I also just beat it, having took considerably longer (9:30) but with 100% of the things.
Non spoilery thoughts: I really, really dug this. It feels like the game was made for me, and I really needed to get deep into a really tight, solid game after the past week I had.
However, it is a very different experience than what most folk consider the best of the series, and I can easily see how some could bounce hard off it. It can be pretty technical, the bosses can be really tough until you hunker down and learn their patterns, and then there's the EMMI. Personally, I enjoyed every encounter but I can absolutely see how they would turn some players off, and if you hate the EMMI sections, well, that's a sizable chunk of the game to dislike.
Overall critical opinion of the game seems quite good, though, and it seems to be selling quite well which is a nice turn for the franchise. So I'm hopeful this will help Nintendo realize that 'hey that Metroid thing what we own ain't that bad after all, let's make more!', but time will tell. I can definitely understand lamenting if this is the style of game they lean into going forward, I still rank Super as my favorite of the series, though Dread has toppled Prime 1 for the silver medal at least for the time being.
And the sad thing is, a lot of what made Super work so well for a lot of folks just isn't likely to be replicated now, though. Super Metroid was very much a lightning in a bottle kind of situation, and Nintendo's most obvious effort to replicate its structure, Zero Mission, feels pretty artificial. Sequence Breaking in ZM feels less like organically stumbling upon a loophole the devs didn't consider and much more like 'here is the more obscure alternate path that was nevertheless accounted for by the developers'. Part of what makes Super Metroid's sequence breaking so much fun is not just the tricky abilities the devs accounted for (wall jumping, shine sparking, and bomb jumping) but the stuff they didn't that has been instrumental in breaking Zebes wide open. Stuff like the mockball, gravity jump, and reverse gates wouldn't make it out of QA nowadays, so stuff like skipping Spore Spawn or early Ice Beam or getting to Crocomire without Speed Booster or Wave Beam wouldn't happen today without a really obvious 'here is the dev approved breaking of sequence' section.
So Dread borrows a lot more from Zero Mission's style of sequence breaking. It definitely exists, but it seems to be all accounted for. At least, for now. Game's less than a week old, after all, and there are already some surprising sequence breaks found, who knows what may yet be discovered. I am really looking forward to seeing how the speedruns for the game develop.
Some of the biggest gripes I have are fairly minor, to me, but ymmv. I really wish you used the D-pad for movement, because using an analog joystick for it in a 2D game is and always has been total butt. I eventually adjusted to it, but there were many points early on, and still a few now and then towards the end, where the game would read a diagonal input where I didn't intend it. No good reason not to let you use the D-pad for movement, either, what is it even used for right now? The sensor pulse? Put that on some other button, who cares. Just give me more reliable movement.
Another thing it should have that it has no reason not to is an Easy mode. I'll probably try Hard on my next real run, but I'm one of those lunatics that actually enjoyed fighting the Boost Guardian in Prime 2 on Hard mode. There's no reason not to give people the option to have an easier time because as I said earlier, hard game is hard.
Also would be nice: A speedrun mode similar to what Bloodstained has. Just a mode that auto-skips all cutscenes and other fluff, just the pure distilled game world. The game is far less intrusive than Fusion or, ugh, Other M, but still there are just enough momentum breakers that would make speedrunning this game slightly more annoying than it needs to be. No boss cutscenes, no comm rooms, none of that.
One other critique I have is the environment design. Whenever you get to break out of the techno-factory setting and see the actual world of ZDR it can be quite cool. There are a number of areas with stunning background details. But far too much of the game takes place in relatively samey techno-factories. Even worse, while each of the main areas has the sort of identifiable theming you'd expect from the series (ice cave, water cave, lava cave, plant cave, temple cave, cave cave) each zone has a good chunk of the map taken up by said samey techno-factories, and one zone in particular is just a giant techno-factory so that one just loses all identity. Main bit of advice for Mercury Steam if they get to make another one of these: make far more cool and weird alien environments, and far fewer 'hey it's literally any video game' environments.
Now I'll talk about story behind a spoiler pop.
Non spoilery thoughts: I really, really dug this. It feels like the game was made for me, and I really needed to get deep into a really tight, solid game after the past week I had.
However, it is a very different experience than what most folk consider the best of the series, and I can easily see how some could bounce hard off it. It can be pretty technical, the bosses can be really tough until you hunker down and learn their patterns, and then there's the EMMI. Personally, I enjoyed every encounter but I can absolutely see how they would turn some players off, and if you hate the EMMI sections, well, that's a sizable chunk of the game to dislike.
Overall critical opinion of the game seems quite good, though, and it seems to be selling quite well which is a nice turn for the franchise. So I'm hopeful this will help Nintendo realize that 'hey that Metroid thing what we own ain't that bad after all, let's make more!', but time will tell. I can definitely understand lamenting if this is the style of game they lean into going forward, I still rank Super as my favorite of the series, though Dread has toppled Prime 1 for the silver medal at least for the time being.
And the sad thing is, a lot of what made Super work so well for a lot of folks just isn't likely to be replicated now, though. Super Metroid was very much a lightning in a bottle kind of situation, and Nintendo's most obvious effort to replicate its structure, Zero Mission, feels pretty artificial. Sequence Breaking in ZM feels less like organically stumbling upon a loophole the devs didn't consider and much more like 'here is the more obscure alternate path that was nevertheless accounted for by the developers'. Part of what makes Super Metroid's sequence breaking so much fun is not just the tricky abilities the devs accounted for (wall jumping, shine sparking, and bomb jumping) but the stuff they didn't that has been instrumental in breaking Zebes wide open. Stuff like the mockball, gravity jump, and reverse gates wouldn't make it out of QA nowadays, so stuff like skipping Spore Spawn or early Ice Beam or getting to Crocomire without Speed Booster or Wave Beam wouldn't happen today without a really obvious 'here is the dev approved breaking of sequence' section.
So Dread borrows a lot more from Zero Mission's style of sequence breaking. It definitely exists, but it seems to be all accounted for. At least, for now. Game's less than a week old, after all, and there are already some surprising sequence breaks found, who knows what may yet be discovered. I am really looking forward to seeing how the speedruns for the game develop.
Some of the biggest gripes I have are fairly minor, to me, but ymmv. I really wish you used the D-pad for movement, because using an analog joystick for it in a 2D game is and always has been total butt. I eventually adjusted to it, but there were many points early on, and still a few now and then towards the end, where the game would read a diagonal input where I didn't intend it. No good reason not to let you use the D-pad for movement, either, what is it even used for right now? The sensor pulse? Put that on some other button, who cares. Just give me more reliable movement.
Another thing it should have that it has no reason not to is an Easy mode. I'll probably try Hard on my next real run, but I'm one of those lunatics that actually enjoyed fighting the Boost Guardian in Prime 2 on Hard mode. There's no reason not to give people the option to have an easier time because as I said earlier, hard game is hard.
Also would be nice: A speedrun mode similar to what Bloodstained has. Just a mode that auto-skips all cutscenes and other fluff, just the pure distilled game world. The game is far less intrusive than Fusion or, ugh, Other M, but still there are just enough momentum breakers that would make speedrunning this game slightly more annoying than it needs to be. No boss cutscenes, no comm rooms, none of that.
One other critique I have is the environment design. Whenever you get to break out of the techno-factory setting and see the actual world of ZDR it can be quite cool. There are a number of areas with stunning background details. But far too much of the game takes place in relatively samey techno-factories. Even worse, while each of the main areas has the sort of identifiable theming you'd expect from the series (ice cave, water cave, lava cave, plant cave, temple cave, cave cave) each zone has a good chunk of the map taken up by said samey techno-factories, and one zone in particular is just a giant techno-factory so that one just loses all identity. Main bit of advice for Mercury Steam if they get to make another one of these: make far more cool and weird alien environments, and far fewer 'hey it's literally any video game' environments.
Now I'll talk about story behind a spoiler pop.
Y'know, it's kind of funny all that talk about Metroid mutation body horror we had in jest actually kinda sorta came true a little bit? Sure, the final 'Metroid Suit' was short-lived, and Samus still seemed to be human inside of it from what we could see, but still, I'm honestly shocked Nintendo went that far and did the thing a lot of fans speculated and fan-arted after playing Fusion. Samus actually straight-up mutated into a Metroid, kinda! The Metroid suit was super garish and I'm glad it's not likely going to get a game to itself, but just for the brief period we had it, it was definitely neat.
I don't have much to say about Raven Beak, he was a boring villain, and I could care less about his 'I am your father' moment. Like, Samus watched Ridley (probably) eat her parents, you think THAT is gonna rattle her? Bird, please.
I'm still a bit confused by the very end where Silent Robe, or the X that took over his body, appeared in Samus's ship and cured her Metroid-ification by reverting to an X parasite and letting Samus absorb him. It goes against everything we know about the X (single minded obsession with growing and multiplying, deathly afraid of Metroids), plus since the Metroids preyed on the X, then didn't Silent Robe just give Metroid-Samus a snack? Why would that de-Metroid her? Did the Metroid and the X cancel each other out? Was part of Silent Robe still in control despite, again, literally everything we know about X parasites and their hosts? Or did he somehow account for his eventual death and having to deal with Samus's mutation? Is Samus still part Metroid, and it's mostly dormant again, or was the Metroid DNA completely nullified? Hopefully we won't have to wait two decades for clarification in Metroid 6.
Oh yeah, and did anyone else have the impression that the 'Adam' we were communicating with all game was Raven Beak the whole time? Or was it just that last one? I feel it could go either way.
(oh and now that Kraid has gotten his big come-back and Phantoon had that appearance in Other M, is it time for Draygon to get a moment to shine?)
I don't have much to say about Raven Beak, he was a boring villain, and I could care less about his 'I am your father' moment. Like, Samus watched Ridley (probably) eat her parents, you think THAT is gonna rattle her? Bird, please.
I'm still a bit confused by the very end where Silent Robe, or the X that took over his body, appeared in Samus's ship and cured her Metroid-ification by reverting to an X parasite and letting Samus absorb him. It goes against everything we know about the X (single minded obsession with growing and multiplying, deathly afraid of Metroids), plus since the Metroids preyed on the X, then didn't Silent Robe just give Metroid-Samus a snack? Why would that de-Metroid her? Did the Metroid and the X cancel each other out? Was part of Silent Robe still in control despite, again, literally everything we know about X parasites and their hosts? Or did he somehow account for his eventual death and having to deal with Samus's mutation? Is Samus still part Metroid, and it's mostly dormant again, or was the Metroid DNA completely nullified? Hopefully we won't have to wait two decades for clarification in Metroid 6.
Oh yeah, and did anyone else have the impression that the 'Adam' we were communicating with all game was Raven Beak the whole time? Or was it just that last one? I feel it could go either way.
(oh and now that Kraid has gotten his big come-back and Phantoon had that appearance in Other M, is it time for Draygon to get a moment to shine?)
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