Metroid general

[Grub]

I have weird autistic qualifiers for these things that no one agrees with, but one big one is 'everything has to have both a combat and traversal purpose' to qualify as Metroid-like. And to maybe show my hand a bit, in my mind Metroid is the 'default' bucket and everything else gets put in the 'sotn' bucket. Hollow Knight got put in the sotn bucket simply cuz I didn't see  enough of Metroid in it (idk, HK has gear upgrading and a currency and NPCs to talk to and some other stuff that moves it too far away from Metroid for me).

I guess I can see how S&S and Death's Gambit can come across as sotn-likes, but honestly I never actually made that connection because I was just thinking of them as 2D soulsbornes, like GRIME.

I hesitate to dive into this autistic argument because really I feel like it doesn't matter too much in the end but it found the melee vs ranged combat qualifier made less of a difference on gameplay than the stat/equipment system does. SotN always reminded me more of something like Zelda 2 or Faxanadu with a metroid style progression system tacked on. All the metroid style Castlevania games have that same rpg style progression system. For me at least, that's always been the biggest divider between the two styles of metroidvania because it changes the overall game progression and turns it into something you can just grind your way out of if things get too difficult.

Hollow Knight didn't have any of that. You couldn't just go grind for XP or find a different weapon or armor or something to go and get yourself out of a tough spot. There were no rpg elements at all. It seems odd to me that people focus on something like sword vs gun when that has less of an impact on the overall game progression than something like an entire rpg/equipment/inventory system does. The funny thing is Hollow Knight's movement and control scheme was actually based on Megaman X if you read interviews with the devs which is a very much a ranged weapon game.

 

[Gossip Avoider]

Nigga I thought you were gonna hit me with 'they made the DS Vania games' or something, not the God Of War ones

They made a "classical" one for the 3DS four years prior to Samus Returns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castlevania:_Lords_of_Shadow_–_Mirror_of_Fate

 

[Soggy Floppa]

I hesitate to dive into this autistic argument because really I feel like it doesn't matter too much in the end but it found the melee vs ranged combat qualifier made less of a difference on gameplay than the stat/equipment system does.

RPG stuff for sure, its why I put the Dark Souls games in the SOTN category since fundamentally they are kind of the same thing if you boil it all down. But melee vs ranged does make a difference since it informs the level design and in Metroidvanias the level design is maybe the biggest thing next to lock and key progression. Melee based combat means levels are flatter due to limits on vertical attacks.

 

[UERISIMILITUDO]

I have weird autistic qualifiers for these things that no one agrees with, but one big one is 'everything has to have both a combat and traversal purpose' to qualify as Metroid-like.

This fucked me up once. When discussing Zelda with a buddy, I pointed out that Metroid was different precisely because practically everything the player gets in Zelda is intended for combat against a boss, say, whereas Metroid has cool items like the speed booster that are useless for that.

Imagine my surprise when the blinders were removed and I learned Metroid Dread specifically had bosses intended to get fucked up by the speed booster.

 

[Retarded Weeb]

I always just viewed it as Metroid games feel more like taking an action-platformer like Mega Man and making it exploratory instead of linear, while SotN-style Castlevania games feel more like making an Action RPG but putting it in a 2D side-view format like classic Castlevania. Despite the similarities in how their maps are laid out (as a big, interconnected 2D side-view dungeon), I would say they're not really even in the same genre.

Speaking as someone who hasn't really played other Metroidvanias, liked SotN a little more than Metroid, and basically played every Metroid game back-to-back around the time Dread came out, and found Dread to be a pretty good game. Maybe even the best one by a slim margin. No big complaints except that the stealth sections are iffy.

 

[Grub]

But melee vs ranged does make a difference since it informs the level design and in Metroidvanias the level design is maybe the biggest thing next to lock and key progression. Melee based combat means levels are flatter due to limits on vertical attacks.

The problem with that is, the Castlevania games and the soulslikes do also tend to have ranged weapons or attacks you can get. You can play Salt and Sanctuary entirely as an archer if you want to. You can use ranged attacks or whatever magic gimmicks a particular Castlevania game has.

There's also a mod for Hollow Knight you can get that changes the game to use ranged combat and it doesn't really change the game as much as you'd expect.

I always just viewed it as Metroid games feel more like taking an action-platformer like Mega Man and making it exploratory instead of linear, while SotN-style Castlevania games feel more like making an Action RPG but putting it in a 2D side-view format like classic Castlevania. Despite the similarities in how their maps are laid out (as a big, interconnected 2D side-view dungeon), I would say they're not really even in the same genre.

2d Side scrolling action rpgs existed well before real metroidvania style games existed. There were a few side scrolling action adventure games around but most of them didn't have any kind of proper item ability gated progression. But side scrolling action rpgs were actually pretty popular in the late 80's-early 90's. There's quite a few of them from that time period. From what I've read of the development of SotN, the developers were mostly inspired by those kinds of games and the Legend of Zelda.

Speaking as someone who hasn't really played other Metroidvanias, liked SotN a little more than Metroid, and basically played every Metroid game back-to-back around the time Dread came out, and found Dread to be a pretty good game. Maybe even the best one by a slim margin. No big complaints except that the stealth sections are iffy.

I'm kind of the opposite to you. I got into Super Metroid first and I never liked Symphony of the Night as much. I enjoyed it and I don't think it's a bad game or anything but I also could never understand why it got lumped together with Super Metroid.

This fucked me up once. When discussing Zelda with a buddy, I pointed out that Metroid was different precisely because practically everything the player gets in Zelda is intended for combat against a boss, say, whereas Metroid has cool items like the speed booster that are useless for that.

That's really only true of the later Zelda games. The earlier Zeldas weren't really like that as much. I think the biggest difference between Zelda and Metroid is that Zelda's items, for the most part, don't tend to open up new areas you need to go back to or act as a means of progression on their own. There's only a few times across the whole series where finding some item, without the story pushing you ahead will grant you access to the next area. Zelda's progression tends to be almost entirely story based starting as far back as the second game. Items are sometimes part of progression in Zelda, but it's the story pushing you forward mostly. In Metroid it's finding new items that pushes you forward. The items themselves are the progression. Even in Fusion, despite it being super linear and story driven, it was the items you were getting or being told to get that was driving everything forward.

 

[Susie Legion Simp]

The flower pattern was on the ground already that appears when the bosses die, but the artifact doohickey was gone.

Yeah if I'm remembering correctly I saw that which seemed like it was there, but disappeared for the Omega Griever before appearing again after it died.

Anyways I had just wanted to mention that because it really bugged me. I beat the Game, but couldn't be bothered to get all the items and whatever scans I missed. The ending seemed like it was the "Bad" ending with the characters stuck with Syluc, so I was going to go back in and collect everything else. Then I found that the Game forces you to start over from the beginning if you try to play again after beating it (I guess unless you made another save game) so I gave up on that. Doing a little research, I guess that is the only ending, and the difference is that Samus doesn't have her helmet while planting the Tree if you got everything.

 

[Lurkerish Kandor]

Imagine my surprise when the blinders were removed and I learned Metroid Dread specifically had bosses intended to get fucked up by the speed booster.

Same thing happened to me with SM:Subversion, except I felt even more like a dumbass in that case because the boss room explicitly has a pair of SpeedBooster tiles on the floor as indicators of where the recommended 'shinespark runway' is


Speedbooster definitely gets forgotten about as an offensive weapon throughout the whole franchise, which is sad because there's some really fucking cool things you could do with a Samus-sized bullet (a power-armored cannonball).

 

[DickMain]

This fucked me up once. When discussing Zelda with a buddy, I pointed out that Metroid was different precisely because practically everything the player gets in Zelda is intended for combat against a boss, say, whereas Metroid has cool items like the speed booster that are useless for that.

Imagine my surprise when the blinders were removed and I learned Metroid Dread specifically had bosses intended to get fucked up by the speed booster.

I dunno. Speed can be used to fuck up some bosses in SM, and then you've got items like Irons in oot that are just used for accessing certain areas, and not even for the boss of the dungeon you mainly use it for. I don't think it's really as clear cut as 'Metroid items are for combat and exploration and zelda's are just for boss fights" (speaking as somebody who runs too much oot and watches too much SM).

 

[winderson_silva]

The Rock as Samus, Ryan Reynolds as The Baby, Danny DeVito as Kraid, Tom Holland as Ridley, Jack Black as Mother Brain, and Timothy Chamalet as Adam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W54DvzF9S8

 

[derapples]

This may be old news but I just learned about it. Apparently AM2R is getting a visual overhaul. I must say, the screenshots look great.
Link

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

View attachment 8790153
This may be old news but I just learned about it. Apparently AM2R is getting a visual overhaul. I must say, the screenshots look great.
Link

Damn, that does look nice. Nintendo takedown 2.0 incoming out of sheer jealousy

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

My son said he wanted to challenge himself to a 1% run in Metroid Fusion. I said "maybe don't, my brother said that was the hardest Metroid run he's ever done" and so I suggested he try Super Metroid Redesign instead as it is harder, but not too bad. He was brain broke by the fact that the physics changes made even jumping on platforms harder and more precise. I'm not sure he's going to continue that run lol

 

[Retarded Weeb]

I'm dumb, so I decided to quickly play through Federation Force before playing Metroid Prime 4. Now that I've played it, all can say about it is that it's aggressively mediocre. It's not doing anything really wrong, but it's also not doing anything particularly interesting or fun. Some of the boss fights and challenges are tedious chores made worse trying to play it single-player, and the aiming with the right stick kind of sucks. It reminds me of Zelda: TriForce Heroes, where Nintendo really wanted to make a multiplayer game and it's not really fun or balanced for playing it solo. But if you actually had 3 friends to play games with, then there's better stuff you could be playing than Metroid Prime: Federation Force of all things. As far as Metroid games go, I would rather play Other M.

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

I'm dumb, so I decided to quickly play through Federation Force before playing Metroid Prime 4. Now that I've played it, all can say about it is that it's aggressively mediocre. It's not doing anything really wrong, but it's also not doing anything particularly interesting or fun. Some of the boss fights and challenges are tedious chores made worse trying to play it single-player, and the aiming with the right stick kind of sucks. It reminds me of Zelda: TriForce Heroes, where Nintendo really wanted to make a multiplayer game and it's not really fun or balanced for playing it solo. But if you actually had 3 friends to play games with, then there's better stuff you could be playing than Metroid Prime: Federation Force of all things. As far as Metroid games go, I would rather play Other M.

The sad thing is nearly this entire review could also describe Prime 4. I guess that makes some sense, Federation Force to Prime 4 feels like what they did with Samus Returns to Dread (new game on handheld, then expanding it to console), only Samus Returns and Dread stayed mostly true to the design ethos of Metroid games while Federation Force and Prime 4 drifted away from that into more generic scifi power fantasy stuff.

Metroid is a game based on a horror franchise so when the horror portion is taken away and it's just reskinned Destiny, it just doesn't stand out in any way.

 

[Retarded Weeb]

Something I forgot to mention before, but when I was playing Federation Force, I quickly felt like it was really similar to Prime Hunters in how it takes place in some unexplored solar system and similarly has an ice planet and volcano planet. And Prime Hunters had slightly more exploration elements as I recall because you still played as Samus with similar moves, but it wasn't really a Metroidvania, it had you visiting chunks of the planets to complete a goal in a mission-based structure, just like FF.

And then I thought that the robot planet the Pirates have taken over in FF felt rather similar to the robot and Space Pirate planets in Prime 3 (so yeah, game isn't really winning points for creative new areas), which made me think about how that game felt kind of off for Metroid with how the planets were completely disconnected from one another to the point where it can feel like you're just visiting them each time to go through a new linear section to complete a goal, and how Retro wanted to add some bounty hunter mission system to the game before Nintendo told them that was stupid. So it does give me the feeling like these American-made Metroid games keep wanting to remove the actual Metroidvania exploration to turn them into mission-based shooters where you just drop into an area to shoot things.

 

[Retarded Weeb]

Alright, I beat Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. Not in the best way to play it since emulation for it still isn't great, so I had to deal with the game hitching on room changes, the scan visor acting weird, and audio in cutscenes getting desynced, but it was good enough. I got 100% item completion and scan logs, and collected all the green crystals so I unlocked everything except a few pictures you need to beat the game again on hard for, which yeah I'm not doing.

So yeah, I'm definitely late to the punch on talking about this game, but I want to write my thoughts down publicly anyway. Overall, it was very mid. I just came off of Federation Force, so that makes MP4 look good given it feels better to control than that at a basic level, but in the end it's definitely below any of the good Metroid games. I don't have any central thesis, just a bunch of different thoughts I had while playing which I'll try to remember now and list. I ended up writing a lot so I'll give some section headers.

==Gameplay==

The maps were very linear. The Prime games in general don't really let you sequence break that much, and actually if we're being honest most of the games outside of Super don't really let you do things that much out of order without glitches or unintended exploits, but Prime 4 here was particularly linear. Most of the areas are basically straight lines, and there's absolutely no connection between areas except via their own exit out to the central desert. The game world is effectively a big field in the center with five levels attached to the edges of it. Not really the same feeling as exploring the world in Prime 1 or 2. Environmental puzzles could also feel more obligatory and low effort than usual, and it felt like there's a particularly large amount of rooms that you walk into and they're obviously just combat arenas where you're gonna get locked in and fight a bunch of stuff with little to no puzzles-solving/looking around for secrets needed.

To summarize, the game still feels fun enough to play on a basic level, as inherited from previous Prime games, and the visuals are nice, but on a gameplay level it feels like the map and puzzle design was them sort of going through the motions. Can also kind of feel that from the beam weapons too, where it's just basic elemental weapons, literally called Fire Shot, Ice Shot, and Thunder Shot. MP1 basically did the same thing, but at least there they dressed up fire and lightning as the Plasma and Wave Beams, named and based off beam upgrades for Return of Samus and Super. I did find the shots fun enough to use, though by the end Fire Shot felt kind of underpowered and not worth using most of the time compared to Ice and Thunder.

I don't really mind as much some people that the psychic powers aren't that deep. I wasn't expecting anything huge as far as new powers go. But it is a little funny how they append Psychic onto the name of almost every power when there's often not really anything particularly psychic about it compared to the base power as it was in previous games. I do find one thing weird in power progression, which is how they stuck the Super Missiles towards the end, right before you get the Power Bombs. Most of the "can only be destroyed by heavy firepower" objects can only be destroyed by Power Bombs, so there's literally only three or four objects in the entire game that you have to destroy with Super Missiles. And they're not even good in combat since they don't do that much damage for how long they take to charge. You're better off spamming Super Thunder Shot and using your missiles to put up Psychic Barriers. And really, the game felt like it needed an extra "final dungeon" area. By the time you get all your powers together, you don't really have anything else to use them on except the final boss fight.

Sol Valley absolutely feels like an aborted attempt at making an open world Metroid, which would have been lame. So now it's just a big empty area between the actually interesting zones that have to spend time driving your motorcycle through to get from place to place. It's funny that actually stuck BotW shrines in there, like literally almost the exact same concept. At least there's only six of them.

==Story==

As far as the dialogue writing goes, it could have been worse. Your first introductions to Myles and Nora are filled with annoying reddit dialogue, but the rest of the writing otherwise is mainly just bland and stock rather than cringy. I guess we can include scan logs in this point. The game spams scannable objects at you, just about everything can be scanned and even rescanned after something happens with it, but 90% of it is really basic information like "This is a container that holds small objects. It can be destroyed by any weapon." or "This a truck used to carry minerals out of the mine." There's nowhere close to the same amount of computer logs and diaries and similar written by someone in-universe as there was in previous games.

The story as a whole feels underbaked. They kind of went for something a little different with this sort of melancholic tone of everything being fucked and unable to be saved, and you're just seeing the leftover mourning for the tragedy. Like how most of the bosses are creatures (and an AI) taken over by Metroids, and after you kill them you can find lore entries telling you that they were actually peaceful allies of the Lamorn, so you were effectively forced to put them down and leave this already desolate world just a little more dead. But it doesn't feel fully realized enough to make me feel any real emotion over it. And by the ending, I kind of just feel confused about what exactly was going on or why we were here. The game never has any deeper explanation behind what Green Energy is or why it transformed the Lamorn into feral creatures, or still don't really get what a Memory Fruit is why it's particularly important for Samus to plant it as the Lamorn's legacy, and really it just feels like at the end we didn't actually accomplish anything except get Samus home, which makes the talk about her being the Chosen One meant to save the Lamorn seem kind of stupid. Like I get it's probably intentional that it turns out she couldn't literally save them, just save the history of them I guess, but it still feels kind of hollow and not in an intentional way.

And finally, it's super clear they had nothing planned with Sylux. Honestly, I think people overhyped Sylux even before MP4 came out. He's just a guy with a cool suit of armor and a mysterious backstory. And given he was just one guy among a bunch of other bounty hunters they put in Prime Hunters for its multiplayer, he always came off as the type of character where they never actually had anything particularly in mind for what his mysterious backstory actually is. Treating him like he's totally gonna be a cool main villain felt like it wasn't gonna pan out, and I was right. First off, it's kind of weird how the game starts, with some quick text boxes explaining what's going on and briefly calling back to the end of MP:FF followed by jumping right into some action. I've never seen a game both feel like you're really missing something if you didn't play a previous game to get more context, but also playing that previous doesn't get you any more important context at all. They're really just making some shit up real quick to you get you into, which barely has anything to do with the main story once you're on Viewros.

And Sylux is a really... oddly minor villain, considering he's effectively the main antagonist. Because the Lamorn stuff doesn't really have an antagonist, everything is just fucked and they don't even expect Samus to do anything about it except see what happened, grab a fruit, and leave. The only reason you encounter any major resistance in your journey is because Sylux and I guess some of his Metroids happened to get dragged into it, leading to the Metroids possessing most of the bosses and Sylux fucking with you a few times. And there's nothing to suggest Sylux himself has any more idea what's going on than any of the random troopers you're hanging out with. He literally just happened to get dragged into this and decided to mess with shit to fuck with you. Something I'm also not clear on is if he was the one activating that Green Energy cannon. It kind of seems like it, but it doesn't feel he has any motivation to outside seeing if it would help get in your way. And when you beat the game with 100% completion and can see his backstory, you find he's just some loser. He's an asshole who tried doing something stupid for glory/power while a federation soldier, got rekt, and Samus happened to be there, so now he hates the federation and Samus. You know what he is? He's literally Infinite from Sonic Forces. But at least Infinite is funny in just how over-the-top edgy he is (he has his own fucking nu-metal theme song whose lyrics are just him bragging about how badass he is) and how utterly petty his motivation is (he picked a fight someone and got his ass beat and got called a faggot, so now he wants to go school shooter on the whole world). Sylux is just like, unremarkable minor forgettable villain levels of pettiness. Definitely feels like something Retro just had to pull out their ass because no one actually thought of a backstory for him before, and they didn't care that much now because he has nothing to do with the main Lamorn plot.

And the game ending without everything resolved - Sylux is still alive and maybe even the reddit squad still is too if Sylux didn't kill them right after you left - feels like a sign of a team that wasn't confident in their game. Maybe that sounds weird, like if they're not confident then you'd want to end things conclusively in case you don't get a sequel, but I say that if you're confident then you'll know to wrap things up satisfactorily and if people liked then then they'll want more regardless. Ending things one a half-cliffhanger just feels like you couldn't write a good conclusion and hoped that things being left hanging would lead to people wanting to see a continuation even if they weren't that excited about it. And really, the game does feel like it just ends rather abruptly. The previous Prime games didn't have amazing plots, but I remember all their endings being more conclusive and satisfying than this.

==Conclusion==

Overall, everything about this game, on both a textual and metacontextual level, feels halfassed and undercooked. It very much feels like a game that was ordered to be made because fans were asking for a Metroid Prime 4 and it would look good to announce one, but there was simply no one who had any good ideas for a Prime 4 or was particularly eager to work on it. Not helping that many of the people at Retro who actually made the first three are gone, and even they seemed to be getting burnt out and were fucking around with weird ideas by the time of MP3. This game has some ideas going into it, but it's all underwritten and all just slides off you.

Anyway, with now having played every Metroid game, here's my list if I had to rank them.
=Good=
Metroid Dread
Super Metroid
Metroid Fusion
Metroid: Zero Mission
Metroid: Samus Returns
Metroid Prime
=Alright=
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Metroid II: Return of Samus
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Metroid
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
=Mixed Bag=
Metroid: Other M
=Didn't enjoy playing them=
Metroid Prime: Federation Force
Metroid Prime Hunters