this is like top 3 nintendo and its not even by nintendo! OMG! the movement is so freeing, the dash and the screw attack make me (samus) feel in complete mastery of my domain. The dash is easier to use and better implemented here than it was in zero mission, and much better than in prime (it wasnt in prime) backtracking here isn't a problem because you could be across the map in 20 seconds. But there really is not much backtracking here at all. You COULD backtrack, but every area feels very separate and distinct. Once you're done with one, you go onto the next. All the times i was lost and decided to backtrack, every single locked door that i now had access to just led to missile upgrades or something, not much progression or whatever. Progression in this game goes like this: u go into an area, this area has a set amount of metroids. You kill them all, then an earthquake happens and it drains some lava so you can go there and go to the next area to kill the next area's metroids. On the one hand, the metroid killing objective always gives u some kind of direction, it feels cooler than just being there “to kill the space pirates” cus your goal being destroying an invasive species before it inevitably consumes every ecosystem in the galaxy is cold as fuck. On the other, it makes everything feel segmented and further disincentivizes backtracking. Which could be a plus? I mean, I really enjoyed this setup. It felt a little linear, I guess, but I liked it. I understand both sides but i'm leaning more towards cool. If you read my zero mission review you know how much I loved fighting the metroids in that game. Each one needing the specific method to be defeated and how relentless they were in both movement and numbers made them such fun enemies. In this, there's "evolved" metroids which.. yeah, took another approach which I didn't appreciate nearly as much. But hey, at least zero mission metroids are still in this game. Doesn't excuse the boring and monotonous bullet sponge evolved metroid fights in this. Oh well. In other news, the rest of the bosses in this game are beautiful. Gone are the giant stationary dudes with one weakness!!! these bosses take full advantage of your mobility, they don't just test your ability to measure how short of a jump you need to shoot your missile at their weak point, you gotta do other cool stuff too that I don't wanna spoil. The final boss? boom? u guys know what im talking about. this guy gets it. Now, I was really close to giving this a 5/5. And the hesitation is what took it down to a 4 and a half. I just thought you guys should know I considered it. I'm really excited to play super metroid next, because apparently that's the videogame to end all videogames. So far i've been very impressed with the metroid series. And to all my vampire the masquerade bloodline awaiters, I will finish that game too. Give me time! Im doing malkavian so it takes me 20 minutes to respond to each dialogue choice.