I’M DREADING THE RESPONSE TO THIS REVIEW.

I don’t love Metroid Dread. I wanted to. I called up my local game store and asked them to put me down for a copy as well as the Amiibo the moment the Nintendo Direct that announced it had ended. Metroid: Zero Mission and Metroid Prime are two of my favorite games ever, and the rest of the series is really good so when I say I do not love Dread, please know that I am disappointed with that fact. I am disappointed that I do not love this game as much as other people do. I have my reasons though and I hope people will take the time to read my issues with Dread before crucifying me for not liking it as much as they do.

So, before I go any further, let me just say that I bought this game with my own money, and I decided to write the review to take the load off of someone else who did in fact get the game for free to review. We don’t make money off ads because we don’t have ads on ZTGD so we’re not interested in hate clicks. This is my opinion and, in a world, where reviewers are consistently called shills or being accused of payola, I am just being honest with my opinion. I spent my money, I didn’t love it, and here’s why. But to be clear, Metroid Dread is not a bad game. Not in the slightest. It is however a game in a series that has more highs than lows. Even the worst Metroid games are far from being truly terrible. However, Metroid inspired a lot of games from both bigger studios and independent devs, many of which have come out since the last mainline Metroid title. A new Metroid game has to be perfect if it wants to stand in front of everything that has come after, and I don’t think Dread gets it all right.

PLATFORMS: SWITCH
MSRP: $59.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $49.99

My first problem is a bit of a carryover from Metroid: Samus Returns for 3DS. While the parry system is neat, the game relies too much on it. This is fine for a title where attacks are going to be melee focused but Samus has a gun to kill things at range meaning I am constantly putting myself into danger to defeat enemies because the gun is useless until I counter. Missiles circumvent this but are way too necessary in Dread because of how useless the gun is. Sure, charge shots can do the same thing as a missile, but why is the standard shot so weak? Even when I would receive upgrades Samus still felt horribly underpowered. I understand the name of the game is Dread, but really that only comes into play when the invincible EMMI units are around so keeping Samus so underpowered for most of the game doesn’t feel scary, it’s just annoying. Until the last two segments where Samus is pretty much overpowered in comparison to the standard enemies, I didn’t feel like I was progressing in any meaningful way. The power-ups were more like keys than actual items that powered up Samus.

Speaking about progression, I felt like Dread gave me little to no direction at a point. The beginning and ending sections of Dread do a good job of making it clear on where to go, but there was a substantial point around the middle where I got lost. Had I known a general area of where to go I would have stayed there and kept bashing my head against the wall to find the way through. However, I kept backtracking to figure out where I needed to go next because even though the game will make me talk to ADAM, he doesn’t ever give any real advice. I know I need the Varia Suit. This is useless information because telling someone what they need and not where to get it is pointless. I had no issue finding the Varia Suit, but I use that as an example to not spoil anything. I would check the mission log and it would just tell me what the last power up I got was.

I know what the last power up I got was; the issue is where I need to go to use the power up as throughout my journey, I have passed plenty of spots that require it. So, around the point where I had four or five areas unlocked, I got stuck because of this issue and I think. This is where the second part of this issue comes into play: the map is terrible. The world layout is nonsensical, which is okay for natural cave formations but for buildings I expect something that makes more sense. Nothing stood out to me either which compounds the issue, because had I started to recognize the paths through areas, I wouldn’t have this issue, but rooms don’t stand out and so I had to refer to my map. The actual in-game map is even worse because it is filled with icons that I can’t turn off. I appreciate that I can place markers on the map but letting me toggle the icons that show where power ups have been seen/collected would have been way better.

At a certain point in Metroid Prime, Zero Mission, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and plenty of other Metroidvanias, I learn the layout and can quickly make my way to other areas without having to constantly refer to my map. That never happened in Dread which only stole more of my time. Teleporters and locking of doors and some odd choices further obfuscated the map and turned it into a labyrinth that I didn’t enjoy going through and having to travel through an active EMMI zone multiple times because I didn’t know where to go was like getting my teeth pulled. I know people have complained about shooting random blocks to open paths forward, but I don’t think that complaint would have been made had this game been a bit better at making the player comfortable in knowing they are where they need to be to progress.

Which is a shame because this is the best Samus has ever felt. Sure, I wish the standard blaster shot did more damage, but controlling Samus is so smooth. Running from EMMIs feels like I’m playing Mirror’s Edge in 2D because of how fast and nimble she is. Had I been able to learn how to traverse areas without having to constantly check my map, I would have been sprinting through areas because using that counterattack out of a sprint is one place where it is extremely satisfying. Samus in this game is probably the best she has ever been overall. The characterization finally represents how Nintendo has tried to sell Samus for years, but previously she always just came off as stoic and stone faced (I won’t talk about her characterization in Other M because some mistakes should be forgotten). Finally, Samus is a badass who is not here to mess around. The final sequence in this game is one of the coolest things I have ever seen and did make everything worthwhile, but the problems I had did tarnish the ending a bit.

I have heard the discourse surrounding Dread saying that the game is hard. I disagree to an extent. I think the bosses are hard (relatively speaking), but outside of one that I could never quite get the timing on, the rest of them just require some patience and pattern recognition to get through. Now, that being said, the fact that most bosses can’t be hurt with the standard shot and forces the use of missiles is a bit lame and can cause some people to have problems juggling the controls while trying to dodge and fire and I can see how that would be a problem for some people, but I just think the missile issue points out how useless the standard and even some of the upgraded shots are throughout Dread. Boss battles do require mandatory use of the parry system but generally the window to react is increased over standard enemies and the EMMIs.

I do think the fact that bosses do a lot of damage is unfair, but only because Dread does not like giving out power ups except for missile upgrades that add a whole 2 missiles to the total count. I would have preferred less upgrades in higher amounts and I would have loved a few more health upgrades. Performing some of the actions to get upgrades is a challenge and to be greeted with more missiles may be the lamest reward. I suggest people watch someone go for 100% of the collectibles. It is insane how much work it is to get ten more missiles. Extra costumes from previous Metroid games would have been nice. Hell, anything other than more missiles. One of the Dread Amiibos gives ten more missiles while the other gives another health container. Clearly one is far more important as every boss has something that can be shot to get miniscule amounts of health back as well as missiles.

Back to the difficulty however is the EMMIs. I do not think the EMMI sections are difficult or hard, but just punishing. The sections are mainly linear while the EMMI is active with only one clear way through, and once caught the timing on countering the EMMI is always different and eventually that fear of them goes away and they just become an annoyance. I’m glad the game knows to do checkpoints outside these areas but to me it just says that the developers understood that the EMMIs aren’t necessarily fair. I don’t learn anything from the EMMI encounters as a player. Not until late in the game do I get items that give me some advantage of outrunning them. So, I just die and restart to circumvent this issue. Hard implies there is a difficulty curve, as in that there is something that the player can learn to become better, but I know what the EMMIs are capable of very quickly and outside of that they don’t necessarily repeat the same actions on every attempt I make. This isn’t a Metal Gear Solid stealth section where the guards move like clockwork, which would be fine if I only had to deal with each EMMI once, but I found myself wandering and having to traverse the same EMMI section multiple times was annoying and not fun. I didn’t become a better player for going through that, I just became irritated. Even defeating the EMMIs is just a chore. I would have preferred having to evade the EMMIs and slowly taking pieces of their face plate off over having to slowly heat it up in one continuous barrage.

I know that’s a series of complaints, but they are complaints about a good game in an amazing series. I simply don’t think this stands as tall as Super Metroid, Zero Mission, Prime, Fusion, or even Samus Returns. But to a Metroid fan it is worth playing and realize that these are problems I found with the game; other people haven’t had the same issues. However, to anyone who has never played a Metroid game before, I don’t think this is the place to start. I think it feels too different from the rest of the series (neither a good or bad thing) and the moments in the story that hit really well only do so because of everything that has happened before in previous titles.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.