Metroid Dread Review
I was excited for this game when it was announced and I recently played through Metroid Zero Mission, Metroid Samus Returns, Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion so that finally beat some version of each of the main 2D versions to catch up with the franchise. When I got Metroid Dread, it took me about 20 IRL hours to beat the game (a lot of that time was dying to bosses). So here are my thoughts and improvement comments based on playing it and watching some others play it.
Gameplay
Thoughts
The game feels great while moving and combat. Samus moves nicely with a joystick just like in Metroid Samus Returns, and the new abilities to Slide and Dash Melee just improve it. They make moving through obstacles and dealing with enemies nice without disrupting your ability to progress forward. Then, the combination of Free Aim and the Dash Melee makes dealing with the regular enemies very nice. The boss fights are difficult at first though even with improved movement and combat options, but once the patterns are leant it because doable within a few tries.
The portals make backtracking much easier and the reduces the fatigue going through old areas to find the next path you can now attempt with whatever new ability you just obtained. Unlike in Metroid Samus Returns, they are paired so you can’t just go to wherever you like once you find a portal, but once you find all of them it does allow for this choice. This is a reasonable compromise to make access easier and keep the player going where they are supposed to.
Improvement Comments
Adam’s debriefs should have need to have two improvements: autoplay and skip. While the game plays audio for them, it relies on you to progress it. This should be improved so that it has an optional autoplay. And, there should be an option to just outright skip it. In the debrief before the last boss, you can skip it and the cutscene that follows, but this option is missing from the other debriefs.
There is a small additional delay in load times when moving in and out of rooms with cutscenes. This should be addressed so that it loads normally when the cutscene is no longer going to play.
While I am a fan of the Melee Counter that was added in Metroid Samus Returns, I believe that it should been changed to do damage, similar to the Dash Melee, rather than simply knocking back enemies when they are not attacking. It would reduce the time you need to wait enemies to get to that proper counter phase.
The number of prompts for the Omega Cannon needs to be reduced. Every time you get it you get separate prompts for the Omega Blaster and Omega Stream. This should have been a single prompt saying that the Omega Cannon was online and the player would already know that both of its functionality are available already.
Aeion Abilities should not have just consumed the whole bar. It would have been nicer to be able to turn on and off the Phantom Cloak at will, or use a single Flash Shift and then do future ones, or some combination of those abilities.
I don’t like when a game that has only two difficulty options, as far as I know, requires you to beat it on the easier mode to unlock the harder one. While someone like me would have a difficult time on Hard Mode, it would be nice for expert players to have the option available one time. But, to the game’s credit they at least made it that once you unlock Hard Mode you can just play it on any file without having to copy the completed one first.
Controls Improvements
The controls menu shown above is reasonable, but I wish they did better in some parts. But, it stays the same even when you reach the final boss. It doesn’t add labels for the later Aeion Abilities so that when you come back to the game later, you don’t have to fumble to remember them.
The Phantom Cloak Aeion Ability activation button seems a bit weird to me. It is mapped to pressing down the right joystick, i.e. R3, but I feel like mapping it to one of the unused D-Pad buttons may have been a viable option as well. One thing to note is that this may make it difficult to use while moving, but a lot of its use is standing in place to wait out E.M.M.I detection.
I don’t like that you need to hold the R button to use the Power Bomb; it should have been mapped it to ZR instead. This would have mirrored the way that you have Missiles and Grapple Beam use R and ZR respectively when not in Morph Ball, and this change would have made the Power Bomb quicker to use, especially when fighting enemies.
Speed Booster feels a bit clunky with having to hold down the left joystick while moving. This could have been done similar to Super Metroid where it happens when as you run normally. But, this change may need a bit a redesign to its activation so as to not hamper movement in some of the zones.
Some minor complaints that don’t hamper the gameplay are
- while it appeared in Super Metroid there is no button remapping support.
- With two unused D-Pad buttons they could have added a disable minmap option.
My Completion Time
