Looking back it's easy to undersell how popular Metroid was in the late 1980s. For a series often reputed as one of Nintendo's less successful franchises, the original game didn't just make a splash, but a crater, selling nearly 3 million copies by the mid-2000s. While a sequel was inevitable, it's strange that it would be released not only half a decade later, but on a remarkably less "prestigious" system. While both titles were developed by Nintendo R&D1, Metroid II: Return of Samus seems to have been developed by a largely different team, which explains why it feels so different compared to its immediate predecessor.

Metroid II differs most obviously from its predecessor in one major way: linear level progression. Linear should be used lightly, because you are still likely to get very, very lost if you are not paying attention. Unlike the original game, where you can largely explore most areas to your heart's content, Metroid II gates its areas behind progression, meaning the game feels much less free-flowing. Do not confuse this for the game turning into a standard platformer, as the bug hunt the player must undertake still requires active exploration to find all of the hidden metroids. As innovative as Metroid 1 is, Metroid II one-ups it in terms of refined game design, removing much of what could often make the original game very annoying. The gamet/geega/zeb enemies which were such a pain in the original game, while present, are far less unforgiving and never encountered in areas where they can end an entire run even in a worst-case scenario. The game's power-ups still require some searching, but they're never in areas that I feel the player wouldn't be able to discover on their own, unlike the original game's varia suit for example. Newer abilities such as the spider ball allow for greater navigation and it turns the entire environment into your playing field. The progression of the metroids from smaller creatures to beings that could tear you limb from limb with the flick of a wrist is an appropriate scale of challenge, but the last evolution in particular is perhaps too wasteful to take down (and yet, still entirely mandatory). This leads to a far more refined experience which, while perhaps not as creative or innovative as the original game, fixes a lot of its flaws and isn't nearly as frustrating. Nintendo hasn't quite nailed down the formula yet, though, as there are still some rough spots that hamper the experience. Some of the levels are a bit overly large, and while you don't exactly get lost per se, it takes far longer to traverse them than it should. The final area also requires grinding if you weren't an expert with your missiles beforehand to defeat the strongest metroids, but the missile drop rate hasn't actually been increased so you just spend a lot of time moving in between screens repeatedly to spawn them back in. Despite these rough spots, it's still largely a positive direction for the series and easier to come back to in the modern day.

Visually, Metroid II is a step forward and a step back at the same time. In terms of graphics, the game features superbly detailed spritework far beyond what the original game could offer on better hardware. Remember how Samus was sort of an amorphous blob in the original? Now you can see the individual rivets on her sprite, and her animations look far more "realistic", too. Essentially everything has had this graphical facelift, and understanding the typical level of visual fidelity Game Boy games reach, it remains mighty impressive. My main issue is that Metroid II, somewhere along the line, lost the atmosphere that the original game had in spades. Metroid's world was very colorful, which is not exactly something the Game Boy can convey and therefore not exactly a valid criticism, but there's far less variety in SR388 compared to Zebes. While there's occasional vegetation and quite a bit of sand, SR388...just isn't a particularly interesting place to explore. Gone are the space pirate lairs, the burning pits of Norfair (although the game still has lava), the sci-fi labs of Tourian, et cetera. It's all just replaced by rock, rock, and more rock. While the general idea is that the metroids are sucking the planet dry of its fauna and flora, it means that late-game areas meant to convey this don't feel much different from the earlier areas "full of life". On the flip side, the designs for the new metroid forms are very cool and it's interesting to see the effort Nintendo put into designing an entire evolutionary tree for their fictional species.

Metroid II's score was composed by Ryoji Yoshitomi, taking over from Hirokazu Tanaka in the original game, and the soundtrack must be one of the most disappointing aspects of the game as a whole. Tanaka's score for Metroid was atmospheric and memorable, fitting each area perfectly while providing iconic melodies that worked just as well on their own. Metroid 1's score feels like a living organism, and this is something Metroid II tries to achieve in a different way, but fails. While it's not without its successes - the melancholy yet beautiful title theme is worthy of great praise and the triumphant surface theme is an ear worm - it's largely weak attempts at atmospheric sound design that fall flat due to both repetitive composition and the limitations of the Game Boy's sound chip. While there is only so much you can do with the hardware provided, the jittering beeps sound more like Samus dialing a phone number rather than the ominous murmurs of SR388's creatures. The theme for the Chozo ruins is grating on the ears, as the bumbling Abbott and Costello-esque track feels like you're slamming your head against your Game Boy. While I do appreciate the moments where Metroid II uses silence to enhance its atmosphere of a dying planet, the score itself does very little if anything to add to that, and at points often detracts from it.

Metroid II: Return of Samus is sort of a two-step forward, one-step back situation. Its further improvements and refinements to the Metroid formula are much appreciated, and the game manages to fit a more linear structure without sacrificing the Metroidvania gameplay we've come to expect from the series. It's far less frustrating than anything Metroid 1 throws at you, though it is less innovative, something the game can't really be faulted for either. Unfortunately, somewhere in that five-year transition, the immersive atmosphere that Metroid was famous for left in favor of stone corridors and cacophonous music. Despite this, Metroid II is still a significantly better game than the original, and one that is worth playing for fans of the genre.

I couldn't find out a place to put this in the review, but I will add as a postscript that I think it's impressive how Nintendo managed to give Samus some poignant character development without having her speak a single word. Her refusal to kill the infant metroid despite causing the genocide of the entire species speaks volumes about her and the fact that this was achieved on an 8-bit handheld system is insane. It's a sweet and rewarding moment for beating the game.