Definitely my favorite 2D Metroid game. It's streamlined in all the right ways - combining the missiles and super missiles, giving you area maps at the start of the area, objective markers etc. All this makes for a much smoother experience from start to finish than the rest of the series, without sacrificing the exploration of the other games as you find areas off the beaten path. The bosses are great, the pixel art is some of the best the GBA has to offer, the stuff with the SA-X kicks ass, and I could go on. This is just a really solid 2D Metroid experience, and I hope Dread builds on it.

My one complaint would be that the soundtrack is pretty mid, but I blame that mostly on the GBA soundchip sounding like a monkey pissing on a MIDI controller, and not on the compositions themselves.