I don't think M1 or M2 are exceptional games. In many ways, I'd rather play SR than M2 even though I think M2 is the better game. (say what?) Also ZM is my second favorite 2D Metoid. So, you know, wrong again.

Fusion was just the precursor to Other M. It's plot was almost as bad, and explained things that were better left unknown because the direction Fusion goes with much of this stuff is so contrived. What's funny is that, after SR I don't even want to criticize Fusion because Fusion is sooo much better. It's more linear than SR and it's STILL better.

There's nothing I can say to argue against Fusion's atmosphere. Love the SA-X. Love the X-Parasite. Love the atmosphere. Love the sound design. Love the music. Love the boss fights. Love the power grip and climbing. Love moments like when the SA-X tries to take out the Metroids and gets overwhelmed because that's one of the best moments of silent story telling in the series. Fusion is my (now second) least favorite 2D metroid, but that doesn't mean I think there's nothing good about it or that it's shit. Just that it's story and linearity are, and that it would be a much better metroid game without them being the way they are.

Also, I was wrong. The manga came out after fusion, so my life and theory are a sham anyway. Sakamoto just had a bad idea, someone made a manga after it, and then he canonized that into Zero mission, which frankly is even more depressing.

I've literally read the interviews you're referring to. They're on Metroid Database. I don't think any the story stuff started as a new idea for Super. I just think that the advent of new tech naturally made more possible.

I'm not saying size wasn't an issue. I just don't think it stopped dialog from happening. There were a lot of big games in that day.

I definitely wasn't. My impression was always that people who find it tedious are fine with just ignoring it, but i honestly don't think it should exist at all. But I'll just be repeating point's I already brought up in my The Super in Metroid Prime 4 article. (Actually the article didn't go in depth on this particular issue - i just love plugging my own work)

AM2R does something that may be a compromise I'd be more fine with. Scan Logs that you don't actively scans. Since you can turn off the notifications, it's essentially just a wiki. I still think that the game should rest solely on it's "silent story telling" especially when there are so many untapped avenues for the franchise to explore in this regard, that is at least a compromise i'm not against. It's the stopping, pointing, waiting, reading loop that I hate, especially when it actively feels like you're missing out by not essentially doing busy work, an element that doesn't exist in the 3D games.

I also don't think the story in the prime games benefit from it. The ending of M2/SR, Super, and Fusion hit so hard because nothing needs to be explicitely told to you. There isn't a story beat in the trilogy, aside from maybe samus waving at the end of Prime 2, that comes close to hitting as hard, and that is still just a cutscene, wrather than something that is actively happening to the player/something that the player is stumbling upon.

Proving you wrong? Because I did that ages ago.

@speaming
You think wrong. There's zero arguments about free aiming being a devolution.

Shoutouts to Mr L. for making it

?

I think that's your problem right there. Your mindset is way too focused on trying to find objectivity or a fact-based approach, instead of acknowledging subjectivity. Why would you consider M2 better if you'd rather play SR?

I'd say 90% of what I've said is subjective. I'm not too focused on finding objectivity, unless you consider finding any objectivity at all to be too much. What I'm focused on is backing up my arguments with well thoughout reason, or more accurately, i play a game, get annoyed by 100 little things in the case of SR, notice how many of these issues relate to each other, and say "wow, i have an argument here." I don't need to acknowledge subjectivity, because how subjective something is is not relevant. We're all adults. We all understand subjectivity. I only use objectivity when it supports my subjective arguments.

M2 has less wrong with it, and what is wrong is less cataclysmic overall than what's wrong with SR. SR is designed to be a more easily playable experience. It benefits from 30 years of hindsight and stronger hardware. Metroid vs. themepark. I can complain that M2 is linear, which it is and i think it could have been tackled better in a remake that unfortunately isn't SR, but M2 doesn't, for example, artificially hinder the usefulness of the Spider Ball with unscalable walls. It does so sometimes with spikes, but those instances happen with such infrequency in that game that it feels like it actually belongs in the environment instead of in SR where it feels like the developers don't want the player to do something. SR has bigger areas, yet manages to feel more restrictive than M2 because it doesn't trust the player with the tools it gave them. SR is the demotion of the wall jump that happened in Fusion, but applied to literally every facet of the game other than the grapple beam. M2 may be linear, but at least it's linearity isn't obstructed. SR gives you HUGE areas and goes "You can't go here even though you have the ability that should let you because we want you to always do it our way. Nope! Heehee you can't use the spider ball there! Nope! The wall jump is literally funtionally useless in this game - muahahah! Wait... No, don't bomb jump! Uh... Shit! Fans! That's what we'll do! Those will suck up the bombs so you can't use them! What? We can't put those everywhere because even we see how stupid that would be? Gee... Let's hope nobody figures that out, then. Why would you want to break sequence, anyway? Do you not like our level design already? ;-("

It's the philosophy that Sakamoto is the driver, and he's going to make sure you know it. People complain about how easy the morph ball bomb is to execute, and I'm over here thanking the heavens that that ability hasn't been neutered to all hell yet, because it's how I got everywhere Sakamoto didn't want me to go in this game that wasn't blocked off by one of the 20 door variations in this game that make for the absolute worst case of backtracking and gated exploration in the entire series. I bomb jumped everywhere trying to get the most fun out of this game as i could because there is no other freedom in the entire game. Not even with the spider ball thanks to the previously mentioned yellow walls/spikes, of which there were more than in M2.

But on the other hand, Samus controls better in SR. SR looks better. I can turn my brain off and play SR. I don't think M2 is one of the best in the series, but I don't think that SR's highs out weight it's lows enough for me to consider it a better game than M2. M2's biggest crimes are that it's ugly, clunky, linear, and sometimes it doesn't sound as good as it should considering that the gameboy has the first two gens of pokemon sountracks and M1 had very melodic chip tunes. SR's biggest flaws are fucking (almost) everything and how they loop back into each other. Calling it baby's first metroid may be slightly inaccurate, but calling it metroid for people who hated almost everything great and nuanced about Super isn't. It's the quinticential safe-troid.

Don't worry. Even though the maps are big, you CAN'T get lost. Don't worry. No more backtracking even though it establishes a sense of place. Don't worry - every enemy dies in one flashy hit so you don't get bored with "down time." Don't worry. It still feels like you have the freedom to explore, right? Don't worry. Hey, did you see that metroid carcass? Wait, did you see those dead soldiers? Hold on, we don't want you to miss that totally not obvious thing in the middle of the room unobstructed by anything. Here is a cutscene of samus examining it because surely you wouldn't have just done it on your own because Metorid is just about jumping and shooting shit. Don't worry. Everyone likes puzzles, right? Of course you do! We said so! Here's a shit ton of not annoying little ones that totally won't make moving back and forth between areas an unecessary pain where pure platforming used to suffice. Don't worry. We got you. Just turn your brain off and play our game the way we want you too and no other way. You like Metroid, right?

But after playing Super and the games it inspired, it's very difficult to go back to playing a game that controls and looks like M2, or M1 for that matter. Not impossible, but I'm a man of simple needs. Even if I were to play it now, I'd at least use a hack to improve the aesthetics a bit. In many ways, but not in every way, I'd rather play a game with less hurdles to get through to enjoy, even if it's a problem riddles as Samus Returns.

Then again, AM2R exists. So again, someone please help me with my controller issue - I'm dying here trying to play (what I hope to be) an actual good metroid 2 remake.

I mean, that's fine. I don't think the controls are cumbersome at all, but I mean it's fine that you think that.

The boss fights are some of the best parts of SR, but they are absolutely possible with the older aiming. (some of the platforms would need to change for some of them that are over lava though) But look at fusion. Awesome fights in that game. Best in the series outside of Kraid in Super which is the actual best in the series. Didn't need free-aim at all.

Still trying to play AM2R, but still can't get my controller working.

I don't want to spill everything about my critique lol. Hate most of the music. Previous metroid games, including M2, had simple melodic music that was extremely deliberate. In SR's search for bombast and fanfare, it loses that simplicity and deliberateness in favor of a very busy soundtrack. Busy as in that most tracks have too many different sounds going on at once, making it sound messy. This is an issue that plagues reorchestrations, but what's funny here is that because of how sparse M2's soundtrack is, half of it isn't used and is replaced by a shit ton of original, really crappy (for the most part) music. It also reuses a lot of tracks from Super, which I really hate. AM2R does this too, as well as Prime. It takes what used to feel like area specific themes and turns them into generic "volcano/jungle/water" themes. Not even Zero Mission did this, and literally takes place on the same planet as Super.

Don't mind the graphics, but prefer the 2D art style. Much better than Other M though, so I'll pick my battles there. It's definitely not something I'd criticize the game for. What I don't think i like are how the environments relate to each other because it doesn't feel like a world to me at all. just a bunch or pretty rooms with themes that connect them together. That's actually something I know for a fact AM2R excels at, and something the previous games did well. I'll need to play again to be sure though because something tells me the fact that you zoom past each area in such a curated way has made this cohesiveness less obvious than it actually is.

I don't know what arts are. Aeion you mean? Hate half of them. Don't mind the other half. The map one completely eliminates all sense of discovery. Giving the player the X-Ray scope at the beginning instead would have solved the (bomb every crevice) issue without revealing the whole map. Everything else could have been map stations, which reward exploration with map chunks.

The UI is fine. Is it fine?

...

Yeah, I think it's fine. I don't like how tapping the screen to ball up feels, but I like that the option exists because it's much better than simply pressing down twice. In the future though, I'd want it to be its own button.