Finished the game this morning and I'll be the outlier and say I'm disappointed. It's certainly not a bad game, but aside from the outstanding controls and animation, it really doesn't feel as though it has moved with the times as Metroidvanias have become increasingly popular. This is the most refined 2D Metroid, but that's really all it is. In some respects, it's arguably lesser, specifically in how it actively discourages exploration until the very end of the game. When playing through the story, the game guides you very well: I was rarely lost, and on the few occasions I was, it wasn't for very long. However, when attempting to go off-piste, the map design often forces you to take really long, circuitous routes (even with all power-ups unlocked) when it would have been incredibly easy to include a shortcut or even keep a door open. Ori and the Will Of The Wisps has a smaller map and is less subtle in guiding you, but is beautifully designed to encourage and reward exploration, with plenty of opportunities to open up new routes and make navigation swifter, which Dread very much lacks. Ori is also far more atmospheric and has a much stronger sense of place: ZDR, by contrast, felt like generic-Metroid-locale-101. Dread really feels like it lacks depth for me. Power-ups are the bog-standard expansions and the story is really all there is to do. Could there maybe have been a system to upgrade some of your weapons manually, or secret upgrades a la Prime? Could the story have tried a more non-linear structure in parts? Could there have been some sidequests, whether for material rewards or to discover more about ZDR and its relation to the Chozo? The game has plenty to recommend it, but the updates it has undergone since Fusion feel minimal and, yes, the price is an issue when other Metroidvanias offer more for a significantly smaller outlay. Metroid doesn't have to turn into something it isn't, but does need to keep growing. Dread is fine, and perhaps a sideways step is what was needed after the series' almost two-decade break, but feels chronically unambitious.
On a separate note, I loved almost all the bosses and it was immensely rewarding to train until being good enough to take them on while barely taking damage, but it really annoyed me that there were unspoken conditions that had to be fulfilled in the last two in order to stop the fight going on ad infinitum. For Experiment Z-57, you have to blow up its legs when they attach themselves to the walls, or else it heals and you have to start all over again. I ignored his legs as they weren't doing anything and fought him for fifteen minutes before finding out what had to be done online. The game never hints that this is an essential action to take, nor is there any reason why it should be. The final boss also has a bit of this, in that if you don't continue attacking immediately after a counter, the battle will also go on forever. I usually only shoot once post-counter, which wasn't enough, so the game wouldn't progress through to the boss' second phase. Again, while most people probably will attack non-stop, I had to search online for what I was doing wrong. In both battles, there are sections where these conditions make damage effectively irrelevant, in that you can't beat either boss through wailing on him alone, which shouldn't be the case.
