LogFAQs > #886885069

I agree with nearly everything in your review, besides the emphasis of counters. I hardly used counters. The game became way more evenly paced once I stopped using the ice beam in area 2. That thing is useless beyond creating platforms and kills momentum.

You are absolutely right though regarding the three big concerns I had-- each area is a cave with a slightly different background, there are hardly any unique enemies, and the final section of the game is all kinds of wrong. What I find odd is that the first two things, lack of unique feeling areas and enemies, didn't bother me at all in Metroid 2. Maybe that's because each individual area was much smaller and tighter in terms of design? But hell, even as you get to the end of Metroid 2 the areas start to become more unique as you mention in your review. Samus Returns has the same problem that the DS Castlevania games would end up having-- copy paste rooms with different backgrounds to trick people into thinking they created unique rooms. Super Metroid will always be the pinnacle of the Metroidvania series because it truly had unique rooms. Each room in that game looked different than the last and felt different than the last. Samus Returns really drops the ball there, which is unfortunate because there are hints of something brilliant. Area 5 as Tranny mentioned is amazing, except it really isn't. It could have been amazing but at the end of the day it feels like a hodgepodge of random rooms, some with really cool fauna as background, some with water and Maridia music, but no real identifiers other than the backgrounds and no real flow between the rooms. Hence my major complaint with the random ass heated rooms with Norfair music.

I'm rambling. I don't feel like going through that and correcting grammar or making it more legible. I'm drained.
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Notyou