I wish I had started this game in easy mode. They don't let you change the difficulty after you've started and I am too far to start over again. The difficulty absolutely sucks all of the joy out of this game for me, and I love the Metroid series.
The parry feature is cool but implemented so badly. It should be consistent for every enemy in the game, but some enemies have different timings to hit, making that little flash almost meaningless.
Too many points in the game feels like pointless busywork. My path will be obstructed so I'll have to go the long way around the map, but there will have been no point to the extra travel time.
The load times are long, making dying over and over again to a cheap, unfun boss even more frustrating. And traveling to a new map just gives me an excuse to scroll twitter for a couple minutes.
The game will give me a new power and that will feel great for about 2 seconds and then you're like, "what do I do with this power now? Where do I even go?".
The controls feel overly complicated, you need to use a combination of the shoulder buttons to perform different abilities like aiming, missiles, grapple gun, morph ball/slide. I could never get the hang of which ones to push so when I want to aim I end up shooting a missle or something like that. Just frustrating.
This is by far the best looking Metroid game, and it feels smooth to play. And that classic Metroidvania feel is back, which I am a fan of. But this frustrating game design and level of difficulty makes it the least fun Metroid game I've ever played. Unless you love punishingly difficult games, play this on easy.

Be an ape, fuck shit up.

One of the best soundtracks ever made for a game. It's designed to go along with the gameplay, so you contribute to the music but without it being a rhythm game.

I won't spoil the ending, but it's so cathartic. It's worth seeing this one through to the end, even though it does get pretty hard.

It had a great beginning, if a little plot dense that relies on both the first game and the VR spinoff. The graphics and art direction were amazing, the teeth based platforming was delightfully gross. And there are a ton of collectibles to invite you to explore the level and your powers to get all of them. But then some of the collectibles are locked away where you need a new power to get to, and the game doesn't always let you know that you're missing a power, and replaying a level just to get a handful of squiggly lines isn't much fun. Thankfully there's a fast travel system when you go to replay a level, but it's still a hassle to get to. Sometimes the collectible isn't even locked by a power, the game will let you see one floating right there, but then go into a cutscene and move you past it.
The gameplay is split into 3 subsections: exploration, platforming, and combat. There is a bit of platforming in the exploration, but they are different. And the combat is just combat and nothing else. As the game goes on it doesn't really change much over time and the gameplay gets somewhat stale. Changing powers and badges constantly gets annoying, I wish they could have came up with a way to map more powers to buttons and combinations. It's weird that there are no puzzles in this game, the aesthetics are cerebral but the gameplay is not. You platform to areas, sometimes fight some guys, and watch really long cutscenes.
The story isn't bad, it deals with a variety of mental health issues and handles them honestly without dumbing it down. But the actual plot is a little too inwardly focused and relies too much on the previous two games in the series. In the first game you're training to be a Psychonaut, some kind of globetrotting psychic super spy that fights crime or something, I don't actually know what they do. And in this game you get upgraded to... intern. Still training to be a full fledged Psychonaut. You go on exactly one mission, the finale of which was excellent, but then the rest of the game is all about following up on the fallout from that mission. It's all about family and the founders of the Psychonauts and what happened in the past, but nothing about what the Psychonauts do. Make me a cool psychic super spy and send me on missions involving psychic powers!

The game got too hard for me at some point so I gave in and turned on infinite health. Then the game was too easy, so I would turn it off. But I was already broken when I gave in the first time. Whenever the game would get challenging, which was all the time, I would turn god mode back on. I wouldn't allow the game to sharpen my skills. I ruined the moment to moment gameplay for myself. I got to experience the story and lore and world building, which were all excellent, but the acclaimed combat with all it's intricacies was all but lost on me. It makes me a little sad.