#but i honestly have learned to have more fun with metroid 1 and 2 at this point

[beevean]

Metroid hot take: Super Metroid needs a remake, badly.

As much as it gets talked up in the fandom, actually playing the game feels miserable to people who didn't grow up with it due to lacking quality of life features from Fusion/Zero Mission.

Strongly agree | Agree | Neutral | Disagree | Strongly disagree

I'm sorry. I prefer SM to Zero Mission even in the controls :( ZM feels a bit too stiff for me. <- talk about scorching takes lol

Sure, there are things in SM that absolutely could be fixed, such has having to cycle through the items to use, but a lot of things people love about ZM, I prefer in SM: the physics (although yeah the platforming doesn't suit them well), the walljumps, the level design, the sequence breaks, the way the Speed Booster and Shinespark work, the more organic way you collect items, the more subtle way you are guided forward, the general aesthetic of the world...

(I may just suck at ZM, I won't deny it, but I really did not vibe with that game. Fusion is cool, though, as its own thing.)

I think there are hacks that Zero Mission-fy SM. You might be interested!

[nerdy-the-artist]

Dread it… run from it… destiny arrives all the same. Or rather, lesbians, bird people, and pirates. The series kinda just grabbed onto me out of seemingly nowhere at the beginning of March. Resisted the urge at first as a whole lot of series have disappointed me but, man, this fits all the niches for me. Great female protagonist, lost civilization tropes, pirates, galactic politics, galaxy threatening parasites. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t dive in sooner. To speak about the learning Chozo bit, it’s a slow process for me. Spring break is coming up, so I might take that opportunity to expedite the process then.

Mostly, however, I’m gonna share some more token details from my Metroid AU. Granted, I may be jumping the gun, as I haven’t gotten an opportunity to actually play a Metroid game, so perhaps I’m not the best gal to write a story on the matter. But the world building is fun. Without further ado, I will now proceed to rant about actual tidbits from the AU.

1. Ala the manga, Samus does have a slight telepathic bond between her two Chozo blood donors, Grey Voice and Raven Beak. However, due to hardly ever seeing Raven Beak, she does not recognize him. He appears in dreams though, in which she describes him as “the man with the broken face”. Yes, I’m going with his beak being a prosthetic. In any case, in the rare few times Samus dreams of this man with the broken face, he simply tells her to come find him. With time, however, Samus writes the dreams off as just that, dreams.

2. Ridley’s moniker of The Cunning God of Death is taken to another level. While he is well aware that he has no supernatural power or dominion, he styles himself as a god. In his speeches to his underlings, he proclaims the masses they will slaughter as “the mortals”, with his personal kill squad being known as The Revenants. His propensity to survive the unsurvivable helps cement this image in both the eyes of the pirates he controls, and the enemies who hear tales of his crimes.

3. While this may be controversial, the whole term of Space Pirates will be vastly expanded upon. As opposed to one great monolith of a faction, there will be many factions and sub factions jockeying for power in the lawless regions of space. Ridley and (upon the invasion of Zebes) Mother Brain’s faction are known as the Glaxamore. Additionally, membership into these various Space Pirate factions is not particularly restricted by race. There are a great many human and elfan pirates, in Glaxamore and beyond. One such human pirate will be a ship captain in the fleet surrounding Zebes, post invasion.

4. Back during Samus’s teenage years on Zebes, she and Old Bird would play pranks on Grey Voice. One such instance that I am itching to write, if for no other reason than my own entertainment, is when the snuck an Iono Feria (peaceful creature, once again, from the Manga), into Grey Voice’s personal study in the middle of the night, much to his fright and frustration when he woke up the next morning.

5. To speak more about Samus in particular, I wanted to dip more into the character-at-rest portion of her personality. While she is still a loner, she does make use of that time to improve herself beyond her ability to fight and survive. For one thing, she meditates. She tries a variety of different techniques, both human and Chozo, in order to commune with nature. This pursuit was one Old Bird passed onto her. Another thing she inherited from the Chozo is an accent! Samus and the Chozo speak English with a very distinct accent, which is slightly comparable to Greek or Spanish. I may pitch in some voice acting to show what I mean at some point, but not yet. Lastly, in addition to power suit and zero suit, another staple of her wardrobe is a Chozo poncho, with ornate patterning and a very earthy color palette. She often wears it during meditation sessions or when she simply wants to chill.

And that will be all for now. If you guys are interested in hearing more tidbits of this AU, I would be happy to post more. For now, however, I will leave it at this.

[less-than-three-3]

played metroid prime just like everyone else on the planet, apparently

it was ok (for a metroid game) (that means it is still pretty damn good)

But I can’t lie, given the reputation this game has, I was somewhat disappointed. For transparency, I did play it m+kb on my microsoft wii, though if I had shelled out the price for the remaster I doubt my experience would have been much different lol. Explanation below, with spoilers?

I’ll start with what it does well though, and that’s being Super Metroid but in 3d. In terms of exploration, how the world is presented, how you progress, etc. was translated to 3d pretty perfectly. Having pretty much no guidance and a full map, but still having one or maybe two actual correct ways that, if you just keep going forward or think about what you’ve seen before, you can find really easily. Honestly, in many ways, it just kinda feels like a really really big zelda dungeon. Or maybe zelda is a mini metroidvania. You decide! You can really see the bones of this game in so many modern metroidvanias. There’s not even really things you need to shoot a million times because of scan visor! 

And yeah, the scan visor is really cool. Being able to just scan to find out how to approach enemies, or how (or when) to get past obstacles, or learn stuff about the world is pretty neato. The other visors, though, were... ok, I guess. They aren’t interesting to use or anything, just *necessary to see certain enemies*, which I guess is fine just not nearly as interesting as scan visor. (They are also sort of an eyesore, and I imagine the remaster does improve on that)

Speaking of needing a thing to beat certain enemies, I just really hate the space pirates and drones and metroids that have a certain element that they can be hit by. This might just be some bias but I feel like they just take way too long to kill compared to their 2d counterparts, and being forced to use, say, ice beam (which shoots slow as hell) is just a slog. It kinda leads into my first major gripe, being that the combat feels like it takes a little too much of a spotlight for how... admittedly boring it can be. And this is with m+kb controls making aiming a lot better. I don’t really know if it’s actually just later enemies having too much health but the shooting doesn’t feel *that* fun or fluid, like in the 2d games, or out of the way, like in ori 1. Like if it was just a minor thing you just don’t have to think about I wouldn’t complain, but since fights take so long I can’t help but just be a little underwhelmed. 

It is definitely exacerbated by my second gripe, which is just that enemies, and especially bosses, are not that interesting? Like they have 1 or 2 attack patterns that you can recognize and dodge, and then you have your turn and you shoot them in the weak spot or with the weak element, rinse and repeat for however long. I think I can give it a little bit of a pass for how old the game is, but I just didn’t really feel that engaged by the bosses. Maybe that’s just a boss design thing and not the combat? I don’t know. Something in there just felt underwhelming.

One last thing to complain about, I promise, but I felt pretty much the entire last “act” was kind of... eh? I didn’t really care for the artifact hunt, it felt a little annoying (especially having to go through the space pirate research base again...). And then the back to back to back of Meta Ridley, Metroid Prime, then Metroid Prime again just really made a point of showing me the totally awesome boss fight design. Especially the final Metroid Prime form which I thought would be like Dark Beast Ganon like oh cool I super zap it to deal a ton of damage.... and then it dealt like maybe 1/10 of its health bar. And then it started summoning more metroids, some of which were the annoying ones. So it was just a really really... fun.... “I have my turn (for a full minute) and then you have yours (for 10 seconds)”. And to then top it all off, I don’t even get an evacuation sequence?? :/

This one’s a more minor, personal issue, and that’s just that I really don’t care to read so much lore. Environmental storytelling and worldbuilding, and ambient mood setting are things that I think Super Metroid perfected and nothing has really met, and that’s something I still believe even having played Prime. If you want to deliver story beats/developments/realizations in a game like this, you show don’t tell. I’m not delivering like a crazy revelation here, any writer knows this lol. But like, for example, to show that, say, the space pirates experimentations of phazon with metroids, instead of a bunch of space pirate data logs to read, there could have been like, idk, some metroid encounters or you see a metroid escape that looks unstable and oozing with phazon. And the chozo artifacts could definitely have been better tied to the phazon stuff too. It’s why I’ve always really enjoyed Fusion and Dread, even if they are departures from the way things are presented in Super, because they actually commit to narrative telling. Maybe I’m off base here, idk, but I just really wish there were less lore tablets and more intuitive things or like even straight up character interactions to show me what’s going on. I hope Silksong improves on that, but I doubt it. Wait what game are we talking about again?

Ok but enough negativity, I really enjoyed everything up to then. Like I said the actual metroidvania parts of it were really excellent. As good as Super Metroid? Not quite, but I do consider that pretty much peak metroidvania performance, so that’s a very high bar. It emulates it super well, and I was definitely really enjoying the full loop of unlocking and going further into the planet. The music too, was really good -- but again Super Metroid’s soundtrack is simply a masterpiece that I think even the 3DS and Switch’s adaptations/remasters of the same tracks don’t hit the same. 

All in all I think that’s pretty much a really good way to put it. It adapts Super Metroid’s strengths very well, but not quite to the extent of it, and some things do just get lost in the transition to 2D and 3D, I guess. It’s different from Fusion and Dread because those games are unabashedly more straightforward experiences, while still maintaining pretty much all the Metroid backbone and blood. It’s trying the same thing, but in a different form. I can respect it, but it’s definitely not my favorite. Which is a high bar! For reference I still end up rating this game pretty much a 9/10 - which may seem odd given all I’ve said, but I think for the most part this really hits the mark, and Metroid has just a really super good backbone, there’s just some.. growing pains? idk. I’ll definitely play the rest of the trilogy. I did see Dark Samus escape from metroid prime so... I think the next 2 games will definitely up the ante. Or maybe they won’t. We’ll see.

[beevean]

Rank your top 5 Belmonts And if you have the energy/desire to do more: Rank your top 5 Castlevania games Rank your top 5 Castlevania tracks

5) Richter. I don't think much of the guy, but undeniably he is a very important figure, the symbol of the cracking of the Belmont legacy. At first, he's a hotblooded shonen young warrior, full of energy and life and will to fight... and then we learn that the will to fight is actually an issue, because after he defeated Dracula at age 19, he found no other reason to live.

4) Simon. Got higher up to the list in recent times <3 he's the Belmont, without any drama or obvious flaw. But I've come to like that about him, and admire his feats in Simon's Quest that show that he's not just a formidable badass, but a very noble man too, willing to even bury his foe out of respect.

3) Leon. He deserved none of that :( Leon is another Belmont mainly defined by his noble nature, perhaps to a fault (my good man why are you storming a vampire castle without a sword). His shining moment is, of course, him rejecting Mathias' absurd proposal: he may be full of anger against his former friend, to the point of swearing vengeance and dooming his descendants to a lifetime of fighting, but he also refuses to fall into the pit Mathias won't escape from, and has the perfect rebuttal for his inane logic and indirectly Dracula as a whole: "But defeating him... No, preventing others from suffering the same cursed fate... That was Sara's dying wish... Granting my beloved's wish. That is all I can do to prove my love to Sara. Eternity without her would be nothing but emptiness."

2) Juste. The golden child in deep denial :D It's a bit unfair that he gets reduced to "Alucard Belmont" and at most praised for his OP powers, but hey, he's not the only one. He has an interesting personality if you read between the lines, from his brashness that contrasts with his angelic looks, to how fervently he forces Maxim to keep Lydie in the dark. Also he's the king of interior decor :P

1) Trevor. He's the Sonic of Castlevania. He invented the Superpower of Teamwork™. He's kind and helpful to those he considers his friends and a terrifying menace if he thinks you're in his way (he won't ask first). He has the Legs of all time. His theme slaps an inordinate amount of ass. He's shaped like a friend and I love him <3

(a close runnerup would be Christopher, because I really like the concept of an older Belmont, who thought that could retire, nyooming to rescue his son from Dracula's influence <3 a prelude of things to come <3)

~

I was sure I had already ranked them, but perhaps I need to remake the list anyway...

5) Adventure ReBirth. Admittedly it's been a while since I replayed it, but I have fond memories of it as far as Classics go. It's simple, it's well designed, it's fun, it has kickass remixes (Aquarius <3) I wish it wasn't so obscure because I think it's the best entry point for those interested in the genre.

4) Portrait of Ruin. Y'all sleep on this title unfairly. Jonathan and Charlotte are very fun to play as, the gimmick of the paintings allows for new locations rarely explored in the series, it has an interesting mission system that makes the game more fun to master, and an OST that seriously deserves more love.

3) Curse of Darkness. Yes, it's noticeably flawed, from the mindnumbing level design to the obtusity of Forging. It's not a game I can pick up whenever I want, the only reason I can't put it in first place. But aside from that, it honestly feels like it was designed just for me and my tastes lmao. The fighting/crafting/raising loop is incredibly addictive and reminds me of the Sonic Adventure games <3 and ofc, as you could tell, I'm in love with the characters and story :P

2) Symphony of the Night. The one, the myth, the legend. Describing it feels like a waste of time. It's a timeless classic for a reason. It may not be perfect, but much like Super Metroid, I think the atmosphere is so well crafted that it pulls you in regardless of any issues you might have. It's an experience to be had.

1) Harmony of Dissonance. Oh yeah. This game is stupid fun to me. I just pick it up and play it to wind down. The ability to dash in both directions makes it a 10/10, then you add the spells that are fun to experiment with, the breakability, the COLORS FEEL SO RIGHT, the eerie music (yes it's good! it's good!!! fight me!!!!), Maxim Mode...

~

I was also sure I had this list... how could I pick only 5 tracks from this giant, beautiful repertoire...? D:

5) Chapel of Dissonance. Unlike many of the tracks in this soundtrack, this one is perfectly hummable and sweet. It fits the beautiful sky like a glove, and it may subtly reference Divine Bloodlines which is a stroke of genius :)

4) Lost Painting. SoTN abunds in jaw-dropping tracks, but this one feels uniquely magical, and it plays just in the right areas of the castle (a chapel, a library, and icy caves). It sounds like a sad lullaby sung to Alucard, and I hear reluctance to venture further and fight.

3) Garibaldi Courtyard. I have no clue why this mundane area in the game has music that brings me to tears. Similar in atmosphere to Lost Painting and Fog-Enshrouded Nightscape, but with CoD's more modern sound. I don't know how to put into words the profound sadness I hear here.

2) Dracula Battle (SCIV). I cannot gush enough about the genius of this track as the final boss theme. It never gets faster, or drop a harder beat: you only get these long strings and this complex arpeggio for an unsettling atmosphere. I said back then: "It sounds like you're quietly resigning yourself to your fate. You will die. But that's alright. He will die too."

1) Leon's Theme. This could pass for a classical piece. It's perfect in every way. You can almost touch Leon's sorrow and anger - you can hear the fingers pressing on the piano! It gets you pumped to reach the end of the game, and you get to grieve with Leon for the terrible night he's going through. Special shoutout for the part at 1:34 for sounding like the aforementioned Dracula theme.