I stopped for the night at the first save station in Area 2. Here are my thoughts so far.

- I like the mapping Aeion ability. A lot. It was so frustrating in the older games having to shoot/bomb every wall/wait for power bombs/use the fucking x-ray scanner (Super Metroid) to find hidden stuff. Now it's just a swift press of the A button, and you get the power within like the first ten minutes of the game.

- I don't like the new Ice Beam. (Is that even really a spoiler?) Mostly because it can't kill enemies, though it does hurt Metroids. But missiles are WAY better at killing those, anyway. Also, it doesn't freeze things very long at all. I think you get 5 seconds, tops.

- I don't like how they gimped Spider Ball in this version. In order to make it less useful/force you to do something the developer intended way (this in particular really irritates me), they put this weird slippery stuff on walls here and there, which the Spider Ball can't grip. (This stuff also prevents you from wall jumping.) And for those who played AM2R, Spider falls through the auto-breaking blocks in this game.

- I don't like how you either have to sit in one place to aim (with L), or be running (for diagonal aiming). Not being able to stutter-step while aiming up really sucks. Especially since 80% of the enemies so far fly.

- I'm ambivalent toward the melee counter. I thought it was pretty fun at first, but it quickly becomes your only viable way to kill things (especially if you don't want to take unnecessary hits). It makes combat early on REALLY repetitive and formulaic. (See enemy > wait for counter prompt > counter > hit Y once to kill enemy.)

- I like Metroid fights so far, but I hope they start varying the arenas and attacks soon. The first five you kill are all the same (granted, they are all Alphas as well). AM2R and of course the original also had this problem, but one's a fan game and the other is 20 years old and released on the fucking Game Boy. I should hope Nintendo can be more creative given the current hardware.

But overall it is a faithful remake of Metroid 2 (so far), and looks very good. Aside from the aiming controls I mentioned above, everything is really tight. There's even an instant-morph button, though unfortunately you can only use it by tapping the map on the lower screen. It would have been nice to put it on Select, since that button does the same thing as Start.
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Alkaloid: It's just water in a cup.

Metroid officially returns on Friday and there's no topic.

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