Like Doronko Wano and Nottolot, this is another game from Bamco's New Employee Training Project. It's a thing they do where incoming employees are encouraged to work on smaller games to hone their craft before getting moved onto larger projects. Some get picked to be released for free on steam. It's a cool idea I'd love to see more places try.

Out of the three, this one does the best job of showing off a nice idea, even if it's my least favourite of them. You can see the potential here for a fun puzzle platformer.

I decided to play Prime, again. Only I thought I'd try hard mode, as I did the same on my 2nd Dread playthrough and I had a great time. Of course they are the same thing...

It was pretty much business as usual until I got to the Phazon Mines. That soon started to give me a kicking. But once I picked up the plasma beam, it felt like I was in god mode. And then I got to Ridley. Spent the last 3 days basically doing 2 (3 if you count the 2 stages of Metroid Prime, the boss, not the game itself) bosses. Ridley took more attempts than the final boss, but it was just a case of repetition and grinding it out. If you get complacent or greedy, you get punished for it. Safe to say I did both several times. What, am I supposed to learn from my mistakes?

But it was a rewarding playthrough, and finishing it felt great. I was in two minds just to fuck it off, but I'd come this far, and surely to give up at the last boss would be pathetic. So I soldiered on. Overran on my lunch break, but it was worth it.

This might have overtaken Dread as my favourite Metroid.

I enjoyed this a lot, but if I was writing some kind of reviewer’s tagline it’d be something like “The Sea is beautiful but not very deep.”

The game wears it’s influences on its sleeve, openly a tribute to classic SNES JRPG’s, so when it’s evoking the vibes of those games it’s all very nice and pleasant, but what that means is that by design the story, world, and characters, feel like they’re written that way to most emulate the feel of other games that you might have played in the past and liked.

If the starting point is “I want to make something that’s like this other thing.” Well then, it’s just not going to be as interesting as the more original work.

Maybe I’m being overly cynical and presuming too much about the writers’ goals, but it certainly feels that way, particularly when they’re putting in meta-jokes about JRPG tropes… you don’t need to undermine the reality of your own world with trite observations.

What all that means is moment, I’m enjoying the story, I’m liking the characters, but I also have this vague feeling that it’s mainly because it’s very deliberately like other things that I’ve also liked.

The Combat then – again enjoyable, it’s a good take on turn-based combat, it’s probably getting the “lock” mechanic from something else too although I haven’t played whatever game that is. I do sometimes find it irritating that enemies would suddenly go.

“Here prick, break 12 locks of every damage type in one turn!”

And I’m like

“Doesn’t seem fair?????.”

It is fine though, you can’t 100% break the lock every time by, but it can feel odd and like you might be missing something sometimes.

I do think if the game were any longer the lack of complexity would have started to be a big problem. There isn’t much you can do with character progression or builds in this game. When you level up you simply choose between what stats you want built up.

That’s fine, the combat is more puzzle and decision based, but I got through this entire game without dying (I did die once on a simple random encounter because I’d completely forgotten to heal after the battle before, and I’m absolutely cursing myself for this) There are relics you can turn on to make the game harder (and easier) and that’s all fine, and I’m not saying introducing lots more mechanics and character build variety would necessarily work in this game, it would probably just create other problems. But I think it’s a system that feels like it never quite gets out of third gear.

I feel like I’ve spent this whole time criticizing a game I really enjoyed and had very few complaints about, but that’s the thing. It doesn’t do much wrong, but doesn’t do much that’s amazing either… although that one bit where you traverse to a new area for the final third of the game, wow!

I played through this when it was added to NSO last year and I was a little underwhelmed. Clearly 2023 me was on something. This is a cracking wee Metroid, perfectly formed for the system it was made for. Imagine any other wee 2D handheld game absolutely dripping with this kind of atmosphere and dread. And it looks great. Playing handheld on Switch looks great (not so good playing docked, but it's still lovely), and really is the best way to experience the NSO handheld library.

I really appreciated this time around, how suited it is as a GBA Metroid. Not too long that you've got to commit hours on end staring at that tiny screen, and there's still plenty there to keep the spirit of Super Metroid going. And I don't know how I never noticed how much Metroid Dread takes from this one in terms of overall tone and sound.

These games are flipping great, and we really need Zero Mission adding to the GBA library now. And the other Prime games should be on Switch, too. Not that I don't have the Trilogy on Wii and 2 on Gamecube, but that's beside the point! 😅

Back on point, I don't think I'd have stuck with this if I had it back in the day. The Nightmare boss made me break my self imposed no save state rule, the annoying bastard, and I did find myself turning the air blue a couple of times, but overall, this is some top Metroid, and perfect for an hour or so here and there.

I cannae believe so many folk are treating such an ok game as some big line in the culture war sand. If they took a few minutes away from signing petitions and replying to every Sony tweet with their hashtag, and actually bought the thing they'd see that no amount of skin can save this from being just very fine.

Flat shallow characters, messy predictable story, repetitive combat. This game has it all!

Fights are mostly just waiting for the enemy to do something so you can parry it and do a burst attack. There are combos, but you almost never get to do full ones because the enemy is starting its next swing and your only options are block, parry, or dodge. Good luck with that last one, because the dodge is dogshit. It's supposed to be for moving away from unblockable attacks, but the timing for it just feels off. This is made painfully worse when more than one enemy is targeting you, and your Souls instincts kick in looking for i-frames that aren't there.

Boss fights and music mostly rip though, so it has that going for it.

The characters however are like interacting with cardboard. Everyone is so basic. They're saying words that sound important, but there's so little there beneath it in both the acting or body language. Adam has to be the worst of these. The man feels like a placeholder model and voice through the whole game. It's wild that's he's one of the main cast. They're all desperately trying to get you to care about a story that feels vague, but by accident. Not some kind of "Oh the secrets are being kept from you" thing, but like they forgot to give us necessary info because they know it all since they're the ones making the game. I burst out laughing at the end when some daft stuff happens and a character just goes "What are you talking about?" as this person walks away without saying anything. It's exactly how I felt in the moment.

I'm convinced this whole thing could have worked better as more of a boss rush with bits of story or travel in-between à la Furi. I didn't feel like I was connecting wih the people or what was going on when I was trekking across empty desert doing fetch quests where every one ends with finding a corpse with an attached dying message. It's a poor man's Nier Automata, and that doesn't do it any favours in a world where I've come to resent a game I loved because it's done cross-overs with fucking everything and I'm sick of seeing 2B. THEY MADE ME SICK OF SEEING A NICE BIG ARSE!