(This is the 48th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)

I think if you're looking to get into the much-beloved Metroid series for the first time, Metroid II: Return of Samus (Dev: Nintendo R&D1 / Pub: Nintendo) won't be the best place to start. The game released in November 1991 for the Game Boy, unlike the original which came out for the NES, and if you really don't want to pass by this game, you would probably be best served going for its remake from 2017 for the Nintendo 3DS.

The game isn't 'objectively bad', not even close actually, but it suffers from pretty much all the lack of QoL features that you'd expect from games of this time. This makes it tough to play unless you don't mind looking for the way forward for, potentially, hours at a time, and even then, the future releases will serve you with much more enjoyable gameplay in pretty much every way. But all of that I talk about in detail below.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10

As in the original, you play Samus Aran, who is a Space Hunter working for the Galactic Federation. Her goal is once again to go to the planet SR388, where she is to exterminate the remaining Metroids after both a ship full of researchers and armed soldiers went missing. All of this can be found in the manual. In the game, you press START and are immediately loaded in and stand in front of your ship and are not given any further information.

The main things you will take away from this game in terms of story/characters are the following

Samus is a badass character just simply based on design and she gets shit done when others can't (not unlike many other one hero vs the world games, but effective)

The fact that there was no color for the Game Boy meant that the devs had to add the round metal shoulder pads to differentiate between her Power Suit and Varia Suit, a feature that has stayed with Samus ever since

POSSIBLE SPOILER: The ending cliffhanger, without dialogue and voice acting, is really well done. Samus finds an egg of a Metroid hatchling, which follows her to her ship. What will this cause in the sequel?

So Metroid II doesn't really do much different from many other platformers / Action Adventure types like this in terms of story, but it does manage to stand out a bit thanks to its ending and its main character.

GAMEPLAY | 9/20

You will most likely be familiar with the Metroid formula by now. Start with limited abilities, explore multi-pathed levels multiple times by leveraging new abilities that you gain constantly as you progress. It's a pretty popular genre, and Metroid games pretty much pioneered them. Unfortunately, early iterations come with some growing pains as the developers looked to find a balance of their vision and what they could realistically expect players to be willing to push through.

Before we get there, here is the gist of how this game plays. You control Samus in a 2D side-scrolling game where you can shoot projectiles, jump and even roll up into a ball to squeeze through holes. Your goal is to traverse this map and find all Metroids, which are parasitic creatures that, unsurprisingly, form the main enemy types in this series. Throughout your journey you get access to new skills and attacks, which not only allow you to stand a chance against later bosses, but to also unlock areas that were previously inaccessible.

I personally have a mixed relationship with Metroidvanias, though "utility-gated progression" usually isn't my main issue but rather the convoluted design of the maps and/or the gameplay itself, and both creep up their ugly heads here as well, though I can excuse it much more for a 30 year old game rather than some of the newer entries into the genre.

Firstly, this is a Game Boy game, and unlike the NES version, Samus covers 1/4 of the screen here, which from the get-go makes for an awkward affair when trying to dodge enemies reliably. Her jumps are not sensitive to button presses at all, so you need to press JUMP quite a while in order to make a long jump, and in areas where platforms are separated by some sort of health-evaporating substance in between, these jumps can become quite unreliable and hence frustrating.

Frustrating is actually a big thing with this game. The reason why you want to take hits as few times as possible is because there are few save points here and they are pretty far from each other, so you will constantly find yourself warp all the way back to the checkpoint whenever you die. And due to the level amount of health you're playing with, you'll find yourself die a lot. There are no immediate do-overs. Die and you go all the way back.

The worst part however is the fact that there is no map. So you either have to draw the map along as you play or have great memory. Plus, progress forward isn't as cut and dry as moving forward. Sometimes, progressing means finding some randomly placed hole in a wall that you can only reach by turning into the balled-up shape I was just talking about. It doesn't help that many areas look exactly the same in this game, adding to the confusion of it all.

Overall, the concept of this series I definitely like. This one just didn't age well and I don't know how children at the time could possibly beat this unless they'd spend dozens and dozens of hours of running through walls and having to rely on magazine guides, and whether it's fun to have to use those sources to beat a game is in the eye of the beholder I suppose.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10

No voice acting. There is an interesting that happens from time to time where the music simply cuts off and you're left playing for a while whilst just listening to the sound effects. It's odd on the one hand, but satisfying on the other because I actually like the various sound effects that you hear, whether it's shooting your projectiles, the sound of each step you take, collecting items and some beep sounds that play that apparently are part of the "Caverns 1 Theme". Whenever the music does play, you've got to understand the limitations of the Game Boy sound engine. So what they managed to do with that is pretty impressive. Obviously, if you give a listen to the 3DS remake OST, you'll see what increased technical capabilities will allow you to do, but the soundtrack here plays into the atmosphere of the levels very well here, and gets downright eerie whenever you get into a boss fight. In contrast, the surface of SR388 theme sounded a bit too playful to me, but I get it considering that's the music that kids will spend most of their time listening to. Do you dare and get further into the game than you're expected to? That's where you are met with tracks that match the increased tension and where this gets a lot more atmospheric.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 5/10

If you rate this based on the capabilities of the Game Boy, the game doesn't look all too bad. If you rate it compared to what you would have gotten had this been an SNES game, it doesn't rate quite well. If you go somewhere down the middle, you can appreciate that this game was the reason that the Samus sprite got changes to it that would last until today, that the Metroids look positively disgusting and .. well yeah, that's pretty much it. The blackground is simply black, levels look very similar in design, the sprite size of Samus looks kind of awkward and creating holes in walls that hide progress and not giving any graphical indicator that something might be behind there is just an odd choice. And overall, the game simply doesn't look so good due to being a Game Boy game, which you might like yourself but is what I'd call an "acquired/nostalgic taste".

ATMOSPHERE | 8/10

The game does a pretty good job actually of throwing you into hostile territory filled with vile and disgusting creatures. Whenever the non-music track plays or the tracks that hit the eerie tones of the graphical presentation play, this can become quite atmospheric and immersive, and downright scary I'd imagine for young gamers whenever a Metroid is chasing you down.

CONTENT | 5/10

Many different abilities that you can get your hands on as you play the game. The journey there can be rough however, as you will spend many hours trying to figure out where to go next, which some might call intentional and I'd call boring and not well executed here. Apart from that, there isn't much content here, but if you enjoy the bashing your head against walls aspect of it, this will be enough to keep you occupied for a dozen hours+.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 3/10

I appreciate the idea behind this game of having to traverse a hostile environment and find your way through it without any hand-holding. Unfortunately, my idea of a fun game is in contrast to what the game design philosophy of Metroid's creators is, at least for the early entries in the series. No map is tough on its own, but progress hidden in walls (forcing you to check every wall), same looking areas and abilities that don't control all that well (the spider ability) makes for too many (subjective) issues here.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10

The concept remains intriguing, though I'd say the sequel has not yet gotten it to where it will eventually go in this series.

REPLAYABILITY | 1/5

There isn't really any particular reason/motivation given for replaying this. Chances are, if you somehow beat this, you'll be satisfied and ready to move on.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

The game worked well at all times.

OVERALL | 53/100

Unless you really enjoyed the original or really, really enjoyed the later entries in the Metroid series, I think this game is very skippable. Even if you did enjoy later Metroid games, you will likely miss the QoL features that will be introduced later. What this game does well is create a tense atmosphere, but I would agree that that's the gist of it, unless you are a big fan of the concept of hitting early wall to see if you can go through some of them, or if you enjoy drawing a map as you go. Otherwise, you will likely have to rely on guides to make progress, and have to do so many times. So right now I would call this a good proof on concept, just like the original, but the next step hasn't really been taken yet in my opinion.

A better puzzle game than a roguelike. Often found myself wishing each episode was deterministic, maybe with an optional randomized mode set separately. The mechanics and systems here are really fun but it gets dragged down by forced replays due to poor luck. Could it be argued this is intentional due to the game's story? Maybe but I don't think it excuses it either way. Some other "tactical" type roguelikes like Slay The Spire always feel beatable in practically every scenario due to the variety of options and opportunities to squeeze everything out of what you're given. That was absolutely not the case here. Despite the mechanical depth it felt like options were usually limited, which is why I compare it more to a puzzle game in terms of its strengths.

The dev did a thread on the development of the reunion episodes that I found quite engaging. It's clear that a lot of thought and care went into this. It's still very fun and has a ton of creativity packed into it! It's a shame that the core concept is at odds with the execution.

What the hell guys? This game is a masterpiece. A giant leap from its predecessor, introducing almost all skills and items (in 1991!?!?) that the franchise has ever seen and utilizing them in ways that all sequels have not even come close. (The vertical gameplay with space jump and spider ball is just brillant)

They should have called this game „Metroid: Annihilation“. The main plot is as badass as anything I have ever played. Miss Aran travels to the home planet of the Metroids with only one goal: To eridicate every last one of them before the Space pirates can get them. The main objective to actually hunt down all metroids is extremely motivating and delivers great exploration opportunities and encounters with many suprising secrets and clever traps.

Since you have to scan every corner of SR388 to eliminate every last one of the evil brains or whatever the metroids actually are (their various and challenging evolutionary states are both fascinating and horrifying) , I automatically found every uprade which was very rewarding. The map and general presentation is beautiful and feels very authentic and mysterious.

The late game or let’s say Samus' final rampage completely changes the pace of the adventure and really lets you show off all the weapons and skills you have gained on your journey.

The plot twist at the end made me tear up and I will boldly claim that Moon Studios have been paying a huge homage to this narrative in "Ori and the Blind Forest".

It's the perfect Gameboy game. Anybody who does not believe me, please turn on your switch, print out the map and let the great space genocide begin!

To be honest, and I have the feeling I'll be crucified for this: I don't understand the love Diablo 2 has garnered over the years. The Diablo series managed to co-opt and narrow the term “ARPG” to mean an isometric, point-and-click game through its sheer popularity, and over twenty years later Diablo 2 is still considered the ARPG among many gamers. Blizzard gave Diablo 2 quite the tune up with Diablo II: Resurrected, but is the game still a “masterpiece” with a new paint job? TL;DR at end.

I got D2:R because I played Diablo IV's beta as a necromancer and enjoyed that a good bit. Necromancers are rarely offered as an option, so it felt fresh summoning an army out of recently-slain corpses. I figured D4's launch would suck (nailed it, though you don't have to be Nostradamus to know Blizzard has a failure streak to maintain) and I didn't want to pay $70 to wait for a game to be good. So I got D2:R (and 3, on sale as a combo) as I figured, “When people say “Diablo”, they mean Diablo 2. It's gotta be good.”
So, is it?
To sum up my thoughts: kind of, not really. Many games are important, defining moments of the medium and easily cement their place in history; the harder part is still remaining good – or even playable – years later. With the press of the 'G' key, the game immediately shifts over to the original audio/visuals and good lord, have things improved. More remasters need to offer this, if for nothing other than the five seconds you'll spend in the old graphics to know you were wise to buy the remaster.
I'd say Blizzard was able to breathe a lot of life into Diablo 2 thanks to hard work on the visuals, but it still plays like a very old game and I fail to see why this is considered one of the greats when most of it is a bland and repetitive snore. I'm pretty sure the only reason I had fun at all was because I played with a friend, but every game is improved with friends, so that's hardly a "pro" to me. Alone, D2:R is almost dreadful.

The story has excellently rendered cutscenes accompanying each of its five Acts, but you'll never care about what's going on. Diablo was an asshole but someone killed him, oh wait he's coming back to life, kill him again. That's the game. The world is a few varied landscapes depending on the Act but there's nothing to learn about it except through maybe “gossip” dialogue options of NPCs. That's fine for me: I don't need to know more, they already lost me and they're sure to lose you, too.

The visuals all look good with great textures and the animations clearly kept the “jerking” look of yore intentionally; all very solid. Again, you can go back and look at the old textures and sounds with one button press, then right back to the Resurrected look when you realize how awful that was.
The UI is pretty terrible and probably my least favorite part of the game's experience. Only two buttons are shown, your left and right mouse clicks, and you can look through a clunky menu or use the F-row of keys to swap between abilities. 'W' can be pressed to switch weapons instantly to a second set, which can have its own presets. I don't think there's any denying that this feels bizarrely limited and stiff to navigate. For some reason, the controller support is quite good, where they bump that number from two visible inputs to five, and you can hold a trigger down to see five more! This is huge!... but since I prefer playing on a mouse and keyboard, I'm stuck with the clunky shit, memorizing what each key from F1 through F8 does and whether its assigned to M1 or M2. Very disappointing. At least key remapping works well?

ARPGs, as now-defined by Diablo, never interested me much. I think they're pretty boring. Your abilities rarely change and while boss fights may be exciting changes of pace, the game is almost always going to be a grind. By design you're supposed to walk into a room and, through basically muscle memory, wipe the whole place out, probably without opening your eyes. You will then do this several hundred times with little to no variety. Because your inputs are so miserable, having to actually swap between abilities on the fly is a nuisance and the developers seem to know this, so it's walk in, slaughter, move on.
To overly simplify, as I see it, there's really only two styles of gameplay: direct and summoners. Barbarians, Amazons, etc. are direct: they'll attack each enemy directly with their melee or ranged weapon and aside from maybe your slave-- I mean “hired help”, you're doing all the damage on your own. Necromancers and druids are summoners: they spawn an army to do their bidding for them and are largely managerial, making sure their wolves or their skeletons are full in number. Occasionally, they chip in with melee or ranged attacks, too, but their power comes from their numbers.
Summoners are insanely strong. I played as a necromancer while my buddy played as a druid, and together we just ran through most of this game while our combined armies tore shit up. This made the game pretty boring, honestly. Only Diablo and his brother, Baal, forced us to actually try and play differently. Two boss fights across god knows how many hours, that's it. Most of this game played itself for us.
Direct fighters are laborious. I've played a few hours as an Amazon, and while it's nice to actually have a direct role in the death of my enemies, now it's all on me. Everything has slowed way down, and since I've beaten the game as a necromancer, I know exactly how much more I have to go and it seems like quite the painful endeavor without someone else there acting as a summoner. It's less “boring”, I suppose, but not in a very good way. I doubt I'll finish as my Amazon.

You ever have a friend recommend you a TV show with the addendum, “Oh, the first season sucks, you gotta get through it because the second is where it gets good!”? You're probably not watching that show, right? People do that with games, too, of course: “Final Fantasy XIII gets good twenty/thirty hours in.” Diablo 2 is the first time I've ever seen a game really start to get good only after you've beaten the entire thing and can go through again on Nightmare difficulty.
Once beaten, you can just start the whole thing over again immediately as your same character. You keep all your gear and whatever is in your storage box. In the starting zone for the second time, my buddy and I finally started getting good loot. Maybe it was because we didn't play as Ladder characters, but we rarely ever saw yellow gear on Normal, it was now on Nightmare that we finally got a bit more of a challenge (as summoners, mind you) and loot to accompany the added trouble.

I have the ball rolling on that slightly better Nightmare playthrough, but I'm not sure I'll finish. I feel comfortable reviewing the game here. Finishing that Amazon's playthrough is even less likely. How can I possibly recommend a game to someone when it takes an entire playthrough to start feeling something from it? Most of my first playthrough felt like I was atrophying and the game ran on autopilot.
Maybe the real Diablo was the sheer number of times we had to teleport back to base to sell all of our junk along the way.

TL;DR This game isn't very fun to me, regardless of your class's play style. I like the variety offered (necromancers, hell yeah), but really it boils down to just two styles and they both have issues. As far as “classics you need to try” go, this isn't one of them.
Also, it has been two years and yet if you don't cap your frame rate in the settings, D2:R will try to set your computer on fire. Why hasn't Blizzard patched this? Other than attempting to melt your hardware, this is a pretty good remaster of a boring game.

If not for the awful console it was on, I could maybe call it one of the most impressive platformers I've ever played? Definitely better than the first one, feels better in almost every way, but I didn't enjoy being forced to find keys to end the level, and the final boss was pretty annoying. Everything else though was top-notch. If only this game could have been ported to any other console, SNES, GBA, the DS, ANYTHING, then more people would be able to experience the great game inside. But it's stuck on one of the worst consoles to ever come out of Nintendo. It's like the game is trapped in hell.

The animations and backgrounds are spectacular, most of the art looks nice, if a little busy for the console it was on, but even after changing the emulator from the infamous classic Virtual boy Red and Black to a far more eye pleasing Black and White, I still found myself dealing with horrible eye-strain. Something about the way these games look just hurts the eyes. It was a console that deserved to die, but VB Wario Land didn't deserve to go down with it! Someone once said it best:

"It's actually a good game. Damn good. But, only one problem: It's on VIRTUAL BOY."

As weird as it is to say, I consider Metroid 2 a rare example of a Nintendo-made horror game. You're all alone on a dangerous planet, full of lifeforms that are continulously evolving into ever more dangerous forms. It feels like you're in a race against the clock, before the Metroid race evolves to a level where not even you will be able to stop them from consuming the rest of the galaxy. So, there you are, wandering deeper into the caverns, caverns that seem to be stretching on for infinity, your footsteps the only audible sound, until... wham! A metroid is flying straight at you, and a frantic battle of survival ensues.

Okay, so it's not actually scary at all, but I think that's what the developers wanted to evoke, I think that element of claustrophobia and "hunt or be hunted" is Metroid 2's core goal. The attempt at creating this kind of atmosphere for a Gameboy game is a respectable one, and is really the game's most redeeming aspect. I will always think of that "moment" when you enter the final area, it gives me goosebumps everytime. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself has aged even worse than the original Metroid 1, which is why I cannot ultimately recommend this one.

Taking away color and zooming the screen in did Metroid's exploratory focus absolutely no favors. Areas look even more dull than they used to be. There's caves upon caves, all repetitive, most difficult to memorize and distinguish from each other. And there's still no map, other than the one I heavily relied on from a guide.

There's something to be said about the pros of getting lost in video games, but I think that only applies when the areas you stumble into are distinct enough to a point where the feeling of discovering a new location heavily washes over you. Like when you decide to explore a different part of town in real life, after wandering throughout the same locales you've known for years, and this intense feeling of unfamiliarity hits you. I hope whoever reads this gets the analogy, because I have no better one to offer at 2AM in the night.

Anyway, Metroid 2 does not offer the feeling of getting lost in unfamiliar territory, all it has is the uncertainty of whether you're even lost or not. Constant doubt gets in the way of genuinely enjoying the game, and by a certain point, I get impatient and just want it to be over.

Other than the neat little thought about this being a horror game in disguise, I've gotten little out of the experience. The next Metroid game, Super Metroid, will be where I have more positive things to say. There's also the fanmade remake of Metroid 2, AM2R, which is so good that I treat it as an official Metroid game and wholeheartedly recommend you make that version of the game one of your top priorities.

So, when I beat NEStroid a few days ago I said that my biggest takeaway was how impressed I was by the technological leap to the SNES and Super Metroid. With that fresh in mind, I don't know if anything could have prepared me for how amazed the Game Boy entry would leave me.

To me the Game Boy has always been this antiquated piece of gaming history, like the evolutionary second step from calculator to video game, not entirely there yet. From the few games I'd given real time to, I don't think that was an unfair assessment, and in going through every Metroid game I initially skipped 2 because I thought there was no way it could hold up given the hardware it was chained to. I was wrong.

Metroid II is a game that, despite having many more, or at least many different, roadblocks than it's NES counterpart, manages to be a rousing success on nearly every front. It improves almost every element from the original and adds dozens of changes and new mechanics that would be series staples from here forward. The lack of a map still makes the game confusing, but the more linear and fair structure of the game makes it fully playable without a guide with very minimal friction.

The more legible structure of the game was a huge boost to my enjoyment already, but what frankly blew me away is the way that movement and combat function moment-to-moment in this game. Super Metroid, for what clunkiness it has, remains one of my favourite-feeling games to play, and so when I started playing Metroid II and found the gameplay to be nearly identical, with crouching, more manageable jumping and rolling, and other QOL features I missed, my jaw dropped to the floor. How was this running on what is functionally a souped up calculator?

It's not perfect. In some very obvious ways it's not perfect, like the lack of real bosses and the holdover of some identical rooms which make it very easy to get yourself turned around, but from start to finish there wasn't really a moment where I felt that the game was failing in any of the things it set out to do. Metroid II is a core link to what we know as Metroid today, and it's no wonder that it has been remade as many times as it has.