This is a remake of a 2004 Japan only platformer and it shows. It's frustrating but in an endearing way that will remind you of playing retro classics. Very little is explained to you, you're told the controls then thrown into a game with no further help. The level design is deliberately unfair, filled with invisible pits and platforms. Lots of traps that will kill the player or force them to reset the stage. There's a time trial mode and grinding objectives in the stages is good fun, replaying the levels takes the bite out of their hostile design. If that sounds appealing, then you will probably enjoy this game.

Metroid is back with a vengeance. This game rules, the EMMI sections are tense and exciting, the gameplay is exceptionally smooth, The levels are very well designed and the game keeps your attention til the very end. It's a wonderful blend of new and old that cements this game as one of the best metroidvanias ever. Enough gushing aside, i did have a few gripes with this game.

The controls really needed some work, there are so many buttons required for every little action and using aeon powers/ the grapple feels clunky. A sharp contrast to the smoothness of Samus' other tools. The game is also overreliant on the melee counter. It's made exceptionally clear by enemies who die in one hit to the counter will easily soak up dozens of shots from your main weapon otherwise. It's also made clear by the required counters to progress in boss fights. And i wish developers would stop putting mashing in their games. It annoyed me to no end that the best way to deal damage was to mash harder and harder.

The game also has a bit of an issue with conveyance. It's pretty difficult to tell if your attacks are doing damage, it's difficult to tell how much health you are missing and how much damage you're taking. Many of the windows of opportunity to use a counter attack are near impossible to catch unless you knew they were coming beforehand. As if you're expected to get hit by every attack at least once casually. it's a cheap trick honestly.

There was an overabundance of minibosses with way too much health in the latter half of the game. The EMMI sections felt somewhat shoehorned and i really feel there was a missed opportunity there. They're so short and they end up feeling repetitive with no real variation between them. A damn shame because the EMMI sections are some of the best gameplay dread has to offer. The ending also felt really lame, the story spent a lot of time building up something interesting and then just fizzled out with an incredibly nonsensical and unsatisfying finish. The game is very light on story details except for when it's info-dumping you during two cutscenes.

Truly a hidden gem, this game feels like a love letter to old school nintendo classics. The gameplay is a bit of a mix of dungeon crawling and exploring the overworld talking to npcs. Finding little hidden secrets is satisfying, npc dialogue is charming and legitimately funny. The difficulty is one point of contention, this game is really hard. Expect to die many times if your ego is too inflated to tone down the difficulty. Would also do well to keep some paper on hand as there is no journal tracking sidequests and a lot of puzzles are very difficult to work out mentally. If you have fondness or nostalgia for retro adventure games like Zeldas at all, you simply need to play this game.

This game is often touted as a metroidvania, though I would hazard to say that is being disingenuous to call it a metroidvania. it's really more of a puzzler with an open world twist, akin to The Witness. The game is pretty fun with some clever puzzles extrapolated out of a very basic set of actions you can take. The game itself feels somewhat dated, future puzzle games have spoiled me by having features such as the ability to rewind time if you make a mistake. This game has no such failsafe, i've been quite frustrated by a handful of puzzles requiring precise solutions in a very small timeframe. and if you mess up, well you have to start over again from scratch. It was fun though, despite my gripes.