It's a much better version of the original Metroid. Yes, that's a back-handed compliment.

It's a decent enough Metroidvania Lite with how linear and easy to 100% it is. It's got a thick atmosphere drenched in the isolation feeling with how inescapably far down into dangerous territory you get. That definitely makes its presentation its biggest strength.

It's just a shame it's still a game held back by a lot of clunky movement. Old Space Jump, as usual, doesn't work very well, and as much as the crunched screen is good at emulating the feeling of being in a dark, claustrophobic cave, they have a tendency to place annoying lil enemies just barely out of view of jumps and it gets annoying.

The fights against the Metroids try to have variety in the rooms they reside in, but this hardly changes the fact that they ram into you at speeds Samus can't really react to, so they feel more like stat checks than actual fights. Also Zetas are more dangerous than Omegas for some reason.

I give Samus Returns a lot of shit for missing the point of Metroid II so hard that it becomes milquetoast, but yeah. It fixes two of this game's biggest annoyances in having better controls and Metroids that are at least more interesting to fight.

Reviewed on Feb 18, 2023


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