If you recall, I didn’t have a great time with Metroid. In the early 2000s Nintendo also decided that this original game wasn’t very approachable and also was very hard to access and made the decision to remake it in the style of Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. This resulted in them adding many of the powerups that you’d be familiar with from those games, such as the Speed Booster, Super Bombs, Super Missiles and others as well as a mini-map and a map. Further, while they’ve stayed very true to the original game’s map and item locations, they modified much of it to add more item-gating and a path to the game, as well as some other mini-bosses and an entire extra section at the end of the game where you play as Samus without her suit and all of its amazing powers.
Coming from Metroid Fusion it’s very refreshing to be back exploring a planet. The environments are beautiful and do a great job of adding in the detail that you imagined was there that a good remake does. The updates to the bosses are great as well; Kraid and Ridley are their proper size and have more depth to their encounters that wasn’t present in the originals.
This game also brings back something that was missing from Metroid Fusion, infinite bomb jumps and same-wall wall jumps. Those techniques were removed from Metroid Fusion so that the designers could better control players and make them experience the story in the planned order. Zero Mission allows the players more freedom in how they progress through the game and makes the directions they do give you non-verbal (some statues mark a place to go on your map). The combined effect of this is giving the player a greater sense of freedom and exploration that I feel is core to the experience of these games.
Another added element are puzzle rooms. These hidden areas have some of the health or weapon capacity upgrades that you can collect over the course of the game, but they require you to use your abilities in ways that require more thought or are harder to execute. These were incredibly fun for me as a way to really stretch myself and feel challenged.
The most significant addition to the game is the Zero Suit portion of the game. After beating Mother Brain and escaping the planet, Samus is shot down and unable to use her power armor. Armed with only a weak pistol that can just stun the space pirates she encounters you have to sneak your way through a space pirate ship until you find some special Chozo ruin where Samus is able to remember that she was raised by the Chozo after her home planet was destroyed by the pirates and use her power suit once more. The stealth gameplay and disempowerment in this section did a better job of instilling fear in me than the SA-X’s limited scenes that mostly encouraged hiding did in Metroid Fusion and is something I’d love to see them build off of in Metroid Dread.
All told this is a fantastic remake of the original remake. It respects the parts of the original that they wanted to keep, such as the map, but updates the outdated portions of the game and expands upon the story to flesh out the universe and add a surprise for veterans.
Fun lore side note: a promotional tie-in manga commissioned by Nintendo for the game includes fun lore revelations regarding the Chozo that raised Samus after her home planet was destroyed. They are a dying race that is no longer reproducing and have taken it upon themselves to bring peace and unity to the galaxy. They identified the X Parasite on SR388 as a threat to this and created the Metroids to keep that threat at bay. They also created Mother Brain, the antagonist of Metroid and Super Metroid to continue their cause once they were all gone. Lastly, in addition to training Samus, they infused her with Chozo DNA so that she could use their power armor and weapons. In Metroid Fusion the scientists infuse her DNA with Metroid DNA so that her body can combat the X parasite. So Samus is currently part Metroid and part Chozo. I would love to see them explore how that, combined with her being raised by the Chozo and being a lone bounty hunter who is currently an enemy of the state, impacts how disconnected she might feel from the rest of the people in the galaxy, despite often being treated as their savior.
