How would you rank the metroid games from greatest to least? (Including AM2R)
It’s really hard for me to rank the metroid games because I played most of them many years ago, with the exception of Super Metroid, Zero Mission, and AM2R. Even among those it’s really hard to rate one above the others.
Super Metroid clearly has the highest absolute depth and most interesting speedruns as a result. There’s a lot of subtle stuff that goes on in it that no other metroid game has. It also has the most interesting world structure and powerups. However Super Metroid is really slow and really easy. Kraid in particular is disappointing. Phantoon stands out however.
Zero Mission is much faster and has a nice structure to its world, is also much harder, but has less going on with its game engine, and is kind of tethered to the powerups that fit Metroid 1. It has great bosses and pretty alright enemies.
AM2R is on-par with Zero Mission in most ways, except it has the speed booster and redesigned controls that make use of modern controller limits, doing a number of things with the controls that no previous metroid game has done. It has the most challenging and best designed enemies in the series as well as some of the best bosses, if not outright the best bosses. Many of the enemies and bosses make very clear use of the different beam and missile modes very intelligently, requiring you to switch at the proper times.
I kind of want to put the original Metroid above Super Metroid, because it’s a harder game with better enemies and bosses in most ways, but that also doesn’t feel totally right.
Worst Metroid is definitely Other M. No contest, easy choice.
The 3d Metroids I also have trouble comparing. I think Metroid Prime 3 is the worst because of its more disconnected and linear guided structure. I didn’t play enough of Metroid Prime 2 to judge it. Metroid Prime 1 I played so long ago that I do not have very clear memories of what the non-speedrun experience is like.
Celia Alexis Wagar's CritPoints 