So AM2R aside, how does Samus Returns hold up as a sequel to Metroid: Zero Mission?

So AM2R aside, how does Samus Returns hold up as a sequel to Metroid: Zero Mission?

Pretty good. Though I think Zero mission had more to build off of. Return of Samus is inherently flawed, what with you fighting the same 4 bosses 40 times. It's also inherently linear, though I didn't really mind it as much as I did in Fusion.

why don't you go play it and form an opinion instead of doing what Sup Forums says?

Not as good but still solid. Zero Mission will probably always be the best in the series, but I'm curious to see how well Mercury Steam can do if they took off the shackles of Metroid 2's linear structure. They might not beat ZM, but they'd give it a run for its money

before anyone tells me the stealth section in ZM was bad enough to make the game worse than super, remind yourself that Meridia exists

I prefer it to Zero Mission, so I'd say very well. It's a second tier metroidvania game for me, along with Aria of Sorrow and Hollow Knight.

Zero mission is just so easy tho. And the bosses are honestly the worst in the series. No strategy involved whatsoever.

ZM is absolutely linear too.

It was the last metroid I played before SR.

The stealth section in ZM takes all of 20 minutes if you're playing super slow, so anyone complaining about it is just shitposting.

I actually played both and enjoy both. So fuck you too.

so, how does samus returns hold up as a sequel to zero mission?

I personally like it, but literally I am in my first year of Metroid gaming (actually bought a copy of Zero Mission for 30 bucks phyiscal fag here) but I also know because of this is my first year. and Samus Returns is so fresh in my head, I may not be thinking clearly.

I might have to wait a couple of months and play Samus returns again before I make an official decision

It has a lot less to work with.
Return of Samus isn't a bad Gameboy game, but it's probably the weakest first party game on the system.

I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Only other Metroid game I really got into was Super. I am currently getting murdered by big digger nigger though and want to get off his wild ride

Samus Returns
>not easy
>better boss fights
>not short
>no shitty stealth segment
>better final boss
>doesn't give you everything at the end of the game

Niggernaught

Mario Land 1 is easily a hundred times worse than Metroid 2.

It's solid but still is a Metroid 2 remake and retains a lot of the flaws of the original. It improves in some areas but also introduces new problems, like the melee counter trivializing most of the normal enemies. Overall I really liked it, and I hope it does well enough to warrant Mercury Steam and Nintendo making an entirely new Metroid free from the baggage of a gameboy game.

ZM is the most non-linear game in the series next to Super and the original.

In what way? The game literally showed me where to go after every completed section, and you are gated from new areas by ability upgrades.

It's definitely more linear than Super, but the ZM devs accounted for sequence breaking. You can get super missiles early, kill Ridley before Kraid, etc.

> you can do some relatively minor sequence breaking in a 3-4 hour game

Doesn't even matter if you aren't planning to get autistic about it. Still can't skip the boss door, stealth section, most of the structure of the game is the same.

You want to talk about non-linearity? Look at something like ALTTP. Metroid does nothing impressive with the concept, stop acting like it's some vital component of the franchise.

>Zero Mission the best in the series

No fucking way, I'd say Prime, Super, and Fusion are all better than Zero Mission easily.

b-but muh speed runs

I think it did great, it lacked a "crazy" moment like ZM had with its stealth section, but The Ridley fight at the end made up for it, seeing the Metroid fight alongside you was incredibly satisfying and sad, especially when you know he dies in super... I hope if they remake Super one day, they give us an option to save him if we 100% the game.

Personally, the series is as follows right now:

Super > ZM = SR > Fusion

Same 4 bosses? by the time you fight the third Metroid they are learning new attacks, environments change abruptly making it tougher to fight them(fuck you Metroid I had to fight on the water). Fighting Zetas and Omegas NEVER felt boring because of how hard they were, they are incredibly fun. Also, we had more than 4 types of bosses user, did you play the game?

Care to give reasons as to why ZM is better? map layout seems to be the only thing above SR(SR has weak maps I agree), but its god tier bosses put it on a tier of its own.

The game is no linear, it does have sequences that need to be broken through, the hint system does not take away the fact that is not linear too.

Everything about Zero Missions post-game is fucking garbage.

The stealth section isn't all that long but nothing about it is interesting or fun, Metroid isn't designed for long stealth sections like that and it shows. It comes down to memorizing the layouts of rooms and where enemies spawn if you want to do it perfectly, otherwise its just waiting around a lot. On low percent runs its obnoxious because pirates can kill you extremely fast, while if playing normal its just a nuisance.

The game gives you four separate power-ups at the very end of Chozodia, with a lot of items in the other areas being locked behind them. Backtracking out of Chozodia is tedious because of the way it's designed, having long linear corridors and being split in half for the sake of the stealth mission, so getting in and out of it to start collecting for 100% is a hassle. It's also a massive pace killer, Fusion didn't suffer as badly from the post-game item hunt because of its hub system and Samus Returns has maybe three items you can teleport to with the baby, but in Zero Mission you're gonna be spending like a half an hour to an hour going around getting items after the power bomb even though you were literally at the door to the final boss.

Robo Ridley is a complete pushover normally. His 100% attack pattern should be his standard one, because it's the least interesting fight in the game otherwise. He's forgettable too and a far worse final battle for the game than Mother Brain, and while the escape sequence after him is one of the better ones in the series those two silver pirates are garbage.

I've gotten every ending in Zero Mission and now that I have I never plan on finishing the game again. I do replay it from time to time but always turn it off at the start of the Zero Suit section. It's a pain in the ass in a speedrun, boring as hell in a casual run, and the biggest pace killer in the series in a completionist run.

What would you consider first tier?

>isn't all that long
>Metroid isn't designed for long stealth sections
user, I...

>Same 4 bosses? by the time you fight the third Metroid they are learning new attacks, environments change abruptly making it tougher to fight them(fuck you Metroid I had to fight on the water). Fighting Zetas and Omegas NEVER felt boring because of how hard they were, they are incredibly fun. Also, we had more than 4 types of bosses user, did you play the game

I agree that they were fun to fight. I just meant that some people may get tired from fighting what is essentially the same few enemy types for the entirety of the game, regardless of how much they tried to diversify the fights.

I do think Samus Returns has the most mechanically involved boss fights of any 2D metroid game, especially the difgernaught which is essentially a Prime fight in 2D.

In that second instance I meant long as in having an entire dedicated section to stealth instead of a room or two.

Stuff like the SA-X is fine, they're extremely brief one room encounters. A straight up 10 minute endeavor showcases the weakness of scripted stealth in a game like Metroid.

I could have worded it better, my bad, but it doesn't change my point.

Fucking this

Zero Mission is great, but it's one of the worst 2D games so it's not hard for SR to be better than it in every way.

This

I don't really get the complaint with having to backtrack at the end of Samus Returns. You only need the baby for like, 3 items. Coupled with the scan pulse, the teleporters and map pins, it should take no less than 30 minutes to get everything you've missed and that's if you waited till the end of the game to do any backtracking.

Zero Mission's got a really fast flow to it, helped in part by the fact that the game does literally tell you where your next destination is.

Samus Returns has a very "circular" design, where every path either takes you back to where you started or intersects with another "circle" path that'll eventually take you back to that intersection. I believe this is to encourage exploration, and is actually something borrowed from Symphony of the Night, as well as the warp point system. Though this does make the couple of dead ends that there actually are feel weird.

Even SR's puzzles are designed this way which frustrated me sometimes. I'm not sure if it was because the devs were just really bad at predicting the way people would play or because I'm too used to Metroid design conventions, but I'd always seem to find myself trying to start a puzzle from where it's supposed to let out.

In ZM, you kind of pop from point to point like a draw-by-numbers book.

The progression system is also pretty different. In ZM, even though you know your REAL goal is to kill Kraid and Ridley so you can open Tourian, in practice what you're really trying to do is just collect each power up that opens the path to the subsequent power up, and along the way the bosses just happen to be in your way.

In SR, your progression goals are just to kill enough Metroids to open the next area, and it works because it gives you the sense that you're there to kill Metroids, not collect cool Chozo merch. You just seem to stumble into the upgrades as you go the same way you stumbled into bosses in ZM.


tl;dr it's very hard to compare them because they feel like they were made by completely different teams with completely different goals in mind... which is true. They're both remakes in the same series, but that's as far as their similarities go.

Do you mean that "break this hidden block" = "completely break the game"? That's the most vacuous way to do sequence breaking, it's almost decorative. Doesn't rely on player skill or creative ways to use your upgrades, only makes Ridley slightly harder if you didn't get Super Missiles but nothing else. Doing a RBO in Super makes learn new techniques to just to survive Lower Norfair, but doing it in ZM means breaking a couple of hidden blocks.
Zero Mission is the best baby's first Metroid but even Fusion and original have more sustance.

Just to continue a bit, for the entirety of AM2R's development, I had little interest in it because I felt like it was just gonna be Zero Mission 2 using Metroid II as the loose inspiration instead of Metroid I. But then the actual game felt like very much its own thing.

And the same is what impressed me about SR. I thought it was gonna be to Other M what Mirror of Fate was to Lords of Shadow-- a misguided attempt to shove a 3D game into 2 dimensions on a portable.

But in actuality, though I see some DNA of both Mirror of Fate and Zero Mission in places, SR feels mostly like some new people doing their own take on Metroid, which I find welcome.

I prefer Zero Mission, without a doubt. Samus Returns felt very uninspired to me
>the enemy variety was shit
>the bosses sucked dick
>the level design was too linear and boring
>the soundtrack sucked—this is unforgivable to me, given that pretty much every other Metroid is full of great tunes
>difficulty is terrible because it's done through pure numbers: enemies do a lot of damage. Metroid hits you and you lose half a tank at least, but there's nothing interesting about their design, their placement in the level or their AI, there's absolutely no thought put into it: all enemies are brain dead 0s and 1s that just do a lot of damage if their hitboxes touch yours
>hated the visuals, no just the 2.5D assets but the art design itself was unappealing to me
>copy-pasted jingles: call this nitpicking all you want but the game straight-up copying and pasting tunes from the Prime games didn't sit well with me. The Trilogy did it but it felt appropriate there because it was a saga; an overarching story with the same tone all around. Aside from that every other Metroid has had its own particular jingles, music and sound design but THIS game. That's just lazy.
>checkpoints in a motherfucking METROID game

/blog

I liked Samus Returns. I had as much fun with it as Fusion and Super. I still need to beat the Prime Trilogy in order to complete my Metroid saga. But the weird one analogue stick is putting me off for an FPS title. Is it worth it?

This is my problem with Zero Mission too.
The fun of sequence breaking comes from having advanced techniques and movement options. Things like the wall jump, infinite bomb jump and mockballing that let you circumvent the need for traditional powerups with tricks that are tougher to execute. You don't need to know the ins and outs of every map to pull them off, a lot of people grab things like the spazer and wave beam out of order on their very first playthrough of Super Metroid. It just comes from a familiarity with the games controls and design.

In Zero Mission the sequence breaking is all very artificial. You can't access Ridley until you get the speedbooster because there's a speedbooster block preventing you from getting into the lower level of the shaft, but if you hit the right block at the top of the shaft you can take a shortcut down there. You need the long beam at the start but if you know where to shoot the top of that tunnel you can enter through a different entrance. There's an invisible tunnel leading to Robo Ridley if you don't want to get the power bombs.

It feels like the game was originally designed with non-linearity in mind (which it was, it uses Metroid 1 as a template and that game was extremely non-linear) but the addition of a hand-holding linear sequence forced them to add two entrances and exits to every room.

Rewarding the player for ignoring your commands doesn't mean you didn't give commands.

I beat Zero Mission for the first time a couple months ago and I'm having fun with Samus Returns.
I kind of disliked the graphics for Zero Mission because it felt like too much of a step down from Super, and the really bad GBA sound quality made it a chore to play through.
Sure, Samus Returns sound could be better due to the 3DS speakers not being great, but it's relief to not have to listen to the muffled, underwater-ish sound of the GBA

Play the Wii versions. If you emulate you can probably use mouse and keyboard too.

>>the bosses sucked dick
spoken like someone that has not played the game at all, SR has the best bosses in the whole series, ZM funny enough has the worse ones.

It was great. Metroid II was a lot weaker than the original Metroid, but SR adds to the game and the mythos. Zero Mission is obviously more nostalgic for me, but I like both about the same.

I only have two real complaints for SR:

>you can't use the D-Pad to aim and walk.
>the locked content behind the $30 Amiibo pack, which I bought yesterday because I couldn't resist

>Zeta Metroids
>Omega Metroids
>only hard because of damage
>Not because of the incredible tough patterns they pose
literally played for less than an hour and stopped playing I bet.

ZM is not linear. True, the game will tell you where to go but you are generally not forced to listen to its suggestions. If you explore enough and know what you are doing, its possible to skip around. For example, you can skip getting the charge beam and long beam. It’s possible to reach Ridley before you get to Kraid. This is the opposite of Metroid Fusion which is linear. MF forces you to do the same events in the same sequence. MZM does not for the most part.

>when you kill a Zeta in 10 seconds

It started off with its counterable move so I just unloaded a bunch of super missiles into it, and then right after it hopped on the ceiling and was immediately open to the grapple beam. Then I used beam burst, plus phase drift to keep him down longer.

it was fucking awesome

Anyone else found Zetas to be easier than Gammas? First fight against a Gamma I got wrecked hard, but all four Zetas I had little trouble with.

My problem with zero mission was that most of the areas felt really weak. I never really had fun exploring brinstar or crateria for example, I think it was a combination of the art style and music. Neither of those elements pulled me in like in other metroid games, the one area that came the closest was Kraid's Lair.

Gammas are more prone to wasting your time, so I suppose. The first time I fought a Zeta I got trashed since it was so aggressive.

It seems pretty good, but given its a remake of 2 it still suffers 2's problems.

While this thread is up, is Other M really that bad if you cut out the story part of it? I've been going through AM2R and Fusion right now, figure I would knock Other M off the list too. The only complaints I ever hear about Other M though are the awful story.

If you cut all the story and pacing destroying segments like the pixel hunts and forced slow walking sections, I would still not play that game.

From what I gather as an outsider to most of the series, Other M's main problems in terms of gameplay were that it didn't have a very good idea of exploration due to being so narrative-driven, and that having to deal with 3D combat via a sideways remote with auto-lockon aiming and having to aim and stop your character entirely via pointing the wiimote at the screen to shoot missiles were really fucking retarded.

I've seen some say that without all the bullshit attached, the core combat could've been fun, but since cutscenes were unskippable if I remember right, it's a very, very draining game.

The music is also pretty shit and forgettable. There's also the segments where you'e locked in first person and have to find something trivially small in the environment. The worst of these is when you're in a dark room and trying to find something above you, and meanwhile you're getting fire rained down on you so if you don't find whatever the hell you're supposed to be finding, you're losing health.

>the soundtrack sucked

You know what, I'll give you that one.

But pretty much EVERYTHING else that was first party or thereabouts; from Donkey Kong to Lolo to Wario Land to Kirby, Zelda and Picross and Mole Mania and Balloon Fight, it's just absolutely trumped by the rest of the output for the system.

Granted, RoS was also one of the very early first party titles, so it's not really fair to compare.
Wave Race is also worse.

You still play Metroid?
What are you, a woman?

Not the same guy, but I can't remember a single new track from Samus Returns. The only ones I remember are the remixed Magmoor Caverns and red Brinstar music.

So how about those new Fusion Varia colors?

>remixed Magmoor Caverns
>Magmoor Caverns
You uncultured swine

I already knew the story was a farce going in and paid it no mind.

I still gave up less than 1/3 of the way in. It's just an awful slog. I can't stand it. I have 100% every single Metroid game and I could not bring myself to complete that shit. It is boring, frustrating, and loooooooooooooooong.

Chozo Laboratory was also good

A lot of the music is remixed.

The Chozo lab, Zeta, Omega, and Queen Metroid tracks are original and stuck out to me.

>green
But why

And i cant remember a single track from Metroid Prime 2 but that doesnt mean it had a bad soundtrack. Just because you cant hum something doesnt make it bad. Not all music is melodic.

Because that's what it was in Fusion.

Oh, and the diggernaut boss theme too.

that's clearly a slightly greenish yellow. Even the greenishness isn't even close to the Samus Returns palette.

I don't know if I'd call it better, but it's atleast not worse than the original colors.

Most of that theme was lifted straight from the Metroid Prime version, smartass. Sure didn't sound like the Lower Norfair version.

I don't see the issue.

Not him but it's a totally different arrangement from the Prime one.

Doesn't change the fact that the original theme is Norfair Ancient Ruins Area.

If I had to wager a guess I'd say it was trying to match what Fusion's in-game sprite looked like. It looks far more green than the art, and even the abdominal and other such exposed areas look more pink than dark red.
But it's still nowhere close to the shades Samus Returns uses.

Looking pretty Light Suit there, Fusion Suit.

> complaining about bad bosses when ZM has Kraid, shitty worms and Mecha Ridley

ALTTP is gated linearity though. It allows a lot of freedom but it doesn't let you do whatever you want whenever provided you're not doing major glitches.

Light World is completely linear in its progression. Escape -> Eastern -> Desert -> Hera -> MS -> Agahnim Tower

Dark World is more free but there are still clear gates. Palace of Darkness must be done first. You can then do Swamp, Skull, and Thieves in any order, but you need the Fire Rod and Titan's Mitt before you can do the next set of dungeons, Ice and Mire. And you need everything before you can do Turtle Rock, which is needed for Ganon's Tower.

So there are still hard gates to progression but you have freedom in each segment. Which is very good game design, imo. It allows for significant progression and difficulty curve. Compare this to say, ALBW, which has no difficulty curve to speak of since you can do shit whenever.

Pfft. You can easily do Hera before Desert.

>the bosses sucked dick
>the soundtrack sucked—this is unforgivable to me, given that pretty much every other Metroid is full of great tunes

is right. you're a retard.

None of that sounds like anything other than some self-imposed "make the game harder for myself" unimportant shit. You still need various suit upgrades to reach the sequential areas you need to go.

Can you skip the Varia suit? I really doubt it.

Yeah, but there's absolutely no reason to other than for the sake of it. You get the item you need to access Hera halfway through the desert temple. If you're at that point in the dungeon, there's no reason not to clear it.

>the soundtrack sucked—this is unforgivable to me, given that pretty much every other Metroid is full of great tunes
That's not true. Most Metroid games DON'T have great tunes. Metroid II, Prime 2, Hunters, Prime 3, Other M, Federation Force all don't for example.

No you can't. You need the Power Glove to get up the Mountain. There is no other way to get up Death Mountain without using glitches.

You could leave Desert after getting it and just go up but that's pretty stupid since you need all three pendants to get the Master Sword. That's like saying you don't technically need to do PoD first since you can just get hammer and go wherever. Why the fuck would you want to? It's just straight up inefficient.

Based user.

>Can you skip the Varia suit?
In most games, yes, you absolutely can.

Except ZM huh?

Well, no, because the game forces it on you when you get the Legendary Power Suit.
But up to that point you can.

>how does Samus Returns hold up as a sequel to Metroid: Zero Mission?
2d/10 would play again

I'm not sure why you're complaining that they actually picked complimentary greens and pinks this time instead of the eye-searing combination from Fusion.

How the fuck did they make the Fusion Suit look good?

They made it more detailed, I guess. It's not just a bunch of rubber stretched over the Power Suit anymore.

Using sequence breaking as example of player freedom always leaves me scratching my head.

There's no Metroid game that's as open ended as something like Breath of the Wild or ALBW.

Oh man, I know people who would get into a fistfight with you over what you just said.

>no cheese suit
blasphemy

How is he wrong? Sequence breaking isn't intentional. What the developers intended is different from what the players experience.

But the primary problems with 2 are that it doesn't have a map, all the places in the game look the same and it's slow as shit, which are all things fixed in the game.


Anyway the thing with Other M's gameplay has been something Metroid fans haven't been able to really agree on. It's not very good, but I think if you cut out the story, removed the dodge counter in favor of just a regular dodge, and scaled the already shitty looking graphics down so it could all work on an N64, you'd have yourself a pretty solid first attempt at translating Metroid from 2D to 3D on an early 3D system.

If Metroid 64 had existed and was just Other M without the story, that is the only situation in which Other M's gameplay would be acceptable.

However, in the year 2010, long since something being 3D was novel, years and years since pretty much everyone had figured out the rulebook for making 3D games, 15 years since Mario 64 and Tomb Raider, 10 years since OoT, GTA III and Metroid Prime, and plenty of time since RE4 and Gears of War had basically set all the industry standards for both 3D platformers and third-person action/shooters, something like Other M that barely stacks up to even early 32-bit games on the PS1 and Saturn just doesn't fucking cut it.

If this was like two or three guys in their basement making their first attempt at a 3D game, I'd be like yeah, Basement Guys' Other M is pretty alright. But for a full-priced game from NINTENDO, the people who brought you Super Metroid and Metroid Prime? I kind of have an expectation for something that is gonna be a bit more cutting edge, a little more in-line with games that have come out this century, including ones they themselves put out.

Apologies, I've been waiting about 6 years to drop that rant.

I'm not saying he's wrong. I'm just saying I know people who would fight him about it. With their fists.

T-their fists?

>the people who brought you Super Metroid and Metroid Prime
Ah, but this is wrong. None of the people who worked on Super Metroid or Metroid Prime worked on Other M. Barring Sakamoto of course.

Well you don't use your feet in a fistfight, user.

>The game literally showed me where to go
Reminder all Chozo status aside from the first one are entirely optional and only casuals use them. If you've never done Ridley before Kraid in ZM you should not be posting in a Metroid thread.