All around a very solid experience. The whole story was really well crafted and there was always so much intrigue going on that made me curious and try to piece bits of the plot together. But none of that would have been possible if it weren't for a handful of incredibly well-written, endearing, and entertaining characters. I'm talking about Makoto, Kyoko, Byakuya, Sakura, Celeste, Alter Ego, and the one and only Mastermind. They all made the story something I could truly care about, because I cared for them. Makoto's development throughout the game was really awesome to see unfold. As the main character I thought he was a great representation of the player going through all of this at the same time, and an incredible embodiment for the theme of Hope. Learning about Kyoko's story and getting answers about her was a contributor to a lot of my intrigue in the story. And overall her personality very nicely fits into the category of characters I typically love. Byakuya is an asshole, moving on. I thought Sakura and Celeste's motives and endings were super well-written and compelling. For Sakura in particular I didn't think much of her at all until chapter 4 where I really started to like her. Alter Ego is a character I was not expecting to find so endearing. It made Chihiro's character and circumstances during the story a lot more sad and overall it was just really hard to not like Alter Ego. And finally the Mastermind who I won't name. Despite not BEING there during almost the whole game, their presence was still around during the whole story. And the reveal and subsequent display of how insane and off the walls they were was an unexpected twist.

On the otherhand, there were some characters who were really annoying or straight up uninteresting such as Toko, Hiro, and Hifumi. The rest of the cast was either fine or didn't have enough content for me to form a real opinion. I won't go into why I dislike or don't feel anything towards those characters, all I have to say is that some are just gimmicky and nothing else, and some are just boring and forgettable. I think those specific characters who I wasn't super fond of ended up bringing the game down quite a bit for me, but not in a way that they ruined the experience.

Absolutely perfect game from start to finish. After playing Returns I can clearly see that it walked so that Dread could run. Dread takes all of the best aspects in the previous games along with refining all the issues of the previous games and combined them to create this masterpiece. Every area is super memorable and fun to explore; the gameplay flow is just seamless and that makes returning to previous areas feel natural and not like a chore. The abundant number of boss fights is incredible and they're all super fun to fight against. They also added so much enemy and boss variety which is a problem that I had with Returns. The EMMIs are leagues above the SA-X in Fusion when it comes to gameplay due to their unscripted nature and forcing you to be skillful in avoiding them until you have the means to destroy them.

Lastly I wanna talk about the story and Samus' character in this game. While this game is much more focused on the gameplay (as the previous games mostly were did as well), there isn't an insane amount of story content, which is fine. Instead we get major story reveals throughout the game which unveil a ton of cool lore and story that ties the previous stories together. Overall, this made Samus' character the most interesting she has been in the 2D series, and she doesn't need to utter a single word for me to feel that way about her.

Dread is easily the best 2D Metroid, and probably the best 2D platformer I've played so far. It expands on everything the previous games had set up for it, and refines all the issues to create the most smooth gameplay experience in the series.