Metroid Series Catch-All

I'm not sure how far in I am:

Spoiler:

Just picked up the Varia Suit and Bombs and fought Kraid yesterday -- not in that order (I think the bombs were last...). Was the first chance I'd had for a couple days to really put any time in and was able to spend a solid two hours on it.

On the one hand, it feels so expansive that I don't know how or if it would ever become mapped in my mind to the same extent Super Metroid did. Hard to say whether that's a good or bad thing -- mostly just a preference thing I suppose.

Not a fan of the near-insta-kill of being caught by an Emmi. I don't think I've successfully countered one since the "tutorial" Emmi encounter prompts you to learn how to do it. I've certainly had MORE than enough opportunities to do so -- I just can't get the timing down right. However, despite disliking what is effectively an insta-death mechanic for me, it isn't crushing my enjoyment of the game for two reasons:

1) As the EMMI's get tougher to handle, I'm also getting more tools and tactics at my disposal as well as growing more experienced in putting my skills to use.
2) I've certainly already died and had to continue at least as many times just to EMMI's at this point as I did in the entirety of my first "blind" playthrough of Super Metroid back in 1994. That should be incredibly frustrating, but the continue reload is so quick and it starts you so close to where you got nailed (pun fully intended) that it significantly reduces the sting of dying and trying again.

And the challenge is real overall and is tuned a bit more aggressively than I'd prefer.

Spoiler:

Hell, I had to continue around ten times to beat Kraid, maybe even more. I honestly don't recall. It felt like a lot. And it's not even as if Big Ugly had any real "gotcha" tricks that took more than seeing once to understand what I needed to do to handle it. It's just that the game really demands precision and is very unforgiving in how many hits you can take before you're toast.

Heck, even the freaking lava is deadlier than I would have expected!

Where the game is particularly succeeding so far with me is that it's recapturing much of the exploration magic of Super Metroid. Sometimes the railroading in Dread is more blatant than it was in Super, but both games are very clever about funneling you into certain paths in a way that makes you feel like you -- the player -- made this clever discovery and got some goodies that maybe you weren't supposed to yet. It has not yet made me feel like the designers were "dumbing down" the game for me, nor has it made me feel very often as though I'm merely following a flashing series of arrows signposting the way forward with the game not trusting me enough to let me meander (I'm looking at you, Fusion).

In fact, there's been a few times where I went meandering intentionally to try to scoop up some extra missiles (there is a serious paucity of energy tanks here, folks...) and inadvertently found myself ending up where I was "supposed" to go next. I love that. Yes, there's a linear critical path, but the experience of playing Dread so far is very much in the same semi-linear fashion as Super.

Overall, at what I suspect is roughly around a halfway-ish point of the game, I am absolutely delighted with how the experience has been.

I don't think you're quite halfway yet I've cleared another 2 bosses beyond this and still feel like I have plenty of game to play.

Farscry wrote:

And the challenge is real overall and is tuned a bit more aggressively than I'd prefer.

Heck, even the freaking lava is deadlier than I would have expected!

Yeah the bosses are tough until they're easy. And there's a loading tip that reminds you every boss attack is avoidable. You just have to figure out how.

It is surprising how harsh the heat, ice, and lava are though. In other games you could sometimes pop into heat long enough to grab an item. Or even in Super, getting to Ridley early through the lava. But no such shortcuts in this game. Get the gravity suit or stay out.

Well sh*t. Kraid kicking my ass on hard. About 7fm attempts now. That video is lies. Or they recorded a best case scenario.

He never did the counter move for me up top, even after I dodged his non counter swing, just like the video.

Also I've got like 45 missiles so I'm using them even more than the video but it's still taking me longer on the bottom phase.

I really think they're using a turbo button controller for the beam fire. I can't shoot that fast, not even close. So I have to focus more on destroying projectiles than boss damage.

And despite 3 energy tanks just a couple of mistakes kill me. WTF.

Damn 15 tries later he's down. I still only saw the counter attack 3 times in about 20 runs. One time I mistook it for the non counter one and jumped instead of counter. The other time, like 3 runs later, I mistimed it. Then finally like 4 runs after that I hit it and that finished him.

Good grief.

I dunno, I can get it firing pretty rapid myself. However, I very much struggled in ways the dude in the video didn't. I think my issue was being too imprecise with the missile aim when trying to shoot projectiles.

At the final boss and not sure I have the patience…

More progress on hard run late last night.

Spoiler:

Speed boost kill on first Chozo soldier was awesome!

Heading to that underwater boss next. Hopefully I can pull off the counter that's in that video. Never saw that the first time through.

trueheart78 wrote:

At the final boss and not sure I have the patience…

There's a few spoilered posts with strategies from me and CC(I think) the last page or two.

And that hard mode video. But you can use more missiles than it does in phase 2 and 3.

Stele wrote:
trueheart78 wrote:

At the final boss and not sure I have the patience…

There's a few spoilered posts with strategies from me and CC(I think) the last page or two.

And that hard mode video. But you can use more missiles than it does in phase 2 and 3.

Yup. A quick link back to my post which also included a time-stamped link to my stream where I fought him, and then your own response below. And I think the no-damage hard mode video after that.

Hopefully that should help some.

Stele wrote:

More progress on hard run late last night.

Heading to that underwater boss next. Hopefully I can pull off the counter that's in that video. Never saw that the first time through.

And yes, one-shot that boss. Just phase 1, 2, 1, 2 and killed it. Super easy. Got hit only once.

Then two more mini-bosses, I would say, since you don't get powers from them, in

Spoiler:

Ghavoran
and Elun

. Screwed up the first one, but on the retry,

Spoiler:

I used a speed boost when I entered the room and was able to still attack with it after spawn, haha. That's not in the video but definitely the best opener to the Gold Chozo Soldier fight.

Beat the second one in one shot as well, but did get hit twice, ouch. A third hit would have killed me.

Back to

Spoiler:

Ghavoran

for another EMMI and mini-boss if I recall. Need to save and check my time soon. Feels like I'm over halfway through? I've grabbed any full energy tanks and missile+ that were nearby, including a couple speed puzzles that I did much later in 100% run. For the smaller missiles I just grab them if I pass through the room, no heading off path. Up to 6 tanks and 100+ missiles already, so that feels decent. If my time is on track for under 4, this is probably enough to win already. But another couple tanks might give me a spare hit on bosses.

Finished up Sunday, 13 hours 46 minutes.

What is different in hard mode?

From what I can gather, you take quite a bit more damage but that's it. Most enemies have taken the same number of shots or missiles from my experience. When I looked online there were some sites claiming enemies had more health, but I've not experienced any of that myself so I think it was all just assumptions.

Blind_Evil wrote:

What is different in hard mode?

Everything I’ve read has just said you take more damage.

Just to close the book for me:

Spoiler:

I ended up not being up for banging my head against the last boss and YouTube’d it. I wasn’t having fun so I decided to move on.

IMAGE(https://emojipedia-us.s3.amazonaws.com/source/skype/289/sparkling-heart_1f496.png)

Accidently sequence broke twice on my speed run. I'm supposed to leave Ghavoran after getting

Spoiler:

pulse radar

But there's a missile right there. Did a quick ball speed boost and got it. Then I saved and did another speed boost to the roof and I was at that boss...

Spoiler:

Golzuna that drops Cross Bombs!

It was partially harder than I remember without the next missile upgrade power or space jump. But I used speed boost attacks and did substantial damage a couple times.

After that I quickly saved. Then I saw the path I was supposed to take but remembered a missile right above a nearby teleport. And on the first try I got in there. But then that room you can only escape with screw attack, so I had to teleport. I think I could have kept going after that because one side was grapple door. But I fell down the other side, got another missile and energy part. And then I was stuck without space jump. So I think I could have went back to the teleport room and went the other way. But really I didn't want to explore when trying to go fast. And I didn't want to save and really screw myself. So I restored save from before the teleport and skipped the second part of that sequence break. Maybe fun some other time.

Edit: basically did the first 2 minutes of this video then didn't try the shinespark without space jump. But apparently I was on track to early gravity suit. Maybe I should have kept going.

On the last boss myself. Only tried a couple of times, need to get a good run of attempts at it later tonight. The

Spoiler:

power bomb

is absolutely devastating, I love effect of it in any given room, bits of the environment actually react to it. Nice touch.

Beat the game in a weekend of too much play. Tough but fair with great power fantasy build up near the end. "Okay, here's more toys have fun".

I don't plan to replay, so 50 USD at Walmart followed by a 38.50 trade in to GameStop gives an insanely nice cost per hour of enjoyment.

That's me finished. The final boss was a pain in the ass. Initially the very hard until I mastered the

Spoiler:

first two stages. In the first stage I countered easily & stayed in close to Raven Beak when the beam attack comes around covering most of the screen, except the immediate space beside him. I flash shift away from his 2-3 combo melee attack & his charge attack becomes very easy to counter.

Spoiler:

The second phase when he's birdman was initially very tough but through repeated efforts became very comfortable, only getting caught the odd time, usually by mistiming a space jump as I was going up & over him to dodge the machine gun fire. The other attacks were easy once you knew what was coming. There was waiting the until the last second to evade the thick power beam attack, sliding under for the low attacks, the drop down attack was so telegraphed that you could get out of the way every time unless you're being very aggressive with firing missiles & you leave it too late to get one more shot in.

The nightmare part that I was frustrated on was

Spoiler:

on the third phase. The sun orb goes to the top of the screen to shoot out those energy attacks, while Raven Beak himself goes crazy with the huge power beam blasts, or charges across the screen at you with melee attacks. It's the trying to dodge these attacks in tandem, it's extremely difficult. I ended up looking at a YouTube video after getting to that third phase what must have been about 6 or 7 times. I wanted to see if I was missing something obvious.

I'd recommend anyone look at this tip for the last phase, even if Stele & cceserano have already said this it's worth mentioning again

Spoiler:

use the power bomb when Raven Beak releases the sun orb to destroy it & get health/missiles from it

this makes a very frustrating last phase much more doable.

I finished at just under 12 hours, only got 43% of the items which being extra missiles (I had 111 already) or extra energy tanks, didn't really interest me.

I'd put this down as a very good game, really polished, enjoyable traversal with the fundamentals of running/jumping feeling very tight, loads of abilities to flesh out Samus, inventive boss battles for the most part & rock solid story. The combat like the platforming felt very precise & controlled very well. Oh yeah the EMMI's were good upto a point. Good art style, nice graphics & ran very smooth start to finish.

I do think the guided nature of the game took away massively from natural exploration, areas getting closed off behind you making it obvious where the game wanted you to go next. I know you can break out of that but still it felt the game wanted you to go a certain path forward most of the time. The soundtrack was a bit on the forgettable side too.

I hated the many different icons for blocks that you were always wondering if you had the right ability to get through them. The EMMI's were mostly all copy & paste, they move well & there are some great chases but once you've done the first couple you've seen pretty much everything bar one or two wrinkles in the later encounters. Someone mentioned before but there's little tension as when you die you respawn right outside the door.

Lastly like I mentioned before in terms of abilities it played it fairly safe, I'm not sure if they can really break out of that mould without it upsetting fans, losing that Metroid feel or whatever but it all felt overly familiar. I like getting to new areas in unique ways & all too often I was shooting a different type of energy/weapon at a door to open it or using one of the many different abilities to break through blocks.

Still even with all that said I'm excited to see what ideas Mercury Steam can cook up for its next installment. It's a great foundation to go forward with & they've shown they can put out a 2D Metroid with a high amount of polish & good depth to it.

Picked this up a couple days ago and I'm enjoying it so far. I don't much mind the restrictions on where I can go, but if it doesn't open up a bit as I progress further I might change my tune.

I'm up to the yellow EMMI. They don't quite work for me. They've caught me so many times that they've long since ceased to be scary; now they're just a section of the map where I randomly have to start that bit over. I think they'd work better if I had a bit more agency in avoiding them, and maybe also if getting caught had a bit more consequence to it. I thought the stealth field would add a bit of fun tension, but there are precious few places where the damn thing won't just patrol right into you anyway so I've kind of stopped bothering with it. I just pick my path and see if I get lucky this time.

I started playing a few days ago, mostly so I would know what it was like when my wife is talking about the game. I had 2 counters in a row on the green EMMI, which were the only ones I've gotten so far. Felt good. Probably a major fluke.

My hard mode run got through gravity suit and the mini boss right after that last night. I finally stopped after a save and checked my time. 3:22 already. Yikes.

From the hard boss video I only have about 8 more minutes of bosses. But not sure I can run from place to place and finish in under 30. Think I got too many items. Up to 130 missiles and 8 energy tanks. Oops.

Guess I'll try to rush for the end tonight but afraid this is a partly wasted run.

Vargen wrote:

Picked this up a couple days ago and I'm enjoying it so far. I don't much mind the restrictions on where I can go, but if it doesn't open up a bit as I progress further I might change my tune.

I'm up to the yellow EMMI. They don't quite work for me. They've caught me so many times that they've long since ceased to be scary; now they're just a section of the map where I randomly have to start that bit over. I think they'd work better if I had a bit more agency in avoiding them, and maybe also if getting caught had a bit more consequence to it. I thought the stealth field would add a bit of fun tension, but there are precious few places where the damn thing won't just patrol right into you anyway so I've kind of stopped bothering with it. I just pick my path and see if I get lucky this time.

Always be sure to check your map, both to have a sense of where to go, and to also know where to hide. The stealth can help, but you need to be careful where you use it. There are some spider-cling spots where the EMMI will climb to the top and therefore collide with you. In the long run, at that early in the stage, it's better to just try to run through and find the areas to slide under than it is to walk around with the camo on.

It's tough but, the more I play, the easier I actually find some of these sections. The light-blue EMMI was by far the worst, but even on a second go-around with them it wasn't that bad.

I'm continuing my Hard Mode playthrough, which I've decided is now a 100% attempt run as well, and am surprised it's not as brutal as I expected.

Watching Oatsngoats speedrun this, it's pretty crazy.

I watch all the tactics, and I think I wanna just have some fun in the game. Then I see the last boss and I'm just like, their hands are tired at that point.

ccesarano wrote:

There are some spider-cling spots where the EMMI will climb to the top and therefore collide with you.

This implies the existence of cling spots where it won't. If they do exist, I haven't found it worth my time to find them. I pick a route and sprint. If it doesn't work, shrug and try again. That leads to far fewer fail-restarts than trying to find actual working hiding spots.

Every once in a while I'll enter an area that I've mapped out decently well and can tell where EMMI is headed and actually avoid it. That's pretty cool. It just takes too long to get to that point. Maybe if the red blip would show up on the minimap's border instead of just showing up when it's already close enough to hear you.

You can press L on the control pad when standing still to make the minimap bigger. I'm not sure it expands the area it shows though.

Stele wrote:

My hard mode run got through gravity suit and the mini boss right after that last night. I finally stopped after a save and checked my time. 3:22 already. Yikes.

Had a good stretch at lunch but alas, I'm at the final save room at 4:10 and 41% items. Dammit. 170 missiles. Guess I overdid it.

I was hoping to just barely make it on hard mode and then do one more fun run on normal under 4 to finish all the endings. Not sure I have 2 more runs in me right now.

Vargen wrote:

This implies the existence of cling spots where it won't. If they do exist, I haven't found it worth my time to find them. I pick a route and sprint. If it doesn't work, shrug and try again. That leads to far fewer fail-restarts than trying to find actual working hiding spots.

This is part of the problem, because if I recall there's one upgrade you're currently lacking:

Spoiler:

morphball

which opens up a bunch of hiding spots to sneak into and camo. When it comes to spider-cling, though, there are places where it won't climb around, but they have to be sort of dead-endy. Basically, you need to find dead ends you can jump up to, pull your body upwards, and then camo before they catch up, and it's really only something you can get with familiarity.

With yellow, though, I think the most sensible goal is just run. That one's fast enough that you're not going to have enough time to hide anyway, so just need to find the tight spaces to slide under and then head to the next destination.

I had just gotten that upgrade. There are a couple nooks where that combo works, but they're not frequent enough to really use reactively.

I think part of my problem is I'm much better at the moves that were in Super Metroid than I am at the newer stuff. Hitting the left trigger to slide is fine when I'm just doing a bit of traversal, but when there's a major threat bearing down on me I don't have the muscle memory to just do it on reflex. I've got a similar issue with the melee counter. When I'm actively hunting a bunch of missile and energy refills I can do it well enough to top myself off. In the middle of a boss fight? I figure out the attack patterns and weak spots way faster than I do the counter-attack timing and the boss goes down before I ever get one off. I'm probably going to have to YouTube all the cool counter-attack animations for everyone from Kraid onward.

On a different note, when a video game has an enemy who is presented as being roughly equivalent to my character in size and capability and who has a bunch of obvious, explicit attack moves, why is it still OK for them to deal massive damage just by incidentally touching me?

4:45 hard mode. Ugh. Why does it take 35 minutes for the final fight? I guess the scenes count as time even if you skip them? No way the fight and escape took that long.

I did finally die on phase 3 of last boss. 3 times in fact. Really hits hard if you mess up. Didn't take as many overall attempts as my original run. But a lot more than my 100% normal fight.