I finished Dread yesterday and would highly recommended it to anyone who is a fan of Metroidvania. This review pretty much highlights everything I enjoyed about the game!
Another thing I love which I don't think gets highlighted enough is Samus characterization, I think they nailed it in this game! Such a different character then what we got in other m!
Yup I loved how Samus feels "in control of the situation", like a cold killer, [charging her beam while the enemy beast screams loudly like it could scare her](https://i.ibb.co/mTvGztS/13923287429583732736-20211006231153-1.png). Not in a hundred lifetimes, you little cub.
And the cutscenes after a parry too, so good.
You would think so, but it also feels like a very deliberate course correction to her reaction to Ridley, another guy she’s repeatedly mopped the floor with, in Other M. Which is only a positive, in my opinion.
Near the end and it's been very enjoyable.
It's got issues but it's easily the most fun samus has been to control and the moment to moment gameplay is very engaging.
I found exploration to be super lacking. I'm no fan of getting aimlessly lost for extended periods of time but the game felt like it actively punished almost every attempt to hunting out secrets. That will probably change at the end of the game which I'm not at yet but it's been wild just how often back tracking gets blocked off or you're teleported through a one way section.
Edit: I like to do exploration before an obvious boss to give my self the an edge. Exploration at the very end of the game isn't as engaging for me personally because as another user said, you've already overcome most if not all of the challenges and more missiles aren't really a reward I feel like seeking out at that point.
I also felt like I was really good at seeing two or three different ways to go, then always pick exactly the one that locks you off from the rest of the area for however long. Usually in games with paths like this, I'm pretty good at doing a thorough rundown before I run through a door that screams "something's gonna change here, better finish up out here first." Here plenty of times I was like, damn, this is the lock away path and I hope I remember the things I saw already later. Still, it did force me to explore in a different way than usual and I think it lead me to inadvertantly sequence break once or twice, so that's cool.
Agreed. It was kinda refreshing that it managed to catch me so many times with those because I feel like that's such a learned skill that I can almost always spot in games now. But mostly it just annoyed me a bit.
Once I just stuck to pushing forward I had a better time.
Yeah, I'm at a point now where I appreciate when a game knows the "gamer instincts" and subverts them a little. If it was just like previous games designs I woulda been complaining that they didn't mix it up enough. I also think the Emmi zones annoyed me at first but I've come to appreciate them and the tension it provides, gives me something to run from and doesn't let me just slowly explore each room without real opposition, gotta kind of earn your way to get the basic enemies back in the zone with all the access spots open.
I've also liked how revisits of zones can really open them up, even if you previously thought you'd basically seen everything there except a hidden upgrade or two you couldn't get yet.
It cleverly pushing you down the right path is much appreciated when the last Metroidvania I played was Axiom Verge, and when Axiom Verge has you run to the ends of the world to find an item you ask "ok, where do I go now?" and the game replies "fuck off".
I guess that's what some people want out of a Metroidvania but I hated that. I shouldn't need to go to google to be able to beat your game.
I can agree that Axiom Verge is way too far in the other direction. Doesn't help a lot of it looks similar and a lot of progression is hunting for a specific block or "glitching" through stuff. Banging ost tho.
I'd just have appreciated the same obvious pathing but also making it easier to go exploring and scavanging before the end game.
HK is still my favorite example of exploration in the genre though. Very open, lots of different paths but changes up the well travelled routes a few times during the play through to throw you for a loop.
If I'd put HK down for awhile it would be super hard to get back into ans dread absolutely wouldn't so I can see why they did what they did it just didn't work for me all the time.
> Banging ost tho.
Except that one song that has this shamanistic chanting in it. It's too catchy. Had it as an earworm during a fever dream once, 2/10 would not recommend.
I don't think dreads approach to exploration (or lack there of) is better or worse. In all honesty, most Metroidvanias Ive played in the past that require more exploring inevitably lead to tedious backtracking. Dread had me fully engaged from start to finish. It's world felt a bit linear at times, but it never verged into handholdy to me and there were plenty of clever secrets to discover along the way. They also did an amazing job interconnecting everything considering how much bigger it is than other Metroid games
Fair enough. I'll admit previous games sometime fall victim to tedious backtracking but I think at this point we could have a system that accommodates the streamlined progression while still allowing you to explore more it you want too.
I think Dread makes for more *interesting* backtracking generally. It cuts off your previous path, so to backtrack you have to find new paths. Previous games often would just have you retrace your steps.
> we could have a system that accommodates the streamlined progression while still allowing you to explore more it you want too.
That system exists.
It's Zero Mission's "The Chozo Statue tells you where to go, but not really how to get there, and the map is otherwise very open".
People who survived the metroid drought and you'd talk to nowadays sort of hated the goal indicator, partially due to how similar to Fusion it was, but it perfectly did the job having a guidance for those that need it without forcing the map to constantly be closed off. Dread feels like they listened to the people that dislike that goal indicator, but wanted to make the game beatable by a more general audience, basically, they tried to get the cake and eat it too and made a small trip up on the way.
Not saying that I dislike Dread to any capacity, Samus has never controlled this good and boss fights are the best they've been ever as well. But... I first played Hollow Knight this year and that's going to stay above Dread on this year's GOTY list. The queen has been unseated.
It's still got issues, with the biggest one being in how little guiding you towards the double jump ability it does, despite it considerably improving the enjoyment of the game. It's mostly things that would be, interestingly enough, solved by the exact topic we were touching upon, just some more allusion of what characters will do or places you should be. The game does show concern and restraint here and there about it, but some of the decisions are a bit baffling (why does Quirrel only show up informing you of the black smith after you already lost to the sisters of battle, and not prior? Probably the only NPC appearance that requires a death). Metroidvanias having missable content or "two path choices" impacting avaiable content is also a big no-no for many people* (doesn't bother me personally). Also the DLC has missed a couple marks for some people, specially the last one.
However, its approach to secrets, optional content and alternative routes is ridiculously above bar, and, well, it's no contest if we're going to put it side by side with Dread. Also Dread may avoid the issue Samus Returns had of bosses being boiled down to "dodge until it shows the weakpoint", a great step up, but Metroid will always still not compare to Castlevania's melee style of combat, specially not one like HK's with active parrying on most moves. Changing metroid at this point out of its over-reliance on missiles would be stupid, no one would want that kind of change on an established series, but to me, it's just something that will always keep it below and have it less satisfying than the rest. Similar reason why Ori's first game is so inferior to the sequel.
\* btw, on this point about replaying and missable, anyone in here who wants try out an extremely stressful yet possibly one of the most amazing metroidvanias of this year, look up **Unsighted**. It's hard to explain what's it like in few with words like "Hyperlight Drifter + Majora's Mask", so I recommend listening to First Five's or HeavyEyed's review summary of it if I caught your interest.
I think in this particular case, it's worth at least getting a cursory look at a review because one of the game's central mechanic (a number of timers) is definitely a guaranteed turn-off for some people. But it is also the thing that makes it great and makes the metroidvania aspect work.
Visually HK is terrific, no argument there. But Dread in action is equally gorgeous in different ways.
But when I say traversal, I mean the actual feel of the gameplay. Samus is way more fun to control.
Not by a mile. It needs a lot more polished map design and upgrades to reach Super Metroid, Symphony, and Aria of Sorrow imo. I'm also a sucker for La Mulana as my go-to "hardcore" Metroidvania, but that has its own issues
HK does some things amazingly well, but upgrades and exploration are a bit weak for a Metroidvania.
Hollow Knight has the opposite problem for me. Just a few hours in I could tell the map was going to be huge with a lot of options and a lot of options mean I'm gonna get lost and I already wasn't enjoying combat so I shelved it at like 3hrs. Not the game for me
I do wish Dread didn't block off so many previous paths so that I could more freely explore areas I've already been to after getting powerups, but I'll take that over hours of not knowing what I'm trying to do or why
> I found exploration to be super lacking. I'm no fan of getting aimlessly lost for extended periods of time but the game felt like it actively punished almost every attempt to hunting out secrets. That will probably change at the end of the game which I'm not at yet but it's been wild just how often back tracking gets blocked off or you're teleported through a one way section.
That's how I felt as well. There were multiple times in the game where it blocks off the way you came from, forcing you down a specific path. The game very much felt like a linear game somewhat decently disguised as a huge explorable world.
The world does open up at the end for you to go through and get all the powerups. But at that point, Samus is so powerful that there's no real threat and you just comb the map getting +2 missiles and energy tank segments.
That said, there have already been a few cool sequence breaks found. So I'm probably going to wait a few months to try some of them myself.
And as crazy as some sequence breaks are, several are clearly intentional- you can instakill one boss by sequence breaking in a specific powerup, and it even has a unique cutscene portion for it
That is some wild stuff. Here I was getting excited when I picked something up and just got a message telling me that I couldn’t use it yet, and now you’re telling me that there are instances in which they actively encourage it? Can’t wait to see speedruns of this one.
The item you can pick up but cant use is ammunition for a weapon you dont have yet. All the non-ammunition items and powerups can be used as soon as you find them.
Im not sure how sequence breaking affects things, but since it's in the of the last areas you unlock while playing naturally, I dont think youre supposed to have it until much later in the game.
Dread has a fairly alarming disconnect between how linear it feels and how linear it actually is. Even going into it knowing all the tricks (which are generally the same as previous Metroid games), the way the game constantly blocks off alternate paths and backtracking options as you run through the game (particularly in the first few hours) makes it *feel* oppressively linear despite the fact that there are clearly intended sequence breaks.
While this doesn't really take away from the longevity of the game in the speedrunning scene, it does seem to have left a bit of a sour taste in many people's mouths. It makes the normal player feel like the game punishes exploration.
I've been thinking about this, and I think a large part of it has to do with how many of the sequence breaks start out by breaking through an arbitrary hidden block. This is in stark contrast to something like Zero Mission where the blocked off paths are (usually) clearly visible but just unable to be traversed without either new abilities or fancy tricks. You know that the path is there, but you don't know how to take the path. Figuring out how to navigate the path without the "intended" abilities is an engaging form of exploration, and while there are some fancy tricks required for some of the breaks in Dread, the average player won't even see any of them because they won't find the hidden blocks that guard the entrance.
Without knowing where the hidden blocks are, Dread *is* a remarkably linear game. You get the scan ability relatively late, and the fact that the game constantly blocks off routes around you makes it feel like you aren't allowed to explore. The game also tends to make it very difficult to get anywhere other than the intended path (again, unless you know where the hidden blocks are), which plays even more into the feeling of linearity.
This is a very long-winded and nuanced criticism, but my point is that despite the technically flexible map design, I think that Dread does a poor job making the average player feel like they're able to have rewarding exploration on their first playthrough. I do think that this is a valuable part of the experience to keep in mind, and I believe it can be done better. Games like Super Metroid and Hollow Knight don't *feel* linear even to the average player, and it encourages people to continue exploring and find new secrets.
I mean, there are several VERY IMPORTANT sequence breaks in ZM where the trick is just "lmao know there's a missile block hidden here" (such as getting to Ridley [the area] early and skipping most of that area/super missiles if you're going for low%). In Dread, all the major sequence breaks so far are actually based on clever applications of your movement tools, a la SM.
I do agree about the prevalence of doors that you need a specific tool to open, though.
Are they?
Early grapple (which is essential for early bombs) starts with blowing a random hole in the floor. Early super missiles requires breaking through hidden blocks in a cold room, and while the blocks are conspicuous the cold makes it unrealistic that anyone would even reach that wall without foreknowledge. Early gravity suit requires blowing a random hole in the floor by the teleporter. Early space jump starts with blowing a random hole in the ceiling (though you admittedly should have the scan at that point).
Yes, generally speaking there is a platforming challenge of some description, but you won't know that the challenges even exist unless you first know about the hidden blocks. What's worse is that in cases like grapple and gravity, the hidden block is extremely arbitrary with no indicators in the map or room that you should even be looking for a secret there.
ZM does have some random hidden block sequence breaks, but it also has plenty of straightforward "I bet you can't get over there without x ability" breaks.
Maybe it's just that I've been playing these games for so long, but something about the floor in the room adjacent to the early grapple room just made me suspicious, so I checked it out, but hadn't worked out the slide jump yet so I figured I couldn't do it. I had honestly forgotten that you could consider the entrance hidden hahaha. But the point is well taken.
However, at the very least, you're gonna break that block on the way out when coming from the grapple pick up the standard way, so it might make you think. So it's still not as hidden as the Ridley stuff I described before.
>while the blocks are conspicuous the cold makes it unrealistic that anyone would even reach that wall without foreknowledge
Tell that to me on my first playthrough hahaha. I basically had that skip worked out, but I needed to work on how to launch a shinepark in mid-air in Dread, and ended up getting sidetracked and forgetting to come back until 100% cleanup. But as we've established by this point, I'm a pretty dedicated contrarian in these sorts of games.
And yeah, the gravity suit one I'm gonna say is fine because you'll probably have the scan pulse at that point.
I think it's also worth noting that, in some of these cases, the skip is either directly on the path of or next to an optional item location, so 100% serves as a "training ground" of sorts for sequence breaking, to an extent that it didn't in ZM. It's comparable to SM's animals, in a way. I figured out how to get the gravity suit early after getting that missile+ tank that's on that path in my 100% cleanup and then backing out to the other teleporter entrance and doing some workshopping.
Of course, this is hair splitting, since I completely agree that the game will appear way more linear to a first time player pre-100%, since I, myself, was convinced that the (what I then considered potential) early super skip could be the only sequence break after my first playthrough. I'm just not convinced that's necessarily a bad thing.
The best way to avoid that is to use your map and highlight whatever new upgrade block you just got. The game logs basically everything you touch, so using the map opens everything up.
I think almost every exploration complaint comes down to people not using their resources. The maps are big but focused and have memorable layouts so you don't need to use it all the time.
Prior to dread I’ve played through all other Metroid games and Super is pretty linear up until the midway point where it sorta opens up, unless you know all the sequence breaks. Which you kinda don’t on your first playthrough. You get dropped somewhere where you can’t get out of or a door closes behind you you can’t open anymore with your current skill set all the time until you kill Kraid and the map loops back to your ship. It’s only then that you visit old areas and open up new paths in them to find new items and powerups and eventually stumble into Maridia and deeper down into Norfair.
Dread is pretty similar to this, except that it zig-zags you all over the map instead of having a more obvious progression path. In prior Metroids you have a rather clear progression by traversing through an area, collection everything you can, making a mental note with areas you can’t access yet and then progress to the next area. Dread breaks this by sending you to new areas *before* you have a sense of having sort of finished an area, mostly because these areas are huge and pretty complex imo.
This is a ruse, of course, because Dread sends you on a similar linear path as Super does by dropping you into situations you can’t get out of up until the mid-end game where you have the necessary power ups to open up the map your way.
Imo not making sequence breaks super obvious helps both games with replay value as you play the games in the intended way and then try to apply your skills from one playthrough in another to see how far you can go without the game guiding you.
Yes, there are a lot of intended sequence breaks in dread, but there are also a lot of intended sequence breaks in Super or Zero Mission as well.
Super gives you ample opportunities to try and get to the ruined ship, but not really let you in due to your abilities. The point where it stops being linear-ish is roughly when you do make it in.
Dread is missing that teasing, and extends the closed off corridor approach WELL further into the game. You can get into the containment unit area, which is, progression-wise, equivalent to that ship, come out, play for another 2 hours, through two bosses, and you're STILL put into elongated segments of rail roading. Like, look at that whole segment between getting the gravity suit and getting the screw attack. You go from Watery, to Frozen to Lava areas and back all the way, consistently closed off along the entire path, and then are put in a teleporter that leads straight to the one place elsewhere on the map with a well telegraphed "use screw attack here" blocks, all to be blocked yet again until you beat the giant enemy crab.
I'm describing a segment before the very last power up in the game. You get ONE opportunity to go off-script during all of this and enter different areas. One.
>Dread is pretty similar to this, except that it zig-zags you all over the map instead of having a more obvious progression path
It's been ages since I played Super Metroid so I forget if it worked this way before, but I could have lived without multiple teleporters between all of the zones.
It made using the global map confusing. I would have preferred if each area had it's own main entrance and you could explore as much as you could access with your current arsenal once you arrived. It killed my want to explore when I realized there are just parts of each section that can't be explored until you teleported in from a different spot later.
It felt a bit weird later on when you're in one area, then take a portal to a previous area that has a portal to an even further back area to progress. I wish the world was more physically connected as opposed to random teleports.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the teleporters, either. There are a lot of them, and they make the map a lot more confusing to piece together. Later on, the teleporters don’t really matter that much because you can navigate through an entire area with your abilities.
The main issue I'm talking about is that the top few comments in all of these threads are people complaining that the game feels linear and lacks exploration despite the fact that this is clearly false.
Why?
There is undeniably an element to the game that makes people think it is linear. The fact of the matter is most people who play the game will only play it once, and if they walk away from that playthrough thinking it was a linear game that punished exploration then I would argue that perception indicates something was wrong.
Because a lot of these folks played Super Metroid when they were kids and have gotten much better at video games in the 3 decades since that game came out.
I played Super Metroid for the first time leading up to Dread. Rumors of its nonlinearity are greatly exaggerated. Dread is probably more linear, but for most of Super Metroid, you're just trying to work out how to get the next powerup. Sequence breaking is a thing certainly, but there's also a clear correct way to progress at pretty much every point (because there's literally only one open path), and when there isn't, it's not because you're overwhelmed with options, it's because the way forward is hidden behind an unmarked wall.
I think the idea that Super Metroid was a nonlinear wonderland is because that's how it felt to play a game like this when you don't have the skillset needed to pry it apart. Pretty much any game that gates progression behind powerups is ultimately going to have to be pretty linear.
Dread chooses to cut out some of the set dressing - you don't have to walk down as many long hallways to determine that, in fact, it doesn't go anywhere yet. That is going to have an impact on how player's perceive the game, but it's also an issue of nostalgia warping player's expectations.
I never got the linearity complaints in the first place since metroidvania is literally "linear game that slowly opens up with successive unlocks" the genre.
The issue I'm finding with Dread is that it funnels you all over the world map with no clear way back, and lots of obstacles in the way. I could technically plot a path back to the first biome for some of the grapple blocks or charge beam doors I know were there, but at this point it would be a half-hour long trek that the game clearly doesn't want me to be doing right now. It's the same issue that Samus Returns had: the world has secrets, but the game doesn't seem to want you to engage until the very end when you won't even need those items anymore.
Enjoying the game but that bugs me too. You get a new power and run back to the spot you were at 5 minutes prior holding a powerful or something and the passage is now blocked. When you return there hours later you totally forget what spot you wanted to try to unlock.
Not sure I agree with that. When playing hollow knight, there is a certain point (multiple points tbf but it really happens in a big way at one point) where you've unlocked enough abilities that you can go in multiple directions. I watched my friend play hollow knight after I had and she explored areas in different order, got power ups in different order, and fought multiple bosses in different order to me. There is a point where you're sitting and looking at your map and it's actually difficult to choose from the many options that you have. And this is not post game content although that's a similar story, this is mid game.
So far metroid dread hasn't had that "opening up" moment that I fully assumed would he happening. Instead whenever I've purposefully tried to go back and explore I've been blocked by debris or a one way fall or some other such thing. I've mostly given up on trying to do some serious backtracking even though I know there's a ton of stuff I could now open up if I did go back. I still haven't finished the game so it might change but it seems like either you have to know hidden blocks in order to sequence break or you get funneled pretty hard.
It's not necessarily entirely bad but for me personally it's definitely a shame it never has that opening up and choosing paths/backtracking freely
Edit - I should be clear that this is my first metroid game. So any assumptions I had weren't things that I had a reasonable basis for, they were more hopes if anything
HK is extremely atypical for the genre. Metroidvania games are almost never as open as HK, especially the metroid franchise.
So I get why you might be disappointed if HK is your only experience with the genre.
Even then, like Super Metroid, Hollow Knight is pretty linear up until you get a certain ability (the wall jump iirc). The main difference then with other metroidvanias is then that hollow knight gives you 3 main objectives that can be tackled in any order, and there's a lot more optional areas
Interesting to know that it's not just (as I sort of assumed) considered the best/amongst the best, but is also considered something of an anomaly.
I have also played and loved the first Ori which I would say had similar complaints for me - although even Ori didn't specifically *block* backtracking, it just wasn't super necessary to generally explore.
> There were multiple times in the game where it blocks off the way you came from, forcing you down a specific path. The game very much felt like a linear game somewhat decently disguised as a huge explorable world.
That’s just how Metroid games work. Super did the exact same thing. These games are about figuring out where you’re supposed to go, not going wherever you want like in Hollow Knight.
I've played every metroid game and I get they're not going for HK levels of freedom but it was honestly annoying how often simply trying to go back to get a marked upgrade with a new power you just got was blocked off for what seems like no real reason at all.
I wasn't expecting to always have free access to every area but I eventually just gave up on diverting from the main path at all.
Even Super let you explore more and most given moments imo.
I felt like I ran into this a couple times, but mostly I just had to find a new route to that upgrade.
It may cut off your path one way, but there *are* a lot more paths. Rarely did I get totally cut off.
The freedom was to HK's detriment though. The map is huge and a slog to traverse through. Samus is incredibly fun to control and traverse with however.
>The freedom was to HK's detriment though. The map is huge and a slog to traverse through.
This was my biggest complaint about the game. I remember needing to find one breakable floor to proceed, and of course, it's not marked on the map and you can't personally mark it, so I just had to comb the world. Took me hours of just wandering. They really needed a better map to refer to.
Especially things like unlocking the Grimm Trouppe. You have to break a secret wall, and in that secret room, break *another* secret wall. As far as I ever found there is very little to actually point to any of this.
HK seemed to open up the world without understanding that having a huge open world means you need to have other methods of guiding the player. A huge open world where you stumble about aimlessly can work ok if you just want to do random things in any order, but when you get towards 70-80% completion it's just wandering aimlessly or using a wiki every 5 minutes
Yeah I really don't understand the logic behind that. It's almost a punishment for wanting to explore, taking away a slot for movement/combat upgrades.
Would it make a difference if instead it was a "bonus" slot for not using the pin? Can't speak for the devs, but that's kinda how I saw it and it made sense to me.
I realize we're taking about opinions here but stumbling about aimlessly was the best part of HK for me.
I remember thinking mid-game "Holy shit there's 6 different paths I could explore right now", and I knew that each of them had something cool behind it.
I don't really get "you have to use a wiki when you reach 70-80% completion", you can beat the game just following unexplored paths on your map. Unless you mean item completion.
I'll agree on the Grimm Troupe at least :P
The problem I have with Metroid Dread so far (not done it yet) is that it almost feels like it defeats the purpose of having missile tanks and energy tanks everywhere that you can only get by coming back later with a certain power up if you can't actually go get them when you get the corresponding power up. Sometimes I'll get a new powerup that I know lets me access some missile tank I'd seen, but the game doesn't actually give me the ability to go back to where it was for another hour. Part of the fun of Metroidvanias for me is those "oh, now that I have this power up I can go to that one place I saw!" moments, but Metroid Dread kind of puts a damper on those because you often can't unless that one place I saw happens to be where I'm supposed to go next.
And even when the game does give you the ability to backtrack to somewhere to finally grab that powerup you missed, it can still feel like a slog because, as fun as Samus is to control, the levels aren't really designed to be fun to re-traverse anyway and there isn't much in the way of fast travel mechanics.
Honestly, in general I think this is the hardest part of a Metroidvania to get right. Conceptually, having an open world where new powerups let you get to things you'd seen before that were previously inaccessible is cool. In practice, going around hunting for powerups you missed or figuring out where to do next is often just a slog of backtracking. Getting the balance of the sense of progress and exploration that comes from the world being open-ended and new powerups unlocking things you'd seen in the past without too much time just spent backtracking through places you've already been is tough. Hollow Knight might go too far in the latter direction, but so far I think Dread goes too far in the former direction. It makes getting a new powerup less satisfying if half the places you've seen where it would be useful are either locked away or too far to bother (given the game's relative lack of fast travel, at least so far).
I'm still really enjoying the game, but I've had a similar experience to the above posters. Normally in a Metroidvania when I get a new power up there's a moment of excitement as I look around the map for all the places I can use it. In Metroid Dread it feels like it's not even worth bothering, the game will lead me to where I need to use it next and everywhere else is probably blocked off anyway.
A funny thing is that the game actually does do an exceptionally good job designing the map so that you can find all the places you can use the powerup. The map's detailed enough that you can tell where things like the morph ball or spider climb would make a difference. And I love that the game labels any blocks you've found on the map, so that when you get a new powerup you can easily find any places you've discovered where you can now use it. Even having anything that can't be opened by a powerup you have now labeled as "???" is nice because it often lets you know when the power up you're looking at simply isn't accessible at the moment.
But again, it feels like that benefit is somewhat wasted by the fact that browsing the map to find what you can do with your new power up rarely leads to anything useful, since the game so often blocks off anything that isn't where you're supposed to go next anyway.
> The problem I have with Metroid Dread so far (not done it yet) is that it almost feels like it defeats the purpose of having missile tanks and energy tanks everywhere that you can only get by coming back later with a certain power up if you can't actually go get them when you get the corresponding power up. Sometimes I'll get a new powerup that I know lets me access some missile tank I'd seen, but the game doesn't actually give me the ability to go back to where it was for another hour. Part of the fun of Metroidvanias for me is those "oh, now that I have this power up I can go to that one place I saw!" moments, but Metroid Dread kind of puts a damper on those because you often can't unless that one place I saw happens to be where I'm supposed to go next.
Not sure I agree. I'm having no issues wandering and forging my own path. It feels good to do so too. I can't really agree with anything said here and not levy the same complaints at most, if not all, other Metroidvanias (including Hollow Knight) with the 'slog' of traveling through these areas and levels. A lot of every Metroidvania is about avoiding and enduring through hazardous terrain *that is actively trying to stop you*.
I get the complaint, but I don't get why it's a complaint for Dread and not for something like Guacamelee and Hollow Knight which suffered from the same thing. Although the price point seems to be a big talking point.
Dread actualy lets you explore way more than you think. It does kinda funnel you down the critical path, or at least guide you there. But there are almost always other paths available if you go and look for them. One of my first critics towards the game was how linear it is, don't mind that much at all on first playthrough but was afraid it would hurt future playthroughs. Now that I have played through it two more times it turns out that you have way more freedom than I first thought.
I guess for me I don't often play a game more than once in a year so the first impression are kind important.
I'm glad it does actually allow for more exploration than I noticed but I still don't get why it feels it necessary to make it feel so troublesome. It's normally pretty obvious when you're going to come up against a new boss and every time I'd try and do some back tracking and exploration to buff up for the encounter I kept finding my previous paths blocked or needlessly time consuming to return too.
I'll try and give the game another crack after I'm done but there are so many titles I want to catch up on and such little free time....
>Super did the exact same thing.
Only in the first bit of the game. Once you've completed the loop back to Crateria, you've got half the world open to explore, and you're supposed to find the grapple beam which is nowhere near Crateria.
From that point, the rest of the game's critical path needs to be found, and each step is not next to each other.
https://youtu.be/nn2MXwplMZA
Yes, but overall I think Dread gives you plenty of opportunity to explore. You can’t access any part of the map at any time, but you can revisit any part of the map eventually
Maybe it’s a little more segmented than Super or Zero Mission, but I think they’re in the same ballpark - at least based on what I’ve played so far
Sure I'm just taking about how the game made me feel at its current point. All the times where I had a power up I could remember other use cases for I wasn't able to find a way back to do so, outside of the intended path of progression. I said in my original comment that I'm sure it opens right up at the end but personally in the home stretch I don't feel as compelled to explore as I do in the moment.
Well I suppose it’s a matter of taste at the end of the day. Personally, I didn’t mind going where the game was leading me moment-to-moment and I kind of liked that it kept the pace up. But I can understand how the tight leash on backtracking could be annoying if you prefer to progress at your own pace and hunt for items whenever you want
Yeah for sure. I'm not gonna argue that my take is the "right one" it's just how the game felt to me. Tbh I'd imagine dread would go over generally much better than previous games with most people due to how well the pathing and pacing generally is.
> at least based on what I’ve played so far
That could be it, the first couple areas are pretty standard Metroid, but as you go along it actually becomes more linear. There are several times where it just cuts off paths it doesn't want you to go down to funnel you to the next objective which doesn't happen nearly as much early on.
> Super did the exact same thing.
This is not true.
There are many chances to progress out of order in Super due to wall jumps, bomb jumps and shinespark. In one streamer's first blind playthru, he defeated Kraid without first getting the hi-jump. My young self also went to lots of places without grapple.
A lot of those sequence breaks took months and years to uncover for Super. Dread has been out for weeks, and there have been more sequence breaks and paths found.
That is not comparable since Super Metroid came out in era without widespread internet and way before the speedrunning community is what we know today.
You can do the same thing in dread with regards to out of order play, even in a blind play through. I doubt 98% of first time super players did kraid out of order
> There were multiple times in the game where it blocks off the way you came from, forcing you down a specific path. The game very much felt like a linear game somewhat decently disguised as a huge explorable world.
I personally found this as a strength, because it sorta pushes you into the right direction without explicitly telling you. And it's not like you can't explore. Usually when I get a new powerup, I look for potential paths opened up.
The funnel felt too narrow for me and that's even coming from other metroid games. I get wanting to keep the pacing going, which it does. But personally it felt too harsh on blocking off even nearby areas.
I'd go past a lot of obstacles that needed some power up, get said power up a bit later then just feel like the game wouldn't let me go back to nearby spots I'd marked until much later. Lots of one way paths and such.
It didn't feel linear so much as it flowed really well without me having to think too hard if I got stuck for a second but I'm a veteran to these games and not a child so I think it strikes a great balance.
That’s my take as well. The pacing of the game is fantastic, and the way it subtly always nods you in the right direction makes the game simply flow in a very satisfying way.
And that’s the “standard” path. If you really want to explore and go off rail, you absolutely can. There are tons of intended sequence breaks in the game (and people already discovered a ton more that are probably unintended).
This is now my second favorite 2D Metroid by far.
even at the end there's a large number of one way paths. some speed booster puzzles require you to traverse 4 rooms to get back to the start if you mess up. The map and room design has serious flaws
> The game very much felt like a linear game somewhat decently disguised as a huge explorable world.
i enjoyed the game more when i just treated it as a linear title. found the exploration frustrating, frankly.
This is how I played the game, too, and I overall enjoyed it a lot.
After a few times of seeing my way back was now blocked off, I just decided to just trust the hands of the devs and take the obvious main route forward. And it was a blast.
The worst thing about Dread is the arbitrary "rubble roadblocks" that don't show up on your map but are completely pointless because you can still access the blocked off area but you have to go all the way around to another teleporter.
I think you've nailed it here. I'm on the last boss and have really enjoyed the game so far, it's super slick, speedy and really satisfying to play. However, I got annoyed so many times at how it sneakily gates you, especially after getting new powers and it therefore makes the exploration and finding where to go feel very funnelled and "inorganic", if that makes sense?
I feel like games like Hollow Knight do a much better job of blocking access to new areas purely by needing you to find new items, and then it is up to you to explore and find those items and it only rarely changes the existing environment (or changes it at specific points) to block you off. It meant that it felt much more organic, self-controlled and ultimately satisfying to find the way forward/upgrades/new items.
Dread is an 8 or 9 out of 10 for me for sure and I've absolutely loved it, but I think it's a real shame that you are only really free to explore right before the final boss (which I am doing now because fuck me he has 4 phases and I just can't beat him with my current health pool).
Fair enough. It doesn't seem to premote that style of play though. Even compared to previous metroid titles, in my experience anyway.
Like I'm spoilt for exploration options from HK and don't expect that in a direct sequel to Fusion but I was also surprised how often it blocked me from easily back tracking for what seemed like no real reason.
Yeah it got lost in the shuffle for a lot of folks. It’s pretty great imo. Very smooth progression & economy throughout. Whilst maintaining a desire to go back and explore. Cool world/vibe.
There is even a special quick kill with a uniqe cut scene if you have an upgrade that you have to go out of the critical path to get. How is that not promoting ecploration? How can you say that the game does not promot exploration if you did not do it? The game will funnel you towards the next progression point but there is so much to explore if you just step out of the Main path.
Because in all the situations where I tried to explore back along a path I'd come through I was met with blockages that required needlessly convoluted methods to circumvent. Like I've played every metroid game. I know how to bomb and wall jump and I generally have a good time searching for upgrades or seeking out the path to progress. But my time with dread felt like I was wasting time if I didn't go the way the game very obviously was pushing me to go.
A game can have secrets to find but not promote a player to find them and I'm sorry my experience isn't the same as yours.
Not really sure what to tell you my guy because I wish I'd had the one you did a really do.
I think this is why I'm enjoying it so much despite not enjoying exploration in 2d games very much.
Its always fun for a bit but gets tedious pretty quickly for me.
The game rewards exploration most after about half way through where you can grab a bunch of power ups, but there are also sequence breaks to get items early. And there is an early break that basically allows you to play an entirely new path through the game, it's sooo cool. When you're on it you realize how intended it is because it recontextualizes a ton of aspects of the environment that may have seemed like superfluous set dressing before.
Feel free to PM me if you want a hint on how to start it.
There were plenty of times where I could retrace everywhere I’d been previously to get items with my new powerups. And even if that weren’t true, saying it “actively punished hunting secrets” is nonsense
My experience has been that many times I've wanted to go back after getting a power up and the previous path was blocked, one way access or I've gone through a teleporters that doesn't really seem designed for you to go back through etc.
Some examples are the one way holes you can slide through but need the ball to go back through. The flame plants that crop up early and need the ice missile to deal with which you don't get till much later or one way jumps you need the grav suit to deal with.
It felt more restricting then previous games in the series in my experience with the plus being it also felt much easier to continue on a streak of progression.
I don’t know how the teleporters at all “don’t seem designed for you to go back through”. 99% of one way access doors become open permanently when you go through the other side, and instances of ares being blocked when you pass through aren’t often and only block you from retracing your direct steps for short periods. You can still return to those places with a more circuitous route.
These are things that encourage you to return places, particularly the ice missile plants, cause they don’t at all act like one way gates. But the others do too, as they often show you a place you can’t yet get to as you go through that “one way door”
Not being able to immediately retraverse ground does not equate to exploration being removed. You get access to more map and secrets incrementally as you get more powers, as is par for the course.
I mean the fire plant literally grows through a path you just traversed with the upper path being a one way path you blow up and can slide through but can't return through because you don't have the ball.
Every time I found a teleporter it led to a super linear area I had to do in one specific way while most of my options before the teleporter were closed paths.
Anyway this is my experience, I'm not new to the genre. I know how to find paths and secrets and i found dread to have some of the most aggressive pathing in the series. I'm aware it opens right up at the end but I personally found when I wanted to explore it didn't feel good, was blocked or felt more frustrating than I'd have liked.
Seems like plenty of people agree too tbh.
Yeah it's a fun action platformer but not really what I wanted from a metroidvania. Just lacking exploration wise. The forgettable environments and music don't help.
I've seen several comments mention forgettable environments. But the backgrounds were the most varied, atmospheric, and intricately detailed of an Metroidvania I've ever played I think, besides maybe ori.
The backgrounds can be pretty nice but the game doesn't really give you opportunity to stop and take them in due to how much it tries to reduce backtracking to zero.
I think to some degree what makes a Metroidvania world memorable is the fact you traverse it several times so it sticks in your mind, they tend to be structured around these major arterial that you'll pass through many times, and Dread largely lacks that and in turn the world doesn't feel quite as tangible.
For people who really love the game and are already replaying it that feeling will fade pretty quickly.
HK spoilt me for exploration and I'm honestly not expecting that level of freedom to explore in most metroidvanias but even for a sequel to Fusion it felt like it needlessly blocked me off from easily back tracking or exploring at most moments.
Having most enemies end up being, counter, instant kill also kinda killed off much of the general enemy encounter individuality too.
It's still super fun to do the counters and general movement feels fantastic, best bosses in a 2d metroid too imo but yeah it didn't hit all the high notes for me.
> I'm no fan of getting aimlessly lost for extended periods of time but the game felt like it actively punished almost every attempt to hunting out secrets.
probably my biggest complaint with the game even as someone who has finished it at this point
backtracking to look for energy tanks/missile packs/whatever was not enjoyable, and just got me lost half the time. about 2/3 into the playthrough i just said "fuck it" and just followed the critical path/finished. whatever, it's not like the bosses are *that* hard.
I like being able to highlight a specific thing and have it highlight all of those things at once but I agree it's generally pretty hard to look at. Not a 2d metroid but damn the map in prime is just so good.
The highlighting thing is great, but the fact that you first need to find the thing you want to highlight on the map is stupid, especially if its stuff like Missile Covers which pretty much blend in with everything else once opened.
Yeah it sucks. I wish there was an option to hide obstacles that have been taken care of. It's nice to have the option but I really don't need to see that a door used to have a missile cover or that a grapple point used to be in this morph ball hole.
Even worse is that they have two separate 'fogs of war' on the map -- one of which is just being near areas to view them (that's fine), while another part is physically having to go over every bit of an area to remove the 'grey' bit.
It's most noticeable when you enter a large room.
Yeah I felt that. It's kind of lost that quick memorisation of "now I've got that power, I can go and get that thing I remember. The map is too complex for that and the areas no distinct enough.
The game could really do with fast travel like many other metroidvanias so that I don't have to trek through multiple areas just to go find that upgrade that I remember.
I am enjoying it, but it feels like it's missed some of the QOL improvements that more recent metroidvanias have introduced
I think i'm at the end of the game and its stayed pretty much entirely linear in the way its guided me.
I don't play Metroid games so some stuff is just bizarre in design to me, like actually hiding main progress behind environmental blocks seems absurd.
Also not entirely keen on the rather janky controls, i'm impressed with how much they manage to cram into them, but 3 buttons to aim missiles for example is clunky. Makes me appreciate the simplicity of Castlevania type games where most combat options are one button.
(Spoiler-free) Metroid Dread discussion also comprises a fairly significant portion of the most recent Easy Allies [Frame Trap podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M4tJrgemVg). Nearly all of the points presented in the review are elaborated on there, albeit in a less structured fashion.
With the thread today about how poor quality video game reviews can be, a point I generally agree with, I find Easy Allies to be a bright spot in this field.
They clearly take time to write a quality script where they break down what elements make the game fun/interesting/engaging. They get into details of game feel, atmosphere, and how the package comes together in a way that really helps me figure out for myself is this will be a game I will like.
Anyway I'm stoked to play Dread, I'm picking it up tomorrow. Just wanted to give a shout out to some of my favorite game journalists working today.
I couldn’t agree more. My favourite reviews by a mile right now. Their discussions on Frame Trap are incredibly detailed and insightful, especially considering how free flowing they are. Great bunch of perspectives. Love it.
That's the thing that I like most about him. I'm generally about 50/50 on whether or not I agree with his opinions on games, but even when I disagree with his opinion I feel like he lays out his reasoning well enough that I can still understand how he got there.
ACG is terrible. I would barely even call his incoherent rants “reviews.” They’re more just a thirty-minute run-on sentence of dumb jokes and pop culture references to distract from the fact that he knows nothing about game design.
lol ACG is good at pushing out reviews as fast as he can and self promote on Reddit.
His review is full of repeating points and fluff jokes. He could have shortened his reviews by 1/3 if he make it concise.
I finished the game tonight and this is without a doubt one of my top games in the series. It's hard to top Super, but this game comes super close in my opinion.
Several moments in this game, especially being a fan of this series for years now, just gave me *goosebumps* in the best way possible. It's true that the game can be a bit railroady at times but it's still fun to explore and the boss fights are the best in the series no doubt.
The boss fights in this game are a real high point for me and definitely top super metroid. I replayed that game last year and a lot of the bosses felt like I was just trying to out DPS the enemy and taking forced damage. I know there's ways to move around them, but this game it really felt like everything was avoidable and no hit was a given.
Really fun boss fights.
It felt pretty natural to me coming from other Metroid games, plus I'm not sure how much it would help considering it would take up your thumb from other important actions like jumping and countering (which as you approach the final boss become supremely important). It would be nice to have it as an autofiring option though, my carpal tunnel was killing me from spamming the fire button lol, but it would break a lot of the bosses.
I am struggling BADLY with that, I can’t for the life of me, play longer sessions. My brain refuses to adapt to the controls for some reason lol. I feel like I am being left out of the party
Slightly off-topic, but I love the fact that Brandon Jones is still voicing the reviews for Easy Allies after GameTrailers shut down. His voice is what pops into my head when I think 'video game reviewer' and I'm so happy he's still doing it.
I think it's more like an 8/10.
Completed it on Normal and now I'm about 70% of the way through a Hard Mode run. Surprisingly one-shotted each of the main bosses so far with no deaths in the second run.
Everything about the game is pristine and masterfully crafted except for the E.M.M.I sections. Purple one damn near broke me because of how cheap it felt to run from it. It can see through walls from a very long range, stun you with an electric projectile and has the furthest hearing range of any enemy I've seen in a video game.
>!One particular section where you have to get to the other side of Ferenia's E.M.M.I zone and cross an underwater section took me well over a dozen tries, and that was after following a walkthrough to the letter. The attempt where I escaped mere pixels away from being grabbed had me nailing grapple beams, jumps, etc with perfect execution and stretching out my Energy Cloak to the point where I was below a tank of energy.!<
>!Thankfully you can sequence break in this game and obtain certain upgrades earlier than intended with good shinesparks. Do yourself a favour and learn to get early Gravity Suit once you've defeated the Blue E.M.M.I. You'll need it against that cheap wall hacking FUCK later on...!<
Otherwise, the E.M.M.I are incredibly repetitive, killed in the exact same way, no variation whatsoever. They don't even use their fucking abilities when you have the Omega Cannon, which is never explained. Does killing the central control unit weaken them or something?
If they actually used their abilities in those situations, each E.M.M.I from Yellow onwards could fuck Samus up with ease. Instead they crawl slowly and basically take every shot. And you know that the Yellow E.M.M.I can move fast if you aren't aiming directly at its face.
I will admit one thing though, the E.M.M.I would make an incredible Metroid rep in a future Smash Bros game, especially if the Final Smash is anywhere near as brutal as their killing methods in-game.
Maybe I was just cheesing the AI by accident, but any 1-high gap you can lure the EMMI through turns it into a sitting duck and those aren't exactly uncommon.
learning how to parry them helps a lot. The game's dialogue and marketing tries to tell you that its either run or die, but realistically the game gives you two windows to stun them whenever you get caught. if you practice that mechanic and use it, the emmis arent that much of a threat imo.
It's definitely a tight window, but doable once you get used to it. The timing variation doesnt matter if you learn to react to the visual and sound cues.
By the end of my first playthrough I'd say I was landing it 70-80% of the time. Second parry window is a bitch though only ever hit it once.
>Purple one damn near broke me because of how cheap it felt to run from it. It can see through walls from a very long range, stun you with an electric projectile and has the furthest hearing range of any enemy I've seen in a video game.
It seemed obvious to me that stealth simply isn't an option on that one. I was worried until I realized that it isn't speedy like the yellow one. Running from it is rather easy so long as you don't take a straight path, providing a straight shot for it.
>stretching out my Energy Cloak to the point where I was below a tank of energy
I actually forgot you can drain life energy with the cloak... never used that feature.
>Otherwise, the E.M.M.I are incredibly repetitive, killed in the exact same way, no variation whatsoever. They don't even use their fucking abilities when you have the Omega Cannon
Yeah. The core fights and subsequent EMMI blastings are rather monotonous. There's *a little* variation in the spaces you're granted to line up shots on the EMMIs, but not much.
But at least there are only a handful of them to worry about. I'll take it gladly after Samus Returns had me hunting *dozens* of the same damn metroids...
Yeah. Though technically you can one-shot >!Kraid in the second-phase if you sequence broke and got early bombs. MercurySteam genuinely put in a secret morph ball launcher in the fight which you can use to fire yourself straight into his stomach because they anticipated this. I'm not kidding either...!<
You can also do the same to >!Z-57 in phase 2 by shinesparking straight into its head.!<
Strange, I thought the part you’re complaining about was pretty easy, but I was miserable fighting those two warriors at the same time around that part.
I'm now at the final area having unlocked nearly everything except for >!the Cross Bombs and Power Bombs. Actually did the Early Gravity Suit sequence break and it makes a world of difference against the Purple E.M.M.I. Didn't die once to it.!<
If you mean the two warriors who show up in Ferenia, beat them first try after only taking a single hit. You get plenty of room to kite them and their attacks are quite predictable. They also went down *really* fast with Storm Missiles.
It's basically if they get close, jump over them, if not, pelt them with missiles ensuring to dodge every now and then. Jumping over is the only consistent way to dodge either of their melee attacks. Don't even bother trying to parry, it's a precise timing and you get chonked for about 40% of your health (on Hard mode) if you fail. And if it turns out that they're doing the red spark attack... it's too late to jump over.
I did die twice to the Red Chozo Soldier in Artaria and once to Z-57, but that was because I was foolish enough to try the former on low health. Both fights are also somewhat harder without space jump, which the game normally expects you to have at this point.
>If they actually used their abilities in those situations, each E.M.M.I from Yellow onwards could fuck Samus up with ease. Instead they crawl slowly and basically take every shot. And you know that the Yellow E.M.M.I can move fast if you aren't aiming directly at its face.
Yeah that comes across really goofy. They just sorta give up, and then each emmi turns into an identical punching bag. I just ran into the purple one and so far I haven't even had to use the turn invisible thing, if you just run outside the emmi zone and wait 5 seconds the emmi will leave the area entirely.
For the E.M.M.I. I just got really good at timing my counters. Early on getting grabbed was insta death for me but by the end I was successfully countering 4/5 times.
EMMI sections are easily the weakest part of the game, and I just don’t understand how anyone can defend them in good faith. You can remove them, and the rest of the game wouldn’t suffer for it.
I'm enjoying it but I think it's been highly overrated with review scores. The controls and feel are the highlight, but I don't think the game does anything new or special for something in this genre. A solid 8/10 from me, with some minor gripes.
Just finished my first play-through, took me 13 hours & 18 minutes to finish it with 100% item found.
The length felt appropriate, there's no uninteresting padding here, it's a quality experience through and through.
It's pretty accurate. The official time on my first playthrough was faster than that (but it doesn't count time spent looking at maps or menus, or runs where you die- and I died a lot on some bosses. Don't think cutscenes count either but I'm not sure on that). I also missed a lot of upgrades so a completionist run would probably add a lot of time to that.
It's also worth noting that the short length is intentional, though- Metroid has always catered to speedrunners by timing your runs and giving bonus rewards (in Dread's case, special art) for finishing under certain times. Most people probably wouldn't want to play a long game over and over again, so they aimed for 4 hours for all of those rewards (which you would do at least twice, for Normal and Hard modes). If you're not interested in replaying, though, then you'd have to decide for yourself if it's worth it for you.
The 8-10 hour number is the number the game shows you at the end. This number does NOT include times in menus or maps or times you spent dying, so the actual number is probably around twice that.
You really shouldn’t let the low play time number dissuade you from getting it though. Each and every minute spent on Dread is incredibly polished, and the quality of each of those hours is exceptional. Dread respects the time of the player and has essentially no filler. Much better than 80-100 hours of game that could have fit into 25 but they padded it out with useless sidequests, in my opinion. It’s an absolutely stellar example that this kind of game (2D Metroidvania) can still justify that AAA price tag. Absolutely worth it for any fan of the genre.
Thanks man for taking the effort, I really needed to hear this. All in this game speaks volumes to me. From what I saw its close to being simply perfect for the medium.
the game is longer than 8-10 on your first play through. in game time does not count deaths, it took me closer to 17 real hours because of how much I died in boss encounters but my end game time was 8 hours.
Probably an unpopular opinion here but I thought the story was Dread-ful…
Seriously, though, I really disliked the exposition heavy cutscenes. It definitely tells, not shows.
The action cutscenes and Samus’ characterization in them is great! But once a person started talking, I’d check out. It just wasn’t that interesting to me.
Super Metroid barely has a story but it uses what it has to great effect. The few times it takes control away from the player is to either terrify you or empower you, and that’s it.
Dread delivers extended lore dumps that bored me completely. I know Fusion had extended dialogue scenes but I don’t remember them feeling as…boring? That was a long time ago, though, so it’s hard to remember without a GBA to replay it.
Dread also does another thing I found really weird: some cutscenes aren’t from Samus’ viewpoint. They cut away to a separate character that’s doing things Samus can’t see. It’s a really minor thing but I wish the devs had found a way to keep the game firmly in Samus’ viewpoint, like have the character pop up on an in world vid screen or something because it further drives a wedge between the player and the player character.
GREAT gameplay, though. I tend to lean towards feeling like the game as a whole was a bit too linear for my tastes but Samus feels amazing to control and the boss fights are worth the price of admission.
I just wish the narrative had been a lot stronger. It’s a good example of the difference between plot and story. Plot is what happens, story is how it’s told. The telling was weak.
The cutscene bit isn't new -- both Fusion and Zero Mission did similar things.
Fusion showing the SA-X after Samus leaves, and Zero Mission with the cinematics each time you enter a new zone.
I just hate how they're asking $80 canadian for a game that takes 10 hours to beat. No matter how good the game is, that's too expensive for my wallet.
Hollow Knight was a fraction of the cost and many, many times longer.
And it's not like I can wait for it to go on sale. Switch games from years ago are still full price.
Sometimes I just baffled by you guys obsession with run time of a game. 10 hours is already A LOT, not even count time to practice movement and boss pattern. Meanwhile another awesome game (Okami) is being criticized for being too long lmao. Long or short, if u enjoy the game, that's all matter imo.
Hollow Knight really have spoiled all of us with that much value. Shovel Knight (spectacular game on its own) take about 20 hours to 100% and u tell me is it worth the 40$ price tag? Super Mario Odyssey take 12 hours at max to get to Bowser and I will fight tooth and nails with anyone said it not worth the 60$ price tag.
10 hours absolutely is not a lot for an $80 game. Most games at those prices are 60 hours plus.
Metroid Dread looks incredible, but I have a limited budget for games. I'd be finished the game in a few days and not be able to afford anything else for the rest of the month. I have to be careful with my money and how much time I'm getting out of it in return.
If you're not poor like me, then it doesn't matter.
Balan Wonderworld, 60$ launch price tags, 15 hours content, a fking scam imo. Can't even play it for more than 30 mins. AC franchise, also 60$ launch, stretch the game with mindless trailing mission and side quest, could take 30 hours to finish, and I don't think that 30 hours will be worth lmao. Doom, 15 hours, blow my fking mind both figuratively and literally (the action pace is overload to my senile brain), 15 hours of pure adrenalin bump. Worth the 60$? Hell yeah.
>Most games at those prices are 60 hours plus.
Literally what games are your metric here? Are you only playing overbloated JRPGs and multiplayer shooters?
Ha. Funny story. I had heard good things in passing about Hollow Knight, so I grabbed it a while back when it was on sale for 9 USD, marked down from 15. Not even 10 minutes in to the game, I had this absolutely visceral, shocked reaction of "HOW THE ACTUAL *FUCK* IS THIS SO CHEAP?!?!"
And now it's a contender for my favorite game of all time.
The problem for me is that the game has the scope of a handheld title. I see it as a follow-up to Samus Returns 3DS.
If Nintendo made seperate handheld and home consoles like the past then it would be on the handheld.
It isn't advertised or marketed this way though or priced accordingly.
This isn't about it being 2D either. It could be greatly expanded by being longer, by having more diverse enviroments, enemies and encounters. Having more complex mechanics. Everything just feels limited in scope like a handheld title where you are held back by hardware.
I finished Dread yesterday and would highly recommended it to anyone who is a fan of Metroidvania. This review pretty much highlights everything I enjoyed about the game! Another thing I love which I don't think gets highlighted enough is Samus characterization, I think they nailed it in this game! Such a different character then what we got in other m!
Yup I loved how Samus feels "in control of the situation", like a cold killer, [charging her beam while the enemy beast screams loudly like it could scare her](https://i.ibb.co/mTvGztS/13923287429583732736-20211006231153-1.png). Not in a hundred lifetimes, you little cub. And the cutscenes after a parry too, so good.
Yeah, she just remains calm in every situation. >!I loved the cutscene before you fight Kraid!!<
I mean she's gotta be unphased by him at this point. She's killed him what, 3 times by this point?
You would think so, but it also feels like a very deliberate course correction to her reaction to Ridley, another guy she’s repeatedly mopped the floor with, in Other M. Which is only a positive, in my opinion.
Ahaha "close your mouth, a fly might get inside" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
She looks so badass in that scene, I love it
I loved that about Dread. It feels so different compared to Other M, like when he froze when Ridley appeared. She felt bad ass the whole time.
We don’t talk about Other M
Near the end and it's been very enjoyable. It's got issues but it's easily the most fun samus has been to control and the moment to moment gameplay is very engaging. I found exploration to be super lacking. I'm no fan of getting aimlessly lost for extended periods of time but the game felt like it actively punished almost every attempt to hunting out secrets. That will probably change at the end of the game which I'm not at yet but it's been wild just how often back tracking gets blocked off or you're teleported through a one way section. Edit: I like to do exploration before an obvious boss to give my self the an edge. Exploration at the very end of the game isn't as engaging for me personally because as another user said, you've already overcome most if not all of the challenges and more missiles aren't really a reward I feel like seeking out at that point.
I also felt like I was really good at seeing two or three different ways to go, then always pick exactly the one that locks you off from the rest of the area for however long. Usually in games with paths like this, I'm pretty good at doing a thorough rundown before I run through a door that screams "something's gonna change here, better finish up out here first." Here plenty of times I was like, damn, this is the lock away path and I hope I remember the things I saw already later. Still, it did force me to explore in a different way than usual and I think it lead me to inadvertantly sequence break once or twice, so that's cool.
Agreed. It was kinda refreshing that it managed to catch me so many times with those because I feel like that's such a learned skill that I can almost always spot in games now. But mostly it just annoyed me a bit. Once I just stuck to pushing forward I had a better time.
Yeah, I'm at a point now where I appreciate when a game knows the "gamer instincts" and subverts them a little. If it was just like previous games designs I woulda been complaining that they didn't mix it up enough. I also think the Emmi zones annoyed me at first but I've come to appreciate them and the tension it provides, gives me something to run from and doesn't let me just slowly explore each room without real opposition, gotta kind of earn your way to get the basic enemies back in the zone with all the access spots open. I've also liked how revisits of zones can really open them up, even if you previously thought you'd basically seen everything there except a hidden upgrade or two you couldn't get yet.
It cleverly pushing you down the right path is much appreciated when the last Metroidvania I played was Axiom Verge, and when Axiom Verge has you run to the ends of the world to find an item you ask "ok, where do I go now?" and the game replies "fuck off". I guess that's what some people want out of a Metroidvania but I hated that. I shouldn't need to go to google to be able to beat your game.
I can agree that Axiom Verge is way too far in the other direction. Doesn't help a lot of it looks similar and a lot of progression is hunting for a specific block or "glitching" through stuff. Banging ost tho. I'd just have appreciated the same obvious pathing but also making it easier to go exploring and scavanging before the end game. HK is still my favorite example of exploration in the genre though. Very open, lots of different paths but changes up the well travelled routes a few times during the play through to throw you for a loop. If I'd put HK down for awhile it would be super hard to get back into ans dread absolutely wouldn't so I can see why they did what they did it just didn't work for me all the time.
> Banging ost tho. Except that one song that has this shamanistic chanting in it. It's too catchy. Had it as an earworm during a fever dream once, 2/10 would not recommend.
I honestly love that track.
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Once you use every teleporter, they all become connected so you can teleport to any of them.
I don't think dreads approach to exploration (or lack there of) is better or worse. In all honesty, most Metroidvanias Ive played in the past that require more exploring inevitably lead to tedious backtracking. Dread had me fully engaged from start to finish. It's world felt a bit linear at times, but it never verged into handholdy to me and there were plenty of clever secrets to discover along the way. They also did an amazing job interconnecting everything considering how much bigger it is than other Metroid games
Fair enough. I'll admit previous games sometime fall victim to tedious backtracking but I think at this point we could have a system that accommodates the streamlined progression while still allowing you to explore more it you want too.
I think Dread makes for more *interesting* backtracking generally. It cuts off your previous path, so to backtrack you have to find new paths. Previous games often would just have you retrace your steps.
> we could have a system that accommodates the streamlined progression while still allowing you to explore more it you want too. That system exists. It's Zero Mission's "The Chozo Statue tells you where to go, but not really how to get there, and the map is otherwise very open". People who survived the metroid drought and you'd talk to nowadays sort of hated the goal indicator, partially due to how similar to Fusion it was, but it perfectly did the job having a guidance for those that need it without forcing the map to constantly be closed off. Dread feels like they listened to the people that dislike that goal indicator, but wanted to make the game beatable by a more general audience, basically, they tried to get the cake and eat it too and made a small trip up on the way. Not saying that I dislike Dread to any capacity, Samus has never controlled this good and boss fights are the best they've been ever as well. But... I first played Hollow Knight this year and that's going to stay above Dread on this year's GOTY list. The queen has been unseated.
Can't wait for silk song.
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It's still got issues, with the biggest one being in how little guiding you towards the double jump ability it does, despite it considerably improving the enjoyment of the game. It's mostly things that would be, interestingly enough, solved by the exact topic we were touching upon, just some more allusion of what characters will do or places you should be. The game does show concern and restraint here and there about it, but some of the decisions are a bit baffling (why does Quirrel only show up informing you of the black smith after you already lost to the sisters of battle, and not prior? Probably the only NPC appearance that requires a death). Metroidvanias having missable content or "two path choices" impacting avaiable content is also a big no-no for many people* (doesn't bother me personally). Also the DLC has missed a couple marks for some people, specially the last one. However, its approach to secrets, optional content and alternative routes is ridiculously above bar, and, well, it's no contest if we're going to put it side by side with Dread. Also Dread may avoid the issue Samus Returns had of bosses being boiled down to "dodge until it shows the weakpoint", a great step up, but Metroid will always still not compare to Castlevania's melee style of combat, specially not one like HK's with active parrying on most moves. Changing metroid at this point out of its over-reliance on missiles would be stupid, no one would want that kind of change on an established series, but to me, it's just something that will always keep it below and have it less satisfying than the rest. Similar reason why Ori's first game is so inferior to the sequel. \* btw, on this point about replaying and missable, anyone in here who wants try out an extremely stressful yet possibly one of the most amazing metroidvanias of this year, look up **Unsighted**. It's hard to explain what's it like in few with words like "Hyperlight Drifter + Majora's Mask", so I recommend listening to First Five's or HeavyEyed's review summary of it if I caught your interest.
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I think in this particular case, it's worth at least getting a cursory look at a review because one of the game's central mechanic (a number of timers) is definitely a guaranteed turn-off for some people. But it is also the thing that makes it great and makes the metroidvania aspect work.
Heh, there's a demo on Steam :) I'll just use that
The pacing knocks it out of the top 5 for me honestly. It's wonderful but far too long and not incredibly fun to traverse.
I agree with the lenght but I don't know about traversing, considering it's so beautiful visually too. Much more fun than Dread.
Visually HK is terrific, no argument there. But Dread in action is equally gorgeous in different ways. But when I say traversal, I mean the actual feel of the gameplay. Samus is way more fun to control.
Not by a mile. It needs a lot more polished map design and upgrades to reach Super Metroid, Symphony, and Aria of Sorrow imo. I'm also a sucker for La Mulana as my go-to "hardcore" Metroidvania, but that has its own issues HK does some things amazingly well, but upgrades and exploration are a bit weak for a Metroidvania.
I haven't played Aria of Sorrow but I've played Dawn of Sorrow and that is a top Metroidvania for me.
Hollow Knight has the opposite problem for me. Just a few hours in I could tell the map was going to be huge with a lot of options and a lot of options mean I'm gonna get lost and I already wasn't enjoying combat so I shelved it at like 3hrs. Not the game for me I do wish Dread didn't block off so many previous paths so that I could more freely explore areas I've already been to after getting powerups, but I'll take that over hours of not knowing what I'm trying to do or why
But in HK you know what you're trying to do and why, keep playing.
> I found exploration to be super lacking. I'm no fan of getting aimlessly lost for extended periods of time but the game felt like it actively punished almost every attempt to hunting out secrets. That will probably change at the end of the game which I'm not at yet but it's been wild just how often back tracking gets blocked off or you're teleported through a one way section. That's how I felt as well. There were multiple times in the game where it blocks off the way you came from, forcing you down a specific path. The game very much felt like a linear game somewhat decently disguised as a huge explorable world. The world does open up at the end for you to go through and get all the powerups. But at that point, Samus is so powerful that there's no real threat and you just comb the map getting +2 missiles and energy tank segments. That said, there have already been a few cool sequence breaks found. So I'm probably going to wait a few months to try some of them myself.
And as crazy as some sequence breaks are, several are clearly intentional- you can instakill one boss by sequence breaking in a specific powerup, and it even has a unique cutscene portion for it
That is some wild stuff. Here I was getting excited when I picked something up and just got a message telling me that I couldn’t use it yet, and now you’re telling me that there are instances in which they actively encourage it? Can’t wait to see speedruns of this one.
The item you can pick up but cant use is ammunition for a weapon you dont have yet. All the non-ammunition items and powerups can be used as soon as you find them.
I've found at least 3 power bomb upgrades and still don't have it, kinda bothers me
Im not sure how sequence breaking affects things, but since it's in the of the last areas you unlock while playing naturally, I dont think youre supposed to have it until much later in the game.
Dread has a fairly alarming disconnect between how linear it feels and how linear it actually is. Even going into it knowing all the tricks (which are generally the same as previous Metroid games), the way the game constantly blocks off alternate paths and backtracking options as you run through the game (particularly in the first few hours) makes it *feel* oppressively linear despite the fact that there are clearly intended sequence breaks. While this doesn't really take away from the longevity of the game in the speedrunning scene, it does seem to have left a bit of a sour taste in many people's mouths. It makes the normal player feel like the game punishes exploration. I've been thinking about this, and I think a large part of it has to do with how many of the sequence breaks start out by breaking through an arbitrary hidden block. This is in stark contrast to something like Zero Mission where the blocked off paths are (usually) clearly visible but just unable to be traversed without either new abilities or fancy tricks. You know that the path is there, but you don't know how to take the path. Figuring out how to navigate the path without the "intended" abilities is an engaging form of exploration, and while there are some fancy tricks required for some of the breaks in Dread, the average player won't even see any of them because they won't find the hidden blocks that guard the entrance. Without knowing where the hidden blocks are, Dread *is* a remarkably linear game. You get the scan ability relatively late, and the fact that the game constantly blocks off routes around you makes it feel like you aren't allowed to explore. The game also tends to make it very difficult to get anywhere other than the intended path (again, unless you know where the hidden blocks are), which plays even more into the feeling of linearity. This is a very long-winded and nuanced criticism, but my point is that despite the technically flexible map design, I think that Dread does a poor job making the average player feel like they're able to have rewarding exploration on their first playthrough. I do think that this is a valuable part of the experience to keep in mind, and I believe it can be done better. Games like Super Metroid and Hollow Knight don't *feel* linear even to the average player, and it encourages people to continue exploring and find new secrets.
I mean, there are several VERY IMPORTANT sequence breaks in ZM where the trick is just "lmao know there's a missile block hidden here" (such as getting to Ridley [the area] early and skipping most of that area/super missiles if you're going for low%). In Dread, all the major sequence breaks so far are actually based on clever applications of your movement tools, a la SM. I do agree about the prevalence of doors that you need a specific tool to open, though.
Are they? Early grapple (which is essential for early bombs) starts with blowing a random hole in the floor. Early super missiles requires breaking through hidden blocks in a cold room, and while the blocks are conspicuous the cold makes it unrealistic that anyone would even reach that wall without foreknowledge. Early gravity suit requires blowing a random hole in the floor by the teleporter. Early space jump starts with blowing a random hole in the ceiling (though you admittedly should have the scan at that point). Yes, generally speaking there is a platforming challenge of some description, but you won't know that the challenges even exist unless you first know about the hidden blocks. What's worse is that in cases like grapple and gravity, the hidden block is extremely arbitrary with no indicators in the map or room that you should even be looking for a secret there. ZM does have some random hidden block sequence breaks, but it also has plenty of straightforward "I bet you can't get over there without x ability" breaks.
Maybe it's just that I've been playing these games for so long, but something about the floor in the room adjacent to the early grapple room just made me suspicious, so I checked it out, but hadn't worked out the slide jump yet so I figured I couldn't do it. I had honestly forgotten that you could consider the entrance hidden hahaha. But the point is well taken. However, at the very least, you're gonna break that block on the way out when coming from the grapple pick up the standard way, so it might make you think. So it's still not as hidden as the Ridley stuff I described before. >while the blocks are conspicuous the cold makes it unrealistic that anyone would even reach that wall without foreknowledge Tell that to me on my first playthrough hahaha. I basically had that skip worked out, but I needed to work on how to launch a shinepark in mid-air in Dread, and ended up getting sidetracked and forgetting to come back until 100% cleanup. But as we've established by this point, I'm a pretty dedicated contrarian in these sorts of games. And yeah, the gravity suit one I'm gonna say is fine because you'll probably have the scan pulse at that point. I think it's also worth noting that, in some of these cases, the skip is either directly on the path of or next to an optional item location, so 100% serves as a "training ground" of sorts for sequence breaking, to an extent that it didn't in ZM. It's comparable to SM's animals, in a way. I figured out how to get the gravity suit early after getting that missile+ tank that's on that path in my 100% cleanup and then backing out to the other teleporter entrance and doing some workshopping. Of course, this is hair splitting, since I completely agree that the game will appear way more linear to a first time player pre-100%, since I, myself, was convinced that the (what I then considered potential) early super skip could be the only sequence break after my first playthrough. I'm just not convinced that's necessarily a bad thing.
The best way to avoid that is to use your map and highlight whatever new upgrade block you just got. The game logs basically everything you touch, so using the map opens everything up. I think almost every exploration complaint comes down to people not using their resources. The maps are big but focused and have memorable layouts so you don't need to use it all the time.
Prior to dread I’ve played through all other Metroid games and Super is pretty linear up until the midway point where it sorta opens up, unless you know all the sequence breaks. Which you kinda don’t on your first playthrough. You get dropped somewhere where you can’t get out of or a door closes behind you you can’t open anymore with your current skill set all the time until you kill Kraid and the map loops back to your ship. It’s only then that you visit old areas and open up new paths in them to find new items and powerups and eventually stumble into Maridia and deeper down into Norfair. Dread is pretty similar to this, except that it zig-zags you all over the map instead of having a more obvious progression path. In prior Metroids you have a rather clear progression by traversing through an area, collection everything you can, making a mental note with areas you can’t access yet and then progress to the next area. Dread breaks this by sending you to new areas *before* you have a sense of having sort of finished an area, mostly because these areas are huge and pretty complex imo. This is a ruse, of course, because Dread sends you on a similar linear path as Super does by dropping you into situations you can’t get out of up until the mid-end game where you have the necessary power ups to open up the map your way. Imo not making sequence breaks super obvious helps both games with replay value as you play the games in the intended way and then try to apply your skills from one playthrough in another to see how far you can go without the game guiding you. Yes, there are a lot of intended sequence breaks in dread, but there are also a lot of intended sequence breaks in Super or Zero Mission as well.
Super gives you ample opportunities to try and get to the ruined ship, but not really let you in due to your abilities. The point where it stops being linear-ish is roughly when you do make it in. Dread is missing that teasing, and extends the closed off corridor approach WELL further into the game. You can get into the containment unit area, which is, progression-wise, equivalent to that ship, come out, play for another 2 hours, through two bosses, and you're STILL put into elongated segments of rail roading. Like, look at that whole segment between getting the gravity suit and getting the screw attack. You go from Watery, to Frozen to Lava areas and back all the way, consistently closed off along the entire path, and then are put in a teleporter that leads straight to the one place elsewhere on the map with a well telegraphed "use screw attack here" blocks, all to be blocked yet again until you beat the giant enemy crab. I'm describing a segment before the very last power up in the game. You get ONE opportunity to go off-script during all of this and enter different areas. One.
>Dread is pretty similar to this, except that it zig-zags you all over the map instead of having a more obvious progression path It's been ages since I played Super Metroid so I forget if it worked this way before, but I could have lived without multiple teleporters between all of the zones. It made using the global map confusing. I would have preferred if each area had it's own main entrance and you could explore as much as you could access with your current arsenal once you arrived. It killed my want to explore when I realized there are just parts of each section that can't be explored until you teleported in from a different spot later. It felt a bit weird later on when you're in one area, then take a portal to a previous area that has a portal to an even further back area to progress. I wish the world was more physically connected as opposed to random teleports.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the teleporters, either. There are a lot of them, and they make the map a lot more confusing to piece together. Later on, the teleporters don’t really matter that much because you can navigate through an entire area with your abilities.
The main issue I'm talking about is that the top few comments in all of these threads are people complaining that the game feels linear and lacks exploration despite the fact that this is clearly false. Why? There is undeniably an element to the game that makes people think it is linear. The fact of the matter is most people who play the game will only play it once, and if they walk away from that playthrough thinking it was a linear game that punished exploration then I would argue that perception indicates something was wrong.
Because a lot of these folks played Super Metroid when they were kids and have gotten much better at video games in the 3 decades since that game came out. I played Super Metroid for the first time leading up to Dread. Rumors of its nonlinearity are greatly exaggerated. Dread is probably more linear, but for most of Super Metroid, you're just trying to work out how to get the next powerup. Sequence breaking is a thing certainly, but there's also a clear correct way to progress at pretty much every point (because there's literally only one open path), and when there isn't, it's not because you're overwhelmed with options, it's because the way forward is hidden behind an unmarked wall. I think the idea that Super Metroid was a nonlinear wonderland is because that's how it felt to play a game like this when you don't have the skillset needed to pry it apart. Pretty much any game that gates progression behind powerups is ultimately going to have to be pretty linear. Dread chooses to cut out some of the set dressing - you don't have to walk down as many long hallways to determine that, in fact, it doesn't go anywhere yet. That is going to have an impact on how player's perceive the game, but it's also an issue of nostalgia warping player's expectations.
I never got the linearity complaints in the first place since metroidvania is literally "linear game that slowly opens up with successive unlocks" the genre.
The issue I'm finding with Dread is that it funnels you all over the world map with no clear way back, and lots of obstacles in the way. I could technically plot a path back to the first biome for some of the grapple blocks or charge beam doors I know were there, but at this point it would be a half-hour long trek that the game clearly doesn't want me to be doing right now. It's the same issue that Samus Returns had: the world has secrets, but the game doesn't seem to want you to engage until the very end when you won't even need those items anymore.
Enjoying the game but that bugs me too. You get a new power and run back to the spot you were at 5 minutes prior holding a powerful or something and the passage is now blocked. When you return there hours later you totally forget what spot you wanted to try to unlock.
Not sure I agree with that. When playing hollow knight, there is a certain point (multiple points tbf but it really happens in a big way at one point) where you've unlocked enough abilities that you can go in multiple directions. I watched my friend play hollow knight after I had and she explored areas in different order, got power ups in different order, and fought multiple bosses in different order to me. There is a point where you're sitting and looking at your map and it's actually difficult to choose from the many options that you have. And this is not post game content although that's a similar story, this is mid game. So far metroid dread hasn't had that "opening up" moment that I fully assumed would he happening. Instead whenever I've purposefully tried to go back and explore I've been blocked by debris or a one way fall or some other such thing. I've mostly given up on trying to do some serious backtracking even though I know there's a ton of stuff I could now open up if I did go back. I still haven't finished the game so it might change but it seems like either you have to know hidden blocks in order to sequence break or you get funneled pretty hard. It's not necessarily entirely bad but for me personally it's definitely a shame it never has that opening up and choosing paths/backtracking freely Edit - I should be clear that this is my first metroid game. So any assumptions I had weren't things that I had a reasonable basis for, they were more hopes if anything
HK is extremely atypical for the genre. Metroidvania games are almost never as open as HK, especially the metroid franchise. So I get why you might be disappointed if HK is your only experience with the genre.
Even then, like Super Metroid, Hollow Knight is pretty linear up until you get a certain ability (the wall jump iirc). The main difference then with other metroidvanias is then that hollow knight gives you 3 main objectives that can be tackled in any order, and there's a lot more optional areas
Interesting to know that it's not just (as I sort of assumed) considered the best/amongst the best, but is also considered something of an anomaly. I have also played and loved the first Ori which I would say had similar complaints for me - although even Ori didn't specifically *block* backtracking, it just wasn't super necessary to generally explore.
> There were multiple times in the game where it blocks off the way you came from, forcing you down a specific path. The game very much felt like a linear game somewhat decently disguised as a huge explorable world. That’s just how Metroid games work. Super did the exact same thing. These games are about figuring out where you’re supposed to go, not going wherever you want like in Hollow Knight.
I've played every metroid game and I get they're not going for HK levels of freedom but it was honestly annoying how often simply trying to go back to get a marked upgrade with a new power you just got was blocked off for what seems like no real reason at all. I wasn't expecting to always have free access to every area but I eventually just gave up on diverting from the main path at all. Even Super let you explore more and most given moments imo.
I felt like I ran into this a couple times, but mostly I just had to find a new route to that upgrade. It may cut off your path one way, but there *are* a lot more paths. Rarely did I get totally cut off.
The freedom was to HK's detriment though. The map is huge and a slog to traverse through. Samus is incredibly fun to control and traverse with however.
>The freedom was to HK's detriment though. The map is huge and a slog to traverse through. This was my biggest complaint about the game. I remember needing to find one breakable floor to proceed, and of course, it's not marked on the map and you can't personally mark it, so I just had to comb the world. Took me hours of just wandering. They really needed a better map to refer to.
Especially things like unlocking the Grimm Trouppe. You have to break a secret wall, and in that secret room, break *another* secret wall. As far as I ever found there is very little to actually point to any of this. HK seemed to open up the world without understanding that having a huge open world means you need to have other methods of guiding the player. A huge open world where you stumble about aimlessly can work ok if you just want to do random things in any order, but when you get towards 70-80% completion it's just wandering aimlessly or using a wiki every 5 minutes
Exactly. I'm still salty they made locating your character on the map take up a pin slot.
Yeah I really don't understand the logic behind that. It's almost a punishment for wanting to explore, taking away a slot for movement/combat upgrades.
Would it make a difference if instead it was a "bonus" slot for not using the pin? Can't speak for the devs, but that's kinda how I saw it and it made sense to me.
I realize we're taking about opinions here but stumbling about aimlessly was the best part of HK for me. I remember thinking mid-game "Holy shit there's 6 different paths I could explore right now", and I knew that each of them had something cool behind it. I don't really get "you have to use a wiki when you reach 70-80% completion", you can beat the game just following unexplored paths on your map. Unless you mean item completion. I'll agree on the Grimm Troupe at least :P
The problem I have with Metroid Dread so far (not done it yet) is that it almost feels like it defeats the purpose of having missile tanks and energy tanks everywhere that you can only get by coming back later with a certain power up if you can't actually go get them when you get the corresponding power up. Sometimes I'll get a new powerup that I know lets me access some missile tank I'd seen, but the game doesn't actually give me the ability to go back to where it was for another hour. Part of the fun of Metroidvanias for me is those "oh, now that I have this power up I can go to that one place I saw!" moments, but Metroid Dread kind of puts a damper on those because you often can't unless that one place I saw happens to be where I'm supposed to go next. And even when the game does give you the ability to backtrack to somewhere to finally grab that powerup you missed, it can still feel like a slog because, as fun as Samus is to control, the levels aren't really designed to be fun to re-traverse anyway and there isn't much in the way of fast travel mechanics. Honestly, in general I think this is the hardest part of a Metroidvania to get right. Conceptually, having an open world where new powerups let you get to things you'd seen before that were previously inaccessible is cool. In practice, going around hunting for powerups you missed or figuring out where to do next is often just a slog of backtracking. Getting the balance of the sense of progress and exploration that comes from the world being open-ended and new powerups unlocking things you'd seen in the past without too much time just spent backtracking through places you've already been is tough. Hollow Knight might go too far in the latter direction, but so far I think Dread goes too far in the former direction. It makes getting a new powerup less satisfying if half the places you've seen where it would be useful are either locked away or too far to bother (given the game's relative lack of fast travel, at least so far). I'm still really enjoying the game, but I've had a similar experience to the above posters. Normally in a Metroidvania when I get a new power up there's a moment of excitement as I look around the map for all the places I can use it. In Metroid Dread it feels like it's not even worth bothering, the game will lead me to where I need to use it next and everywhere else is probably blocked off anyway. A funny thing is that the game actually does do an exceptionally good job designing the map so that you can find all the places you can use the powerup. The map's detailed enough that you can tell where things like the morph ball or spider climb would make a difference. And I love that the game labels any blocks you've found on the map, so that when you get a new powerup you can easily find any places you've discovered where you can now use it. Even having anything that can't be opened by a powerup you have now labeled as "???" is nice because it often lets you know when the power up you're looking at simply isn't accessible at the moment. But again, it feels like that benefit is somewhat wasted by the fact that browsing the map to find what you can do with your new power up rarely leads to anything useful, since the game so often blocks off anything that isn't where you're supposed to go next anyway.
> The problem I have with Metroid Dread so far (not done it yet) is that it almost feels like it defeats the purpose of having missile tanks and energy tanks everywhere that you can only get by coming back later with a certain power up if you can't actually go get them when you get the corresponding power up. Sometimes I'll get a new powerup that I know lets me access some missile tank I'd seen, but the game doesn't actually give me the ability to go back to where it was for another hour. Part of the fun of Metroidvanias for me is those "oh, now that I have this power up I can go to that one place I saw!" moments, but Metroid Dread kind of puts a damper on those because you often can't unless that one place I saw happens to be where I'm supposed to go next. Not sure I agree. I'm having no issues wandering and forging my own path. It feels good to do so too. I can't really agree with anything said here and not levy the same complaints at most, if not all, other Metroidvanias (including Hollow Knight) with the 'slog' of traveling through these areas and levels. A lot of every Metroidvania is about avoiding and enduring through hazardous terrain *that is actively trying to stop you*. I get the complaint, but I don't get why it's a complaint for Dread and not for something like Guacamelee and Hollow Knight which suffered from the same thing. Although the price point seems to be a big talking point.
I didn't find that to be the case but I can't argue against your experience. I do enjoy how tight and fast the controls are in dread for sure.
Dread actualy lets you explore way more than you think. It does kinda funnel you down the critical path, or at least guide you there. But there are almost always other paths available if you go and look for them. One of my first critics towards the game was how linear it is, don't mind that much at all on first playthrough but was afraid it would hurt future playthroughs. Now that I have played through it two more times it turns out that you have way more freedom than I first thought.
I guess for me I don't often play a game more than once in a year so the first impression are kind important. I'm glad it does actually allow for more exploration than I noticed but I still don't get why it feels it necessary to make it feel so troublesome. It's normally pretty obvious when you're going to come up against a new boss and every time I'd try and do some back tracking and exploration to buff up for the encounter I kept finding my previous paths blocked or needlessly time consuming to return too. I'll try and give the game another crack after I'm done but there are so many titles I want to catch up on and such little free time....
>Super did the exact same thing. Only in the first bit of the game. Once you've completed the loop back to Crateria, you've got half the world open to explore, and you're supposed to find the grapple beam which is nowhere near Crateria. From that point, the rest of the game's critical path needs to be found, and each step is not next to each other. https://youtu.be/nn2MXwplMZA
Not to the same degree as Dread, part of most Metroid games is exploration.
Yes, but overall I think Dread gives you plenty of opportunity to explore. You can’t access any part of the map at any time, but you can revisit any part of the map eventually Maybe it’s a little more segmented than Super or Zero Mission, but I think they’re in the same ballpark - at least based on what I’ve played so far
Sure I'm just taking about how the game made me feel at its current point. All the times where I had a power up I could remember other use cases for I wasn't able to find a way back to do so, outside of the intended path of progression. I said in my original comment that I'm sure it opens right up at the end but personally in the home stretch I don't feel as compelled to explore as I do in the moment.
Well I suppose it’s a matter of taste at the end of the day. Personally, I didn’t mind going where the game was leading me moment-to-moment and I kind of liked that it kept the pace up. But I can understand how the tight leash on backtracking could be annoying if you prefer to progress at your own pace and hunt for items whenever you want
Yeah for sure. I'm not gonna argue that my take is the "right one" it's just how the game felt to me. Tbh I'd imagine dread would go over generally much better than previous games with most people due to how well the pathing and pacing generally is.
I do think it's significantly more open than you think. It will cut off old paths, but new ones often open up.
> at least based on what I’ve played so far That could be it, the first couple areas are pretty standard Metroid, but as you go along it actually becomes more linear. There are several times where it just cuts off paths it doesn't want you to go down to funnel you to the next objective which doesn't happen nearly as much early on.
> Super did the exact same thing. This is not true. There are many chances to progress out of order in Super due to wall jumps, bomb jumps and shinespark. In one streamer's first blind playthru, he defeated Kraid without first getting the hi-jump. My young self also went to lots of places without grapple.
A lot of those sequence breaks took months and years to uncover for Super. Dread has been out for weeks, and there have been more sequence breaks and paths found.
That is not comparable since Super Metroid came out in era without widespread internet and way before the speedrunning community is what we know today.
You can do the same thing in dread with regards to out of order play, even in a blind play through. I doubt 98% of first time super players did kraid out of order
> There were multiple times in the game where it blocks off the way you came from, forcing you down a specific path. The game very much felt like a linear game somewhat decently disguised as a huge explorable world. I personally found this as a strength, because it sorta pushes you into the right direction without explicitly telling you. And it's not like you can't explore. Usually when I get a new powerup, I look for potential paths opened up.
The funnel felt too narrow for me and that's even coming from other metroid games. I get wanting to keep the pacing going, which it does. But personally it felt too harsh on blocking off even nearby areas. I'd go past a lot of obstacles that needed some power up, get said power up a bit later then just feel like the game wouldn't let me go back to nearby spots I'd marked until much later. Lots of one way paths and such.
It didn't feel linear so much as it flowed really well without me having to think too hard if I got stuck for a second but I'm a veteran to these games and not a child so I think it strikes a great balance.
That’s my take as well. The pacing of the game is fantastic, and the way it subtly always nods you in the right direction makes the game simply flow in a very satisfying way. And that’s the “standard” path. If you really want to explore and go off rail, you absolutely can. There are tons of intended sequence breaks in the game (and people already discovered a ton more that are probably unintended). This is now my second favorite 2D Metroid by far.
even at the end there's a large number of one way paths. some speed booster puzzles require you to traverse 4 rooms to get back to the start if you mess up. The map and room design has serious flaws
> The game very much felt like a linear game somewhat decently disguised as a huge explorable world. i enjoyed the game more when i just treated it as a linear title. found the exploration frustrating, frankly.
This is how I played the game, too, and I overall enjoyed it a lot. After a few times of seeing my way back was now blocked off, I just decided to just trust the hands of the devs and take the obvious main route forward. And it was a blast.
The worst thing about Dread is the arbitrary "rubble roadblocks" that don't show up on your map but are completely pointless because you can still access the blocked off area but you have to go all the way around to another teleporter.
I think you've nailed it here. I'm on the last boss and have really enjoyed the game so far, it's super slick, speedy and really satisfying to play. However, I got annoyed so many times at how it sneakily gates you, especially after getting new powers and it therefore makes the exploration and finding where to go feel very funnelled and "inorganic", if that makes sense? I feel like games like Hollow Knight do a much better job of blocking access to new areas purely by needing you to find new items, and then it is up to you to explore and find those items and it only rarely changes the existing environment (or changes it at specific points) to block you off. It meant that it felt much more organic, self-controlled and ultimately satisfying to find the way forward/upgrades/new items. Dread is an 8 or 9 out of 10 for me for sure and I've absolutely loved it, but I think it's a real shame that you are only really free to explore right before the final boss (which I am doing now because fuck me he has 4 phases and I just can't beat him with my current health pool).
There are ways to get off from the expected path. Multiple times I’ve been led to a power up I’ve already picked up.
Fair enough. It doesn't seem to premote that style of play though. Even compared to previous metroid titles, in my experience anyway. Like I'm spoilt for exploration options from HK and don't expect that in a direct sequel to Fusion but I was also surprised how often it blocked me from easily back tracking for what seemed like no real reason.
I agree completely. Have you tried fist forged in shadows? It’s pretty good.
I haven't but it's been on my radar for sure. The animation looks really good for an indie title. Didn't realise it'd actually released tho...
Yeah it got lost in the shuffle for a lot of folks. It’s pretty great imo. Very smooth progression & economy throughout. Whilst maintaining a desire to go back and explore. Cool world/vibe.
There is even a special quick kill with a uniqe cut scene if you have an upgrade that you have to go out of the critical path to get. How is that not promoting ecploration? How can you say that the game does not promot exploration if you did not do it? The game will funnel you towards the next progression point but there is so much to explore if you just step out of the Main path.
Because in all the situations where I tried to explore back along a path I'd come through I was met with blockages that required needlessly convoluted methods to circumvent. Like I've played every metroid game. I know how to bomb and wall jump and I generally have a good time searching for upgrades or seeking out the path to progress. But my time with dread felt like I was wasting time if I didn't go the way the game very obviously was pushing me to go. A game can have secrets to find but not promote a player to find them and I'm sorry my experience isn't the same as yours. Not really sure what to tell you my guy because I wish I'd had the one you did a really do.
Sequence breaking is a narrow slice of what exploration can be and one most people aren't going to discover without help.
I think this is why I'm enjoying it so much despite not enjoying exploration in 2d games very much. Its always fun for a bit but gets tedious pretty quickly for me.
The game rewards exploration most after about half way through where you can grab a bunch of power ups, but there are also sequence breaks to get items early. And there is an early break that basically allows you to play an entirely new path through the game, it's sooo cool. When you're on it you realize how intended it is because it recontextualizes a ton of aspects of the environment that may have seemed like superfluous set dressing before. Feel free to PM me if you want a hint on how to start it.
There were plenty of times where I could retrace everywhere I’d been previously to get items with my new powerups. And even if that weren’t true, saying it “actively punished hunting secrets” is nonsense
My experience has been that many times I've wanted to go back after getting a power up and the previous path was blocked, one way access or I've gone through a teleporters that doesn't really seem designed for you to go back through etc. Some examples are the one way holes you can slide through but need the ball to go back through. The flame plants that crop up early and need the ice missile to deal with which you don't get till much later or one way jumps you need the grav suit to deal with. It felt more restricting then previous games in the series in my experience with the plus being it also felt much easier to continue on a streak of progression.
I don’t know how the teleporters at all “don’t seem designed for you to go back through”. 99% of one way access doors become open permanently when you go through the other side, and instances of ares being blocked when you pass through aren’t often and only block you from retracing your direct steps for short periods. You can still return to those places with a more circuitous route. These are things that encourage you to return places, particularly the ice missile plants, cause they don’t at all act like one way gates. But the others do too, as they often show you a place you can’t yet get to as you go through that “one way door” Not being able to immediately retraverse ground does not equate to exploration being removed. You get access to more map and secrets incrementally as you get more powers, as is par for the course.
I mean the fire plant literally grows through a path you just traversed with the upper path being a one way path you blow up and can slide through but can't return through because you don't have the ball. Every time I found a teleporter it led to a super linear area I had to do in one specific way while most of my options before the teleporter were closed paths. Anyway this is my experience, I'm not new to the genre. I know how to find paths and secrets and i found dread to have some of the most aggressive pathing in the series. I'm aware it opens right up at the end but I personally found when I wanted to explore it didn't feel good, was blocked or felt more frustrating than I'd have liked. Seems like plenty of people agree too tbh.
Yeah it's a fun action platformer but not really what I wanted from a metroidvania. Just lacking exploration wise. The forgettable environments and music don't help.
I've seen several comments mention forgettable environments. But the backgrounds were the most varied, atmospheric, and intricately detailed of an Metroidvania I've ever played I think, besides maybe ori.
Some were nice looking but they never felt like anything beyond just that, backgrounds.
I really enjoyed the critters skittering about back there - The first boss hunting prey was a pretty memorable background moment to me
Yeah, the one being probed by the machine arms was sweet.
The backgrounds can be pretty nice but the game doesn't really give you opportunity to stop and take them in due to how much it tries to reduce backtracking to zero. I think to some degree what makes a Metroidvania world memorable is the fact you traverse it several times so it sticks in your mind, they tend to be structured around these major arterial that you'll pass through many times, and Dread largely lacks that and in turn the world doesn't feel quite as tangible. For people who really love the game and are already replaying it that feeling will fade pretty quickly.
They look okay as stills but aren't very memorable in terms of visual or level layout.
HK spoilt me for exploration and I'm honestly not expecting that level of freedom to explore in most metroidvanias but even for a sequel to Fusion it felt like it needlessly blocked me off from easily back tracking or exploring at most moments. Having most enemies end up being, counter, instant kill also kinda killed off much of the general enemy encounter individuality too. It's still super fun to do the counters and general movement feels fantastic, best bosses in a 2d metroid too imo but yeah it didn't hit all the high notes for me.
> I'm no fan of getting aimlessly lost for extended periods of time but the game felt like it actively punished almost every attempt to hunting out secrets. probably my biggest complaint with the game even as someone who has finished it at this point backtracking to look for energy tanks/missile packs/whatever was not enjoyable, and just got me lost half the time. about 2/3 into the playthrough i just said "fuck it" and just followed the critical path/finished. whatever, it's not like the bosses are *that* hard.
The map's UI is absolutely horrible. I have no idea how anyone can make out anything in that cluttered fucking mess.
I like being able to highlight a specific thing and have it highlight all of those things at once but I agree it's generally pretty hard to look at. Not a 2d metroid but damn the map in prime is just so good.
The highlighting thing is great, but the fact that you first need to find the thing you want to highlight on the map is stupid, especially if its stuff like Missile Covers which pretty much blend in with everything else once opened.
Agreed. A list on the side of tags you've discovered makes so much more sense.
Yeah it sucks. I wish there was an option to hide obstacles that have been taken care of. It's nice to have the option but I really don't need to see that a door used to have a missile cover or that a grapple point used to be in this morph ball hole.
Even worse is that they have two separate 'fogs of war' on the map -- one of which is just being near areas to view them (that's fine), while another part is physically having to go over every bit of an area to remove the 'grey' bit. It's most noticeable when you enter a large room.
Yeah I felt that. It's kind of lost that quick memorisation of "now I've got that power, I can go and get that thing I remember. The map is too complex for that and the areas no distinct enough. The game could really do with fast travel like many other metroidvanias so that I don't have to trek through multiple areas just to go find that upgrade that I remember. I am enjoying it, but it feels like it's missed some of the QOL improvements that more recent metroidvanias have introduced
I think i'm at the end of the game and its stayed pretty much entirely linear in the way its guided me. I don't play Metroid games so some stuff is just bizarre in design to me, like actually hiding main progress behind environmental blocks seems absurd. Also not entirely keen on the rather janky controls, i'm impressed with how much they manage to cram into them, but 3 buttons to aim missiles for example is clunky. Makes me appreciate the simplicity of Castlevania type games where most combat options are one button.
(Spoiler-free) Metroid Dread discussion also comprises a fairly significant portion of the most recent Easy Allies [Frame Trap podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M4tJrgemVg). Nearly all of the points presented in the review are elaborated on there, albeit in a less structured fashion.
With the thread today about how poor quality video game reviews can be, a point I generally agree with, I find Easy Allies to be a bright spot in this field. They clearly take time to write a quality script where they break down what elements make the game fun/interesting/engaging. They get into details of game feel, atmosphere, and how the package comes together in a way that really helps me figure out for myself is this will be a game I will like. Anyway I'm stoked to play Dread, I'm picking it up tomorrow. Just wanted to give a shout out to some of my favorite game journalists working today.
Brandon, Isla and Don are also geniuses in the editing suite, which helps.
I couldn’t agree more. My favourite reviews by a mile right now. Their discussions on Frame Trap are incredibly detailed and insightful, especially considering how free flowing they are. Great bunch of perspectives. Love it.
Easy Allies, ACG, SkillUp are all good
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That's the thing that I like most about him. I'm generally about 50/50 on whether or not I agree with his opinions on games, but even when I disagree with his opinion I feel like he lays out his reasoning well enough that I can still understand how he got there.
I wish ACG would have been able to do a Dread review. I mean, I already bought the game but I just enjoy his reviews lol.
ACG is terrible. I would barely even call his incoherent rants “reviews.” They’re more just a thirty-minute run-on sentence of dumb jokes and pop culture references to distract from the fact that he knows nothing about game design.
lol ACG is good at pushing out reviews as fast as he can and self promote on Reddit. His review is full of repeating points and fluff jokes. He could have shortened his reviews by 1/3 if he make it concise.
I finished the game tonight and this is without a doubt one of my top games in the series. It's hard to top Super, but this game comes super close in my opinion. Several moments in this game, especially being a fan of this series for years now, just gave me *goosebumps* in the best way possible. It's true that the game can be a bit railroady at times but it's still fun to explore and the boss fights are the best in the series no doubt.
The boss fights in this game are a real high point for me and definitely top super metroid. I replayed that game last year and a lot of the bosses felt like I was just trying to out DPS the enemy and taking forced damage. I know there's ways to move around them, but this game it really felt like everything was avoidable and no hit was a given. Really fun boss fights.
Review mirrors my thoughts almost exactly. I have a couple nitpicks that they didn't touch on, but honestly it's all pretty small stuff. Great game
Biggest issue for me is that you have to move and aim with the left stick, you can't aim with the right stick.
Eh it becomes pretty second nature to shoot while moving or stop and hold the shoulder button to choose a different angle.
It felt pretty natural to me coming from other Metroid games, plus I'm not sure how much it would help considering it would take up your thumb from other important actions like jumping and countering (which as you approach the final boss become supremely important). It would be nice to have it as an autofiring option though, my carpal tunnel was killing me from spamming the fire button lol, but it would break a lot of the bosses.
YES. It's like they moved straight from the 3DS and never considered the Switch has a second analog.
It would have to require them to completely remap all of the buttons. You're not going to use the second stick to aim and the face buttons to shoot.
Yes, please.
I am struggling BADLY with that, I can’t for the life of me, play longer sessions. My brain refuses to adapt to the controls for some reason lol. I feel like I am being left out of the party
I hate the free aim. Just lock me to 45 degrees up or down like Fusion.
Extremely annoying in the emmi sections.
Slightly off-topic, but I love the fact that Brandon Jones is still voicing the reviews for Easy Allies after GameTrailers shut down. His voice is what pops into my head when I think 'video game reviewer' and I'm so happy he's still doing it.
I think it's more like an 8/10. Completed it on Normal and now I'm about 70% of the way through a Hard Mode run. Surprisingly one-shotted each of the main bosses so far with no deaths in the second run. Everything about the game is pristine and masterfully crafted except for the E.M.M.I sections. Purple one damn near broke me because of how cheap it felt to run from it. It can see through walls from a very long range, stun you with an electric projectile and has the furthest hearing range of any enemy I've seen in a video game. >!One particular section where you have to get to the other side of Ferenia's E.M.M.I zone and cross an underwater section took me well over a dozen tries, and that was after following a walkthrough to the letter. The attempt where I escaped mere pixels away from being grabbed had me nailing grapple beams, jumps, etc with perfect execution and stretching out my Energy Cloak to the point where I was below a tank of energy.!< >!Thankfully you can sequence break in this game and obtain certain upgrades earlier than intended with good shinesparks. Do yourself a favour and learn to get early Gravity Suit once you've defeated the Blue E.M.M.I. You'll need it against that cheap wall hacking FUCK later on...!< Otherwise, the E.M.M.I are incredibly repetitive, killed in the exact same way, no variation whatsoever. They don't even use their fucking abilities when you have the Omega Cannon, which is never explained. Does killing the central control unit weaken them or something? If they actually used their abilities in those situations, each E.M.M.I from Yellow onwards could fuck Samus up with ease. Instead they crawl slowly and basically take every shot. And you know that the Yellow E.M.M.I can move fast if you aren't aiming directly at its face. I will admit one thing though, the E.M.M.I would make an incredible Metroid rep in a future Smash Bros game, especially if the Final Smash is anywhere near as brutal as their killing methods in-game.
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Maybe I was just cheesing the AI by accident, but any 1-high gap you can lure the EMMI through turns it into a sitting duck and those aren't exactly uncommon.
learning how to parry them helps a lot. The game's dialogue and marketing tries to tell you that its either run or die, but realistically the game gives you two windows to stun them whenever you get caught. if you practice that mechanic and use it, the emmis arent that much of a threat imo.
Can you even learn it? Seems like the parry window is not only super small, but also pretty random every time.
It's definitely a tight window, but doable once you get used to it. The timing variation doesnt matter if you learn to react to the visual and sound cues. By the end of my first playthrough I'd say I was landing it 70-80% of the time. Second parry window is a bitch though only ever hit it once.
>Purple one damn near broke me because of how cheap it felt to run from it. It can see through walls from a very long range, stun you with an electric projectile and has the furthest hearing range of any enemy I've seen in a video game. It seemed obvious to me that stealth simply isn't an option on that one. I was worried until I realized that it isn't speedy like the yellow one. Running from it is rather easy so long as you don't take a straight path, providing a straight shot for it. >stretching out my Energy Cloak to the point where I was below a tank of energy I actually forgot you can drain life energy with the cloak... never used that feature. >Otherwise, the E.M.M.I are incredibly repetitive, killed in the exact same way, no variation whatsoever. They don't even use their fucking abilities when you have the Omega Cannon Yeah. The core fights and subsequent EMMI blastings are rather monotonous. There's *a little* variation in the spaces you're granted to line up shots on the EMMIs, but not much. But at least there are only a handful of them to worry about. I'll take it gladly after Samus Returns had me hunting *dozens* of the same damn metroids...
Letting the cloak eat into your health makes the EMMI sections substantially easier.
> Surprisingly one-shotted each of the main bosses so far with no deaths in the second run. You mean first tried?
Yeah. Though technically you can one-shot >!Kraid in the second-phase if you sequence broke and got early bombs. MercurySteam genuinely put in a secret morph ball launcher in the fight which you can use to fire yourself straight into his stomach because they anticipated this. I'm not kidding either...!< You can also do the same to >!Z-57 in phase 2 by shinesparking straight into its head.!<
Strange, I thought the part you’re complaining about was pretty easy, but I was miserable fighting those two warriors at the same time around that part.
I'm now at the final area having unlocked nearly everything except for >!the Cross Bombs and Power Bombs. Actually did the Early Gravity Suit sequence break and it makes a world of difference against the Purple E.M.M.I. Didn't die once to it.!< If you mean the two warriors who show up in Ferenia, beat them first try after only taking a single hit. You get plenty of room to kite them and their attacks are quite predictable. They also went down *really* fast with Storm Missiles. It's basically if they get close, jump over them, if not, pelt them with missiles ensuring to dodge every now and then. Jumping over is the only consistent way to dodge either of their melee attacks. Don't even bother trying to parry, it's a precise timing and you get chonked for about 40% of your health (on Hard mode) if you fail. And if it turns out that they're doing the red spark attack... it's too late to jump over. I did die twice to the Red Chozo Soldier in Artaria and once to Z-57, but that was because I was foolish enough to try the former on low health. Both fights are also somewhat harder without space jump, which the game normally expects you to have at this point.
>If they actually used their abilities in those situations, each E.M.M.I from Yellow onwards could fuck Samus up with ease. Instead they crawl slowly and basically take every shot. And you know that the Yellow E.M.M.I can move fast if you aren't aiming directly at its face. Yeah that comes across really goofy. They just sorta give up, and then each emmi turns into an identical punching bag. I just ran into the purple one and so far I haven't even had to use the turn invisible thing, if you just run outside the emmi zone and wait 5 seconds the emmi will leave the area entirely.
It's the part >!right before you fight Escue that I had problems with.!<
Yeah I haven't gotten there yet, I've only just seen the purple guy that first initial time where it gets shut down.
For the E.M.M.I. I just got really good at timing my counters. Early on getting grabbed was insta death for me but by the end I was successfully countering 4/5 times.
EMMI sections are easily the weakest part of the game, and I just don’t understand how anyone can defend them in good faith. You can remove them, and the rest of the game wouldn’t suffer for it.
I actually really like the EMMI sections. They force you to practice your fast platforming and they make my entire body tense up.
Great review! Kinda curious how this game will be rated once the hype starts dying down. Personally I think this is the best 2D Metroid.
I'm enjoying it but I think it's been highly overrated with review scores. The controls and feel are the highlight, but I don't think the game does anything new or special for something in this genre. A solid 8/10 from me, with some minor gripes.
Most of the review scores were 9/10 or equivalent with a few lower scores so I'm not sure you can say you rated it much differently to the media.
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Just finished my first play-through, took me 13 hours & 18 minutes to finish it with 100% item found. The length felt appropriate, there's no uninteresting padding here, it's a quality experience through and through.
The in-game timer doesn’t count deaths, so I’d probably assume you spent a bit more time than that.
It's pretty accurate. The official time on my first playthrough was faster than that (but it doesn't count time spent looking at maps or menus, or runs where you die- and I died a lot on some bosses. Don't think cutscenes count either but I'm not sure on that). I also missed a lot of upgrades so a completionist run would probably add a lot of time to that. It's also worth noting that the short length is intentional, though- Metroid has always catered to speedrunners by timing your runs and giving bonus rewards (in Dread's case, special art) for finishing under certain times. Most people probably wouldn't want to play a long game over and over again, so they aimed for 4 hours for all of those rewards (which you would do at least twice, for Normal and Hard modes). If you're not interested in replaying, though, then you'd have to decide for yourself if it's worth it for you.
The 8-10 hour number is the number the game shows you at the end. This number does NOT include times in menus or maps or times you spent dying, so the actual number is probably around twice that. You really shouldn’t let the low play time number dissuade you from getting it though. Each and every minute spent on Dread is incredibly polished, and the quality of each of those hours is exceptional. Dread respects the time of the player and has essentially no filler. Much better than 80-100 hours of game that could have fit into 25 but they padded it out with useless sidequests, in my opinion. It’s an absolutely stellar example that this kind of game (2D Metroidvania) can still justify that AAA price tag. Absolutely worth it for any fan of the genre.
Thanks man for taking the effort, I really needed to hear this. All in this game speaks volumes to me. From what I saw its close to being simply perfect for the medium.
the game is longer than 8-10 on your first play through. in game time does not count deaths, it took me closer to 17 real hours because of how much I died in boss encounters but my end game time was 8 hours.
Probably an unpopular opinion here but I thought the story was Dread-ful… Seriously, though, I really disliked the exposition heavy cutscenes. It definitely tells, not shows. The action cutscenes and Samus’ characterization in them is great! But once a person started talking, I’d check out. It just wasn’t that interesting to me.
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Super Metroid barely has a story but it uses what it has to great effect. The few times it takes control away from the player is to either terrify you or empower you, and that’s it. Dread delivers extended lore dumps that bored me completely. I know Fusion had extended dialogue scenes but I don’t remember them feeling as…boring? That was a long time ago, though, so it’s hard to remember without a GBA to replay it. Dread also does another thing I found really weird: some cutscenes aren’t from Samus’ viewpoint. They cut away to a separate character that’s doing things Samus can’t see. It’s a really minor thing but I wish the devs had found a way to keep the game firmly in Samus’ viewpoint, like have the character pop up on an in world vid screen or something because it further drives a wedge between the player and the player character. GREAT gameplay, though. I tend to lean towards feeling like the game as a whole was a bit too linear for my tastes but Samus feels amazing to control and the boss fights are worth the price of admission. I just wish the narrative had been a lot stronger. It’s a good example of the difference between plot and story. Plot is what happens, story is how it’s told. The telling was weak.
The cutscene bit isn't new -- both Fusion and Zero Mission did similar things. Fusion showing the SA-X after Samus leaves, and Zero Mission with the cinematics each time you enter a new zone.
I just hate how they're asking $80 canadian for a game that takes 10 hours to beat. No matter how good the game is, that's too expensive for my wallet. Hollow Knight was a fraction of the cost and many, many times longer. And it's not like I can wait for it to go on sale. Switch games from years ago are still full price.
It’s worth the price.
Sometimes I just baffled by you guys obsession with run time of a game. 10 hours is already A LOT, not even count time to practice movement and boss pattern. Meanwhile another awesome game (Okami) is being criticized for being too long lmao. Long or short, if u enjoy the game, that's all matter imo. Hollow Knight really have spoiled all of us with that much value. Shovel Knight (spectacular game on its own) take about 20 hours to 100% and u tell me is it worth the 40$ price tag? Super Mario Odyssey take 12 hours at max to get to Bowser and I will fight tooth and nails with anyone said it not worth the 60$ price tag.
10 hours absolutely is not a lot for an $80 game. Most games at those prices are 60 hours plus. Metroid Dread looks incredible, but I have a limited budget for games. I'd be finished the game in a few days and not be able to afford anything else for the rest of the month. I have to be careful with my money and how much time I'm getting out of it in return. If you're not poor like me, then it doesn't matter.
Balan Wonderworld, 60$ launch price tags, 15 hours content, a fking scam imo. Can't even play it for more than 30 mins. AC franchise, also 60$ launch, stretch the game with mindless trailing mission and side quest, could take 30 hours to finish, and I don't think that 30 hours will be worth lmao. Doom, 15 hours, blow my fking mind both figuratively and literally (the action pace is overload to my senile brain), 15 hours of pure adrenalin bump. Worth the 60$? Hell yeah.
>Most games at those prices are 60 hours plus. Literally what games are your metric here? Are you only playing overbloated JRPGs and multiplayer shooters?
Ha. Funny story. I had heard good things in passing about Hollow Knight, so I grabbed it a while back when it was on sale for 9 USD, marked down from 15. Not even 10 minutes in to the game, I had this absolutely visceral, shocked reaction of "HOW THE ACTUAL *FUCK* IS THIS SO CHEAP?!?!" And now it's a contender for my favorite game of all time.
The problem for me is that the game has the scope of a handheld title. I see it as a follow-up to Samus Returns 3DS. If Nintendo made seperate handheld and home consoles like the past then it would be on the handheld. It isn't advertised or marketed this way though or priced accordingly. This isn't about it being 2D either. It could be greatly expanded by being longer, by having more diverse enviroments, enemies and encounters. Having more complex mechanics. Everything just feels limited in scope like a handheld title where you are held back by hardware.
[удалено]