"Don’t worry… I’ll end this. Once and for all."

A welcome return to form, with some of the smoothest 2D action platforming one would dream of a new Metroid playing like. Dread mostly plays out like a greatest hits album for the Metroid series but given the gaps between Fusion & now it seems only fair to reintroduce veterans and recruits of the series here. I think from here on out I hope the next 2D game comes sooner rather then later and they take some new directions in the design, mechanics and settings going forward. To my surprise getting a true sequel to Fusion was unexpected and led to some incredibly satisfying payoffs to the previous games and the final moments go unreasonably hard. Still not a huge fan of 2.5D style games and parts of Dread look pretty rough at points in comparison to its legacy titles but this is probably the best use of the dimension I've played at this time. Here's hoping for a bright future for the series going forward and Prime 4 isn't just vaporware collecting dust inside Nintendo HQ at this time.

While I'm giving this the same score as the first game, the previous title is better in my eyes. The QTE scenes and somnia were a bit more fun in this one but the general plotline is far weaker than before. There was something to be worked on here that might have been expanded or could be expanded in a sequel but there are some head scratching decisions in this one such as:

-Ignoring the events of the first game for the most part and undoing some of the character development.
-Some of the new characters, like Ryuki, land like a wet fart with no personality even when some of the new ones are great, like Tama.
-There's almost a lack of urgency from a weaker villain that's barely present in the plot alongside the jumbled way of telling the story.

I had a good time, but this really seems like a sequel the creators didn't want to make and was done for the sake of popular demand.