This game felt like five stars in the first three quarters for all the reasons you'd expect - the immersive atmosphere, the memorable music, the gradual unlocking of the environment to your new skills. As a 3D Zelda fan, it felt like the whole game world was a dungeon, which I loved. Samus is given the power to ignore certain limits put on other action protagonists (for example, she can walk underwater and stand right in the center of an exploding bomb), which made her feel uniquely exciting to play as. The graphics of the remaster are gorgeous, and some of the touches that I remember amazing us on release remain a delight, like raindrops on Samus' visor and the reflection of her eyes in a flash.

It was so thrilling that I ignored the aspects that I wished could have been improved. I wanted to place map markers at points of interest. The combat was surprisingly easy for me, perhaps because of the new dual-stick controls. Some of the bosses felt their age, with a lot of waiting around. At one point, I got really into role playing as Samus and busted some enemies unnecessarily out of their cages just to make sure they were destroyed, only to find they had all respawned five minutes later when the game forced me to move right back through the area, which broke immersion. These seemed minor, though, especially in an older game.

I played the entire game on the OLED Switch tablet with the backlight at max. Without any other way to adjust the brightness, some areas of the game in that first three-quarters were frustratingly dark, well before other visor options were introduced. This remaster removed the ability to light Samus' way with her beam weapon, which I sorely missed in some very dark corners. This was only a little harder to ignore.

But then came the last quarter of the game. Decisions in the final section combining platforming, enemy design, and enemy respawning conspired to make a few of final segments (including a short one placed between a save point and a boss battle) deeply unfun. Anti-fun. As I was knocked off a platform by a color-coded, duplicating enemy in an area so dark that I needed to use a visor that stripped the enemies of their color, an area I had just moments ago cleared of these enemies but now was required to backtrack through, I felt my enjoyment draining away like Samus' health in a pool of phazon.

These miseries-by-design made all those other flaws suddenly feel less minor. I've decided on four stars, but no single star count feels quite right for such extreme highs and such lows in one game.