Metroid 2: Samus Returns
Metroid 2: Samus Returns is a remake of the game for handheld. It totally redesigns the game from the ground up. I found this game to be one of the worst metroidvanias I've ever played. The fact that it's a first party official Metroid title is pretty sad.
One major mechanic it adds to Metroid is parrying. An enemy will flash before attacking you, and you hit the parry button, and it causes a super-powerful stunning attack. It's honestly kind of like a quick-time-event. The game is badly warped by nearly all enemies having parry attacks. It means that your most powerful attacking option is just standing and waiting. Many bosses are essentially fussing around until they throw out a parryable attack.
The goal of the game is to hunt down 40 metroid bosses. To do so, you have to go through numerous sectors and get various powerups. The thing is: there's only four variants of the metroid bosses (not including the final metroid mother boss). So you fight 4 new bosses, and then 35 repeats. Thirty-five repeats. These repeats are all in places with varying environmental differences which do not matter to the fight. This does not include the specific variant which you have to fight 3 times in 3 different areas before its defeated. So basically you're fighting a lot of the same bosses over and over again. This is a chore. There needed to have like 10 variants and make them interact with the environment dynamically so that environment changes matter.
Furthermore, each sector has its own palette and style, but not its own enemies. You face a lot of recolors in this game. There's something incredibly unsatisfying about getting to a new area only to fight the same enemies and bosses. The game feels incredibly repetitive. The amount of cut-and-paste and padding in this game is shocking. Honestly if I didn't have a commute I probably wouldn't have bothered getting to the endgame.
The endgame is great. There's this crazy mining robot, then the final metroid mother, and then finally Ridley. The whole game needed to have the pacing of the last two areas. Ridley is always one of the best fights in any Metroid game, because they don't give him stupid gimmicks. It's a lot more of a straight up fight. But yea if you trudge through to the endgame, you get some good stuff.
Metroid 2: Samus Returns is not a good metroidvania and not a good game. I don't recommend it. Don't bother.
