Ventidius
Arbiter
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2017
- Messages
- 552
Finished this today. Some impressions with spoilers:
-Intersectoral level design is a massive improvement over pretty much every Metroid except for Super, and in this it even rivals the latter. For the most part you are able and expected to backtrack to previous areas in order to progress, in fact, there are virtually no major areas that you are expected to explored and 'clear' in a single go, you are constantly criss-crossing around the various maps, finding upgrades and opening new routes in previously visited maps. Sometimes, despite this, the way forward is rather obvious, but sometimes it isn't, and starting around the point in which you are tasked with finding the Gravity Suit and Grapple Beam, it tends more towards the latter, which is good. Yes, there is a part in which much of the world gets closed off, but this is temporary and the world becomes freely explorable again once you defeat the boss that causes the problem in the story. Overall, the planet ZDR feels more interconnected and sprawling than the world map of pretty much any other of the 2D Metroids except for Super, and it seems pretty clear they took heavy inspiration from the latter in this regard.
-Intrasectoral level design is not particularly impressive, by the standards of the franchise. The areas themselves are fairly simple, with a relatively limited amount of highlights in terms of interesting encounters, platforming, traversal challenges, environmental puzzles or combination of these. It does get better later in the game, especially when the X show up, but this is one thing that the Gameboy Advance games did better, and obviously so did Super Metroid. In fact, comparing this game to the GBA ones just shows how brilliant Super Metroid was in terms of combining intersectoral and intrasectoral level design, to this day it has the best balance of those two, and this is the main reason why Dread does not really equal it, even in terms of pure gameplay. To be fair, the smoothness of Dread's engine makes it rather fun to use newly-gained abilities to traverse the world (the Screw Attack, in particular, was every bit as fun as it should be, and I was glad to see it didn't get a nerf).
-Combat against non-boss enemies is nothing to write home about, but this is not an aberration for a Metroid game. Like many aspects of the game, this one gets better as the campaign goes on. Once the X are introduced, the player starts coming across some regular enemies that pack some bite, and this was also pretty cool in a ludonarrative sense, since it did justice to the infesting threat that they were back in Fusion.
-Bosses start out fun, but not particularly interesting. Again, this is something that gets better as the game goes on. It gets much better, in fact, and a lot of the bosses of the later half of the game feel rather Fusionesque (for those that don't know, Fusion probably had the hardest and most elaborately designed bosses in the series), something that culminates in the final boss, which is the hardest fight in the game, and a respectably tough battle in its own right. This is one of the few aspects in which Dread arguably beats Super Metroid, as bosses were not a highlight of the latter.
-Yet another thing that gets better as the game goes on is the art direction. Burenia and Ghavoran both look great, have a distinct theme, and ooze personality. Ferenia is a competently designed Chozo area, but it's not among the best in the series when it comes to Chozo ruins. It's still decent enough and mixes up the trope by making it less dilapidated than these kind of areas usually are, and does a solid job of showing a more undiluted picture of Chozo civilization.
-The atmosphere is probably one of the weakest if not the weakest of the major Metroid games, but it's still a Metroid game, which means it's decent at the very least.
-The pacing and length of the game are good, it does not outstay its welcome, but does not feel too short either. There is plenty to explore and find that is out of the way for those who like that too, but the final boss is manageable even without collecting autistically. I liked that the areas got better and changed in their layout and aesthetics the closer you got tot he surface of the planet. This further reinforces the notion that they were consciously taking a very holistic approach to level design, and is also reminiscent of the organic flow of exploration in Super Metroid. In general, the game managed to keep my attention for the duration without resorting to gimmickry, and mixed things up nicely by introducing the X, as the latter change the dynamics and feel of a lot of areas.
-The E.M.M.I.s are not a gimmick, but perhaps it would have been better if they had been. As it stands, they had all the elements to make it a decent mechanic that varied things, but ended up making them too restricted. Perhaps this was done for the sake of challenge, but the result is that they often feel puzzle-like and something of a chore you have to trudge to get on with the game. Could have been worse, I suppose, as they don't really drag the game down too much. Experimenting with this kind of thing is always a risky prospect, and there is always a real chance that it could ruin the game (which I had feared coming in). Thankfully that is not the case here, even if I can't really say they enhance the game either.
- The Chozo warrior fights are very cool, but I hate that they brought back QTEs. Yes, that is a QTE, the fact that cinematic looks like Samus using the riposte mechanic does not change that. The worst offender was the double QTE at the end of the final boss fight. There is no reason why this egregious and discredited convention should still plague gaming in this day and age.
-This is very much a 'full-blooded' Metroid game and Metroidvania, not an eccentric experiment like Fusion was.
Spoiler-free TL;DR: it's a good game, probably not a great of the subgenre like Super Metroid was, but it's alright. It's debatable whether it's better than the GBA games as well, but that's not necessarily a bad thing to me, at least, since I liked those. If you are a fan of the franchise, can't get enough of it, and want some new content, it should be worth checking out.
-Intersectoral level design is a massive improvement over pretty much every Metroid except for Super, and in this it even rivals the latter. For the most part you are able and expected to backtrack to previous areas in order to progress, in fact, there are virtually no major areas that you are expected to explored and 'clear' in a single go, you are constantly criss-crossing around the various maps, finding upgrades and opening new routes in previously visited maps. Sometimes, despite this, the way forward is rather obvious, but sometimes it isn't, and starting around the point in which you are tasked with finding the Gravity Suit and Grapple Beam, it tends more towards the latter, which is good. Yes, there is a part in which much of the world gets closed off, but this is temporary and the world becomes freely explorable again once you defeat the boss that causes the problem in the story. Overall, the planet ZDR feels more interconnected and sprawling than the world map of pretty much any other of the 2D Metroids except for Super, and it seems pretty clear they took heavy inspiration from the latter in this regard.
-Intrasectoral level design is not particularly impressive, by the standards of the franchise. The areas themselves are fairly simple, with a relatively limited amount of highlights in terms of interesting encounters, platforming, traversal challenges, environmental puzzles or combination of these. It does get better later in the game, especially when the X show up, but this is one thing that the Gameboy Advance games did better, and obviously so did Super Metroid. In fact, comparing this game to the GBA ones just shows how brilliant Super Metroid was in terms of combining intersectoral and intrasectoral level design, to this day it has the best balance of those two, and this is the main reason why Dread does not really equal it, even in terms of pure gameplay. To be fair, the smoothness of Dread's engine makes it rather fun to use newly-gained abilities to traverse the world (the Screw Attack, in particular, was every bit as fun as it should be, and I was glad to see it didn't get a nerf).
-Combat against non-boss enemies is nothing to write home about, but this is not an aberration for a Metroid game. Like many aspects of the game, this one gets better as the campaign goes on. Once the X are introduced, the player starts coming across some regular enemies that pack some bite, and this was also pretty cool in a ludonarrative sense, since it did justice to the infesting threat that they were back in Fusion.
-Bosses start out fun, but not particularly interesting. Again, this is something that gets better as the game goes on. It gets much better, in fact, and a lot of the bosses of the later half of the game feel rather Fusionesque (for those that don't know, Fusion probably had the hardest and most elaborately designed bosses in the series), something that culminates in the final boss, which is the hardest fight in the game, and a respectably tough battle in its own right. This is one of the few aspects in which Dread arguably beats Super Metroid, as bosses were not a highlight of the latter.
-Yet another thing that gets better as the game goes on is the art direction. Burenia and Ghavoran both look great, have a distinct theme, and ooze personality. Ferenia is a competently designed Chozo area, but it's not among the best in the series when it comes to Chozo ruins. It's still decent enough and mixes up the trope by making it less dilapidated than these kind of areas usually are, and does a solid job of showing a more undiluted picture of Chozo civilization.
-The atmosphere is probably one of the weakest if not the weakest of the major Metroid games, but it's still a Metroid game, which means it's decent at the very least.
-The pacing and length of the game are good, it does not outstay its welcome, but does not feel too short either. There is plenty to explore and find that is out of the way for those who like that too, but the final boss is manageable even without collecting autistically. I liked that the areas got better and changed in their layout and aesthetics the closer you got tot he surface of the planet. This further reinforces the notion that they were consciously taking a very holistic approach to level design, and is also reminiscent of the organic flow of exploration in Super Metroid. In general, the game managed to keep my attention for the duration without resorting to gimmickry, and mixed things up nicely by introducing the X, as the latter change the dynamics and feel of a lot of areas.
-The E.M.M.I.s are not a gimmick, but perhaps it would have been better if they had been. As it stands, they had all the elements to make it a decent mechanic that varied things, but ended up making them too restricted. Perhaps this was done for the sake of challenge, but the result is that they often feel puzzle-like and something of a chore you have to trudge to get on with the game. Could have been worse, I suppose, as they don't really drag the game down too much. Experimenting with this kind of thing is always a risky prospect, and there is always a real chance that it could ruin the game (which I had feared coming in). Thankfully that is not the case here, even if I can't really say they enhance the game either.
- The Chozo warrior fights are very cool, but I hate that they brought back QTEs. Yes, that is a QTE, the fact that cinematic looks like Samus using the riposte mechanic does not change that. The worst offender was the double QTE at the end of the final boss fight. There is no reason why this egregious and discredited convention should still plague gaming in this day and age.
-This is very much a 'full-blooded' Metroid game and Metroidvania, not an eccentric experiment like Fusion was.
Spoiler-free TL;DR: it's a good game, probably not a great of the subgenre like Super Metroid was, but it's alright. It's debatable whether it's better than the GBA games as well, but that's not necessarily a bad thing to me, at least, since I liked those. If you are a fan of the franchise, can't get enough of it, and want some new content, it should be worth checking out.
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