My post will contain a few spoilers, so if you haven't beaten the game yet, I might accidentally spoil a few things. Just a warning.
I finished the game 100% a few days ago but I never posted in here, so I will now.
I loved this game. The atmosphere creeped me out and made me jittery (especially near the end of the game as I was collecting the rest of the powerups) and I loved the story.
One thing I really want to talk about is item exploration. I know a lot of people were complaining that it shows where the items are on your screen and makes exploration useless. However I noticed in my playthrough that only about 1/4 or 1/3 of the items EVER appear on your monitor screen. The other ones remain hidden until the "after game" part. I don't understand all the complaints here. You can grab almost any item before the end-game part (with the exception of the few power bomb ones) which means that almost all of them are still hidden. Also, even when they appeared on my map, that wasn't even half the battle over. I had a HELL of a time finding out how to get to a few powerups even when I knew they were there!
The boss battles were way too easy (besides the queen metroid) but I loved the game. My best friend Kevin just beat the game today as well and he absolutely loves it. We're both looongtime metroid fans.
