4.5/5 ★ – souldew's review of Metroid Dread.

Metroid dread Immersive atmosphere immediately engages you into this hostile plant. With a solid pacing that drip feeds you new ability. Allowing progression but also include something nearby that shows mastery of there usage usual with a reward. These unlocks can be used to go to new areas with there own specific stylings or allow you to challenge a new boss. The areas range from underground cave, dense forest, ancient temple, lava cover cavern. Each with its own styling and atmosphere. My least favorite and favorite map be ironically the same map that being the water map. One upgrade makes a slow sluggish section feel extremely satisfying. Bosses on the other hand come in 3 differing variety that being that being larger bosses with multiple stages, mini bosses usually guarding something needed for progression and the new E.M.M.I. Which are a wonderful addition shifting the gameplay from shooting everything in sight to skillfully avoid these one shorting machines. The parry mechanic giving you two last hard to execute but fair outs. This dread of seeing an E.M.M.I. Is wonderful cause the stress of rushing though a zone trying to escape only to Bairly get through the door was totally worth it for the extremely excitement of being safe for now. The process of going from hunted to hunter is also very satisfying with each E.M.M.I. Getting harder and harder to beat. They have a slight learning curve on the controls but once you get it is an extremely satisfying feel to dashing around the map with extremely flowing movement, they start off with limited options allowing you to slowly get used to all the new movement over time decreasing the difficult of learning how to master the movement. The difficulty felt hard but fair. It feels like it’s in a near perfect sweet-spot. The only issue is the over emphasis on parrying in non boss fights making it the best way to clear everything. Even some boss fights used parry’s a lot these felt more like a reward though. Making some boss come down to a Mario three hits and it’s dead sort of feel. This is balance around invincibility phases and attacks that force you to showcase movement for a long time getting some bits of damage in while waiting for one parry to get big damage. The bosses emphasize pattern recognition so they get easier the more you fight them. Making each fight feel you are getting closer and closer till you finally finish them off. The cutscenes are beautiful for a switch game. Whether they are showing off an area for the first time or introducing a boss they flow seamlessly back into gameplay. Never taking you out of the action for long and hyping up each encounter that much more. All with skippable cutscene for those people who just want to get to the action. Overall One of my favorite games of the year if you like metriodvania style games pick this up you won’t be disappointed.