorite fights have a mechanic that I did not figure out on my own, and which is borderline necessary if you want to defeat the boss. Having said that, the actual mechanics of the boss fights are exceptional. The game’s final boss is a multi-phase showdown that’s pretty tough and very satisfying to beat, and has a pretty crazy number of attacks, all of which need to be dodged in different ways, and none of which make the boss invulnerable while they’re happening. I keep saying that I want MercurySteam to go further with their boss designs, and this is an example of what happens when they go all out. It’s easily my favorite boss in any metroid game, possibly even surpassing AM2R’s best fights, and is an incredible capstone for an already great game.
A few stray thoughts before I wrap up this review: several sequence breaks and quick kills for bosses have already been found, and I’m really excited to see what else the community can come up with in the coming days. I absolutely adore the visuals and art direction, but that seems to be a divisive topic amongst the community. The music isn’t as memorable or melodic as previous entries, but it’s wonderfully atmospheric and I think it does its job very nicely. This seems to be an unpopular opinion.
Overall, I absolutely loved Metroid Dread. It’s not going to be for everyone; it’s a good deal more challenging than your average Metroid title (though I found it easier than Hollow Knight and Environmental Station Alpha), the EMMIs stress skills that aren’t usually stressed in this genre, and it has flaws that are going to be more severe to some than to others. But for me? This is the best official Metroid game. And being that Metroid is among my favorite series, that makes me really, really happy.