4/5 ★ – Protector_Of_Memes's review of Metroid: Zero Mission.

Metroid as a franchise was in its golden age during the Gamecube era. Metroid Prime became a fan favourite on par with Super Metroid despite initial skepticism, and Metroid Prime 2 Echoes was a massive hit as well. But it wasn't just the Gamecube getting some Metroid love, the Game Boy Advance got a couple of high quality titles as well. Fusion is what I consider to be the best 2D Metroid of them all, and is a game that I would highly recommend, though it's not the current subject. The other title in question is Metroid Zero Mission, a remake of the original Metroid released in 2004 to wide spread acclaim, just like any other Metroid game released around that time and in my opinion is one of the better remakes I've seen in the cavalcade of remakes on the GBA. So I'm blowing the wad early here, it still holds up pretty well, though I can assume you're not here for the cliffnotes version. The game's plot initially is no different from the original Metroid, as Samus is hired by the Galactic Federation to stop the Space Pirates from successfully cloning a dangerous specimen known as a Metroid, otherwise it would spell certain doom for galactic civilisation. Samus agrees to storm the Space Pirate base on Planet Zebes to stop this from happening and to rid the very planet she was raised on by the Chozo of the Space Pirates and hopefully stop their Metroid experiments from going out of control. She succeeds in doing so, even taking down a gargantuan Space Pirate known as Kraid, and the very space dragon who killed her parents, Ridley, who totally won't be coming back after this game. Venturing into the depths of the Tourian area, Samus eliminates all of the Metroids there, and defeats the brains of the operation Mother Brain, followed by an obligatory escape sequence triggered by a self destruct mechanism, with Samus leaving the planet, Mission Accomplished... Except not really. Not long after leaving the planet, she gets shot down by a Space Pirate fleet, crashing back on Zebes' surface. She survives, though with the loss of her ship and her Power Suit, left in her skintight Zero Suit and an Emergency Pistol she herself deems rather useless, leaving her in a fairly dire situation, with her only way off the planet being on the Space Pirate mothership. One stealth section later, she comes across the Ruins Test in Chozodia that she visited as a child, undergoing a trial to earn a new Power Suit, the design of which longtime fans are more familiar with, and proceeds to tear the Pirates a new one, destroying a robot made in Ridley's image, triggering another self destruct mechanism, and stealing one of their ships to escape, finally ending Zero Mission. Plot's minimalistic, but considering this is a remake of the original Metroid, which barely had a story to begin with, it's not really worth docking points from this game. Besides, the addition of some extra lore, like the Ruins Test room being a place Samus had visited as a child, even leaving an adorable little doodle of herself and her foster parents, is a nice touch. In terms of the game's looks, the graphics are amazing for the GBA. The sprites are incredibly well detailed with solid animation across the board, with the environments making extremely good use of every last pixel to create a visually stunning world. The game even has cutscenes, though they're more so animated stills than FMVs, which warrants the same praise I've given the rest of the game's visual presentation. But in terms of the music, it's not too strong for me. There's plenty of remixes of iconic themes like Brinstar, Ridley's boss theme, Kraid's Lair and all that, but even alongside any and all original compositions, the music didn't really stick out to me all that much, leaving Zero Mission with what I believe to have one of the weaker OSTs in the series. Gameplay wise, Zero Mission follows the typical Metroid formula of exploring a vast world, grabbing new upgrades to increase the amount of areas you can explore as well as generally improving your combat capabilities. In that regard, Zero Mission's not realy different from other titles like Super Metroid or Metroid Fusion. As a remake of the original Metroid, a lot of major upgrades retain their general locations, like how the Morph Ball is to the left of where you start the game, but it refines the world of Metroid 1 with generally better level design, as well as adding upgrades seen in later game like the Speed Booster, High Jump and Gravity Suit, with changes and additions to the level design to accommodate for these powers not seen in the original. In terms of control, Samus plays similarly to how she did in Fusion, though with a couple of changes. First of all, the Charge Beam no longer has its shotgun effect from Fusion where shooting an enemy point blank with it would do extra damage. Secondly, and this is much more important, Samus has regained some of her more complex maneuvers from Super Metroid, namely being able to wall jump off a single wall. I bring this up because while Zero Mission for casual players is both fairly easy and rather linear, since there are multiple Chozo statues that can both fully heal you and point you in the direction of the next upgrade required to progress, but if you know about certain shortcuts and techniques, you can easily indulge in so much sequence breaking. Unlike Super Metroid, said sequence breaking is very intentional in design, with the game even encouraging speed running by having certain ending artwork locked behind, say, fully completing the game in under two hours or doing a minimalist speed run on Hard Mode, which gives the game a high degree of replay ability if you're willing to invest time into learning the ins and outs of Samus' moveset, like Shinesparking or Wall jumping using a single wall. The game also does add a good few new bosses alongside redoing old ones. Kraid and Ridley are fought more or less the same way they were fought in Super Metroid, only far easier, in fact the Ridley fight in this game is the easiest in the series, being very easily defeated by spamming Missiles with reckless abandon. Mother Brain herself isn't too different asides from actually being able to defend herself by shooting a laser beam at you with her eye, but it's otherwise the same as the original. As for the new bosses, I don't think much of them either, but most of them do try to add more to their fights to prevent you from doing nothing but shoving Missiles down their throats, with two notable examples being the Ruins Test, with the window of opportunity to hit it when it's vulnerable becoming smaller and smaller with every hit, and Mecha Ridley, actually requiring decent aim to hit its weak spot, and being a massive damage sponge with hard hitting attacks should you have collected everything in the game. But after years of having played the game since my early days of emulation, a lot of the challenge from the bosses isn't there, though I have yet to tackle Hard Mode. In general, Zero Mission is actually one of the easiest Metroid games out there, which does contribute to it being a highly recommended starting point for newbies, though the only real challenges the game provides to veterans are Hard Mode, and by extension the speedrunning potential the game has. Outside of link cable compatibility with Fusion to unlock some extra art, the only other major bonus Zero Mission has is allowing you to play the original Metroid after beating the game once, which is a nice addition, though it makes getting the OG Metroid separately on the Wii U Eshop redundant. Overall, I'd say Zero Mission is definitely worth playing if you want to get into the series, and even for veterans, there's still plenty of replayability with the sequence breaking and speedrunning that can be done. Is it the best the 2D side of the series has to offer? Not to me, but it's damn close, and what I consider to be the best starting point for anyone looking to get into Metroid.