The underlying game systems continue to be satisfying, but christ do these games get more drab and lifeless with every annual release. It doesn't do for a game franchise this driven by charm and whimsy above most other concerns to continually shed what's left of its personality in pursuit of constant Content churn.

What really soured me on this entry is its appalling live service elements, though. Spending the entire single-player portion of the game showing off your generation's main gimmick and then gating actual player access to it behind stringently time-limited online raids is complete garbage.

Writing improves as the game goes along, and it can be very touching and heartbreaking at times.

The many farming mechanics are odd and don't fit the game at all, they just slow it down for no reason.

Nobody plays this game for the excitement of gathering 20 cedar logs.

It's a very good game that could have and should have been shorter.

Honestly had too much nostalgia for this game and was a little bit disappointed when I finally completed it. The pacing of the story is terrible and barely any of it advances at all by the endgame point.
Dialogue is tremendously slow and barely anything of importance is said for how fucking much anyone talks, also the dialogue box disappears and reappears for almost every line that is said, with characters animations and emotes in between. It really makes it a slog.
The combat is also weirdly designed and too easy. If you can prepare 4 max level summons before a boss and nearly one-shot it in one turn maybe you should reconsider the game's mechanics.

What makes this game special is its presentation and puzzles. Music is gorgeous and it looks great, I particulary like the character's portraits. Puzzles are also pretty good. But even then it just can't carry a JRPG with such lackluster story progression and combat.

Okay so this is my fault. I wanted to play the Metroid games in chronological order, while Metroid 1 on the NES and Metroid 2 on the Gameboy are honestly borderline unplayable now due to the way games progressed I opted into playing their remakes Metroid Zero Mission and Samus Returns 3DS instead. While I though Zero mission was an incredible start, I thought Samus returns was a masterpiece one of the most fun games I ever played. So going into Super Metroid which is widely regarded as one of the greatest games of all time I had my expectations set really high and while it didn't blow me away like Samus returns I still think most of what's here is honestly pretty great. I'll start with what's better. The non linearity of the map made exploring so much more exciting. Like I felt like I could tackle these areas in any order and looking at walkthrough at the end to see the few missile locations I missed, I honestly did it in a complete different order than any of the guides I looked at and I love shit like that, like my playthrough was unique. I seriously for the first time felt like a true outsider on this planet and each different section felt tonally different, this is also help by the music which is easily my favorite of the series by far. I loved how the combat all throughout the game felt it had a lot of weight and while I honestly missed the parrying system, there was so much enemy variety and ways to tackle each encounter that it made up for it. Finally the thing that I LOVED most in this game were the boss fights, while my one minor critique of Samus returns was the slightly repetitive boss fights that by the end while gaining in difficulty none of them aside from a couple were super unique. Every single fucking boss fight in this game was INCREDIBLE, seriously they way they each had this grand scale to them and the intimidation honestly they felt like Dark Souls bosses with studying their pattern and figuring out when I could attack their weak point. The difficulty was brutal but in the best way and even the gimmicky fights were fun figuring out what they wanted you to do. Seriously I loved each of these encounters and looked forward to them. Now when I say the reasons for me disliking this game is my fault it's because I'm following up a game Made in 2017 with a game made in 1994. The Quality of life changes made in Later remakes make small things in this just too frustrating. First off, not marking if an item was received or not when you go through the room made back tracking SUCH a chore, which was one of my favorite parts in previous games, like not remembering if that dot on the map was a Rocket I couldn't get because I didn't have the right power up or if I did get it SUCKED, and honestly the reason this is the first Metroid game I didn't 100% because I couldn't care enough to try to remember every single location. Second off traversing the entire map while constantly needing to pause because the mini-map was too zoomed in to make me remember where I was and on top of that the inability to not be able to switch different areas on the map so I had to physically travel across the map which in parts are so confusing because if you go through a secret area and then leave and come back that is never marked on your map so I constantly had to keep switching to the X-ray attachment to be like oh there WAS an invisible wall there but I've gone through it a million times JUST MARK IT OR MAKE IT UNINVISIBLE AFTER I GO IN IT THE FIRST TIME. Like my biggest problem was half way through I had to pull up a map of the game on my iPad and make notes of where I've been where power ups I didn't get where and it felt like I was doing home work and I know the graph paper thing is an appeal to people who grew up on Metroid 1 but it just felt like I was doing homework at a point and constantly took me out of the game, which honestly was so fun when I'd get into a groove but it was the breaking up by those things that really just killed me. Also I felt like I was fighting with the controls for sections of the game, specifially the wall jumping and the screw attack, there were just too many points where I know I was doing the inputs correct and Samus would fall and I'd have to wrap back around to make sure the jump went through, same with the grappling hook. When it felt good it felt great but there were too many times where you would SEE it make connection with the block and you would just not connect and that was frustrating. But even with those complaints what is here for the time is such a great game in so many respects and seriously hold up so well, it just makes me want to ROM hack it to add those QOL changes so that it could be the perfect game I wanted it to be so bad. Either way for an almost 30 year old game it holds up pretty impressively.

Some very evil level design choices, such as having doors that can only one have side not stay open, really hampers the explorative nature present. Very precise and often unresponsive maneuvers can leave simple traversal feel like a chore. I think the combat difficulty was perfect. Samus can feel unwieldy at times, so enemies can die fairly quickly while still feeling like threats. The boss fights give you just enough room to maneuver comfortably. A lot of complaints are minor, but they carry through the entire game. Having one button dedicated to switching gear felt like crap in dire situations. The way certain enemies need to be dealt with felt bad. It's a mixed bag I can only chalk up being a product of its time. Not a bad product by any means, but a fresh one, for better or worse.

The original kino, Super Metroid is so close to being perfect but it's ambitious control scheme just doesn't hold up too well today. The high points of this game are so high, but unfortunately there are a few really annoying lows. First of all I have to respect how advanced this game was for something on the SNES - amazing environmental storytelling, a bunch of vastly different areas, and a load of items to collect. The introduction is perfect, the bosses are great, and the ending deserves all the honor it gets. Unfortunately a few of the aspects of the game such as the clunky controls for things like the Space Jump and just jumping in general, and the item switching are more difficult to use than they should be. Maridia is an awful area with such strange design choices. I hate it so much and it destroys the great pacing that had been established. As well as that the game goes a bit far with the crypticism - I like figuring out where to go next but hiding vital progression behind unseeable hidden walls is dumb (until you get the X-Ray Scope which should really be mandatory and within the first area). Obviously you're supposed to have the manual, but still, cmon. I hate saying this for most games but Super would REALLY benefit from a remake/remaster that polishes out its few blemishes. Great Metroid game though.