Metroid NES is an astonishingly interesting video game as it continues to lower the bar for how bad a game can be while still impressing me. Fundamental flaws that make the game nearly unplayable and surely unenjoyable. HOWEVER, underneath this pretty bad game there’s this spark of creativity. The freedom of progression this game offers is pretty absurd. This game has no real structure, you can obtain items and progress however you’d like. I can’t think of many games that have this level of freedom from this era, it's the kind of freedom that reminds me of Super Metroid or BoTW. There is no one true path to the game. Boss order and item order are determined by your own whims. If the game was more functional I’d be inclined to give it more respect than this but it’s ambitious design is hampered by an extremely faulty base structure.
It is truly incredible how a game can be so far ahead of its time while also being so behind its own competition. Control-wise it's far worse than Castlevania, Mario, or Mega man. It’s horrendous how you can’t duck shoot despite so many enemies being a title below your gun. That’s not the only thing this game falls short on either. Visually Metroid NES is fucking ugly. I mean compare a screenshot of castlevania to this game and it is embarrassing. Not to mention that each area looks borderline identical, I’d say the most confusing part of the game is how any beta tester beat the game like this. If you think that each area looking similar in both visual and design regards is bad, let me tell you that the game also offers literally NO MAP at all. At least once in your playthough you are guaranteed to get lost.
I mean I could go on and on about how ass the traversal is or how genuinely confusing the game is but, it is a NES game. I mean did you have any shred of shock when I said this game is confusing and cryptic, I am literally talking about a Metroid game for the NES. “Metroid” and “NES” are pretty much one sentence usage away from being synonymous with the words “confusing” and “cryptic.” It’s not good but it's expected from a game in this era. However, the health system in this game is genuinely abysmal and EASILY is the worst aspect. You can make or look up a map for this game, it’s pretty simple, but there’s truly nothing that can fix this abhorrent health issue.
Generally this game is fairly easy, that would be the case if the extreme crutch of no healing wasn’t an issue. Of the ONLY 3 bosses, which again is embarrassing even for its time, two of them provide pretty much no challenge. Hallway's enemies rarely threatened me and have only killed me during the loading screen in between doors, which yes you can die while the game is loading. The issue is there is only one way to replenish your energy completely and that's by finding one of the very few energy tanks. Once you run out of that option, the only other way is to simply kill an enemy and PRAY it drops the 5 or 20 health replenish. It’s like being a cashier with a customer that’s paying 5 dollars in pennies. It is a grueling and painstakingly long period of time for a task that could and should have been so easy and simple. That doesn’t even matter though because if you run out of missiles in the final section of the game you have to make it HALFWAY ACROSS THE MAP to get ammo to kill enemies. Without missiles at the end of the game you cannot replenish health nor ammo. Just an absolute mess.
As I finished the game the day I started it and with 5 hours gone from my life, I feel very annoyed with my time with Metroid NES. The concept as a whole was never truly bad, the base idea of this game was used to make the masterpiece which is Super Metroid, but almost every level of the execution was off point. While this game captures specific ideas of freedom within design that I love, the game itself kinda just blows. Even after the grace of freedom, I feel I wasted most of my time playing it. Whether it is getting lost while trying to find a boss just to kill it first try with no struggle or grinding away minutes just to replenish my health, it is never truly THAT fun.