Overall, it's very middle of the road for me.

I only really enjoyed it because of the gameplay.

Multiple times throughout my playthrough, I thought to myself that I would rather be playing Metroid Dread. 😅

Story is very weak, but is expected. Environments were varied, but I do wish they were more interesting. I don't think any of the bosses outside of Sylux stood out. Ending was unsatisfying.

Funnily enough, I enjoyed the characters and interactions here! I don't hate them as much as many others do.

Outside of the psychic abilities, I guess the big gimmick is the VI-O-LA motorcycle. This is probably the most useless gimmick I've seen of the series. The desert is a huge time waster, and you go through an in-depth tutorial of all the mechanics just to not even need to use half of them.

The biggest positive I can give for this game is the gameplay. It's the standard Metroid gameplay with Prime's signature scanning. There's new psychic abilities, but I honestly don't think it adds much depth. It barely innovates, but it doesn't really need to. Metroid gameplay is just fun.

Just to preface, I am a fairly recent Metroid fan. Pretty much when Metroid Dread was announced was when I actually played through the series. I played all of the numbered 2D Metroid games (remake or otherwise) and the remastered Metroid Prime. I haven't played Metroid Prime 2 or 3.

The game was very short though. It was fun so I really wished there was more, but I understand that the value is more in the replayability. I'm still trying to get Perfects in each minigame!

That said, for what it is, I had a great time and pretty much no other complaints!

I loved the art and details in each minigame. There were a lot of "that's cute" moments and some that got a chuckle out of me. The music that accompanied them was also lovely.

My favorite was "Steady Bears" with "Meet & Tweet" being a close second!

I loved the story! The premise of the story is a bit weaker than Ghost of Tsushima (revenge plot vs the elite 6 lol), but it was executed very well. The further I got through the story, the more invested I became. Characters are a big part of what makes a story interesting for me and they nailed it.

Unfortunately, this game suffers by being a sequel. There are a few examples of previous games getting sequels that generally add more "fun" to the game, but lacks the impact of the first game. This ended up becoming another example of this. It makes sense why its presence at TGAs is lacking.

Overall, it felt like a pretty short game.

I know you can find other scenarios to do (I know Cloud is in the game, and I did see Aerith), but I mostly did the main story, and getting to the end, it felt like a second act was supposed to come. I was still satisfied with the ending anyways.

Instead of separating into two versions of the same game, they should have given players options. I really did not like the pixel smoothing and wished I could have played with the original sprites while still keeping the widescreen and voice acting. I still had a good time, but it could be better.

The characters and writing for them are some of the best in the series though. They are all so good, and a lot of the dialogue made me audibly laugh. Keep the writing team!

I am hoping the things I like about this game stay for the next and they just.. make it bigger!

also 60 fps mmmm finallyyyyy

The only issues that really impacted my enjoyment really just boils down to stealth jank, and the damn day/night cycle interrupting the game flow. You can't skip that cutscene (like you can in BOTW), and it resets pokemon spawns. Many times I tried to catch an uncommon Pokemon and NOPE, gone.

The story was very weak and all over the place, which I don't expect much of this from Pokemon, but they tried to do a crazy hype cinematic moment for the climax of the game and it doesn't really hit as hard. Especially without voice acting. It was still cool that they tried it!

Gameplay is banger. Music is banger too, but only having two overworld songs is a travesty.

Map exploration is also great. Imagining the next mainline game having multiple (smaller) cities that let you explore to the extent of how this game does it has me very excited for the future of this series!