5/5 ★ – Chunderclap's review of AM2R - Return of Samus.

Good: For a fan remake, AM2R feels incredibly cohesive as a sequel to Zero Mission. Although I never played the original metroid 2, or the first for that matter, AM2R feels like an intuitive continuation of Zero Mission. Visually, the game looks really good. It looks significantly more vibrant and beautiful of a world than Super Metroid so far. Mechanically, the game is super intuitive and varied, with the game balancing the explorative mechanics in this game vs zero mission, making for a game that feels like a step up in complexity, while maintaining the high level of control and feel that Zero Mission had. To that end, the controls for both explorative gameplay and gunplay feel super crisp and snappy, while being smooth and natural. As a result, the platforming feels natural and satisfying without being frustrating or difficult. While the gunplay is every bit as fun as Zero Mission’s, the bosses felt like a huge improvement. With a good mix of easier, more simple bosses (such as most of the metroids) and more complex and difficult bosses (such as queen metroid and the non-metroid bosses), the cast of boss battles felt like it actually neared the quality of exploration in the game. The exploration was wildly engaging, with the map’s interconnectivity put on full display with the exclusion of long elevator separated zones such as Super and ZM, and the discovery of secrets feeling really rewarding to unlock, without detracting from the primary goals of exploration. The balance of backtracking vs “fast travel” with the distribution center was struck very well, with the need for backtracking gradually lessening as you neared the end of the game. In addition to the distribution center, all of the zones that appear to have been added from Metroid 2 felt super natural and engaging, and the inclusion of logbooks, primarily in the Thoth, was an awesome way to weave a narrative into a metroidvania, even if the majority of those discoveries happened in a single area. The progression of ability gated exploration was really well paced and super engaging, and felt very beginner friendly which I think would make it a great entry into the metroid series, even if zero mission makes more sense from a story perspective. Bad: Very little to say here, I thought it improved on everything that Zero Mission struggled with, while maintaining all the highs of ZM, and remaining every bit as intuitive. Overall (10/10): An incredible, perfectly crafted metroidvania, that serves as an incredibly cohesive and expressive fan remake that follows the style of ZM while improving on its shortcomings.