Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown
Is it too early to call this a classic?
I feel like Metroid Dread cemented itself as one of the best games in the series pretty much from the moment it came out. Not gonna lie, making a follow-up to a 19-year-old beloved classic made by a different studio sounds like a truly thankless job, but somehow MercurySteam pulled it off masterfully, and people were very thankful (well, maybe not so much their employees, but let's not get into that now...). There were so many ways in which this could've gone wrong, or felt forced, which so often happens when fans of a series get to work on said series, but Dread never wastes time on self-indulgence. This is Metroid 5 and, apart from the massive technological gap between it and its predecessors, feels exactly like what a Metroid 5 developed by the same team in the 2000s would've been like. Everything just feels so right.
And like with every other mainline Metroid game, this also feels so unique. That's something I really adore about this series, all the games have their own unique vibe. This could've so easily turned out like a "Super Metroid spiritual sequel" in its tone, because that's the vibe people associate with the franchise the most, but instead it takes you in a completely different direction aesthetically, with the Chozo tech-heavy planet of ZDR not being "Chozo planet" enough to feel like Zebes and not tech-heavy enough to feel like the BSL Station. No, ZDR feels like its own place entirely, and the vibe when around the EMMI robots is genuinely so... cold. Really, the whole game feels cold. And let's not even get into the boss battles cause oh boy did this game get those right. The final battle fucking blew my mind.
Okay I'm just rambling. tl;dr: I love this game.
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