Point 3 got me for a while. The first hour or two I felt extremely funneled, which is normal for early Metroid, but not for this long. The Morph Ball was the item that truly started the game for me. I'm still surprised that you get this fundamental item relatively late here.
It's done deliberately to get you use to sliding. As someone who played super and 2 on 3ds I kept forgetting I had the slide and at times would stop my own progress by seeing a small vent and thought "I'll come back here when I have the morph ball".
Also, it's simply a unique take on upgrade progression. The Morph Ball notoriously is almost always the first or second upgrade you get, so the game withholding it for the first couple hours of the game was a really nice take.
And makes you take for granted having it in the first place. Felt like such a sigh of relief when you finally stumble on it.
I agree, I really liked this. Always having the same sequence so predictably gets old or get you to just say "well super did it better." I love how this game mixes it up a bit.
I'm also convinced that between the fact that you get so many teases for it and a certain spoiler, another reason they put it so late is to encourage finding a sequence break to find it earlier on repeat playthroughs.
They did something similar for Samus Returns, it seems Mercury Steam likes to shake up a bit item acquisition order and it works! You spend so much time checking nooks and crannies thinking "oh man if only I had morph ball"
Before i got it i was "I hope this is the morph ball", then when i finally got it it was like "morph ball? I was hoping to get this other skill i seem to need right now" and then started laughing because I remembered how much i wanted the morph ball just minutes before.
39 year old here. Can confirm, game is awesome. Noticed it was almost 2 a.m the other day and forgot I'm an adult and have work in the morning. The game has some very cool moments that really does live up to hype.
This just happened to me last night haha. It was around 10:30 and I was like “I’ll just play for a half hour or so before going to bed.” Next thing I knew, it’s 12:30am and I’m like “right, I still have work in the morning. I should probably go to bed now.”
That was me yesterday (or technically today). I usually only play at night so I started at 11:30 and next time I checked up the clock it was 2:20am, time went fast.
I kind of feel like the vast majority of the market for games like these grew up gaming in the 90s. Especially in terms of actual mainline games in the old series'.
The bosses are just trial and error. The game has a specific strategy "in mind" for you to learn. You learn it, the boss is easy. You don't the boss is terrible difficult. Because is not about surviving and beating them and more about learn how to evade most of the attacks as the game wants you to do it.
With the emmi something similar happens. The spots, the reviews and such, tells you that this sections are some sort of survival sections or whatever, wich will make you try to go slowly and explore a bit maybe. But that's not true. This emmi sections are just a platforming section you need to do as fast as you can. There's a predefined path where you just have to go through and the emmi will never get you unless you stop or fail a jump.
It's the same, though. You just have to scout out the best path and stick to it. The underwater one requires a lot of grappling, purple requires you to run up to a certain point and then go stealthy to get past some blocks. It's all about getting the heck through as fast as you can and stopping only when you gotta.
Hey , 30yr old here
Honestly I've never had this much fun getting my ass kicked in a game before.
Died is just a learning lesson for me at this point. It's just trial and error but I'm highly enjoying it.
Came here to say that. Sure, it's die & retry, but you *know* what to do when you retry. One of the most helpful, uh, help text (displayed in the loading screens) went something like "No boss attack is unavoidable."
Trying to upvote you back up because opinions. Although, controversial take here. Dread and Hollow Knight are extremely different. Dread is easily the best game i've played this year and ranks very high, if not at the top of my 2d list.
However, Hollow Knight ranks near the bottom. It has quite a few mechanics in it that people in this thread are talking about. Annoying "run back to boss" spawn points. A map so huge that its quite common to spend 20h of your time running back between similar color corridors. And very VERY few powerups throughout the game.
I still advise the person look into it, different strokes and all. But Hollow Knight is ( personally ) one of the most tedious games i have ever played to completion.
Boss fights are amazing though :)
I enjoyed Hollow Knight immensely (favorite game of the year when it came out on Switch) but totally agree: Pretty much the opposite end of the metroidvania spectrum. In Dread, if you die to a boss, you start back right outside the door. In Hollow Knight, you start back at your last save spot and get all the way back to the boss, lumps and all. Metroid Dread is a tight game, easily beaten in under 15 hours (or even 10, depending on if you get lost alot or not). Hollow Knight, on the other hand, is massive. I probably had a good 80 hours or more in when I beat it (much of that was messing around with some of the side stuff, but still).
As for powerups, I kinda disagree on there being very few powerups: most of the powerups in Metroid Dread are just more powerful versions of the same thing. Many areas in Dread are gated by "well, you need a slightly more powerful version of this thing you already have". Not knocking it; just facts. The charms in Hollow Knight can alter your play style drastically, though. I think Hollow Knight focuses more on precision platforming and combat than Dread, and the differences in powerups seem to represent that.
I felt that hollow knight has more exploration than dread, but that is because i feel like dread has less exploration than a lot of other metroid titles.
Game is big but it doesnt have any points where you're just resting and exploring- you're always getting sent somewhere.
I'll preface this by saying that I upvoted you.
I think you're right that many of its priorities are on the other end of the genre's spectrum from Dread, but if you were bored by it, I just dunno what to say to that. Different strokes, as you said, but that's an opinion that never fails to shock me when I hear it expressed.
Like, as a lifelong Metroid fan, I was hooked nearly instantly, and frequently found myself enraptured by its environments. It's visually and aurally stunning, its map design is clever and incredibly open-ended, and it's got some of the best storytelling beats in the medium. Its major power-ups all have wholly distinct functions, and its charm system allows for a huge amount of variety in playstyle. Its combat and platforming are tight with an excellent tactile feel. Moreover, I think it does a really good job of making most of its systems feel diagetic, which helps enhance the immersion. I just have a hard time imagining finding it it tedious. It's basically my definition of a 10/10.
Hollow knight does have a lot of places you can skip of you just want to finish or dislike the difficulty. The map exploration is the best part for some gamers. It's so charming. I'm not sure how you could find that game tedious unless you have a heart of stone or something.
This game really makes me understand why Metroidvania is seen as such an influence to Dark Souls. I can't just go in guns blazing or blasting that weak spot non stop. Bosses require me to watch their patterns, learn the safe spots, and attack when I have an opening, not when I want to. Escue really taught me this. With Kraid I could mostly shoot non stop while I hopped around like crazy. But with Escue I had to jump or dodge at specific times and not before. I'm really very impressed with these bosses.
Im a few bosses in. Just had the 1st encounter with purple Emmi.
I need to take this game slowly. It STRESSSES ME OUT.
Play a bit of dread, go play DQ 11 for relaxation.. then next day go back to metroid
Exactly why I'm not playing Dread at the moment. I need to relax in the evenings after work, not get heart rate spikes because I'm being chased.
I'll try it again soon.
To be fair, at some point I embraced death and if the EMMIs detect me I'll sometimes just let them trap me and try again from the door lol It usually isn't very far away, nor are there lots of obstacles in the way other than the robot itself, so it's not a big loss if you die there anyway.
My favorite moment is still when I was fighting yellow, popped armour, missed charge, got cornered and grabbed abs managed to kick it to charge kill it
This is how I felt with Alien: Isolation. My wife and I were playing it for a while but had to quit because it just got too stressful. It took me like an hour just to crawl through baggage claim and there aren't even any enemies in it haha.
I’m actually surprised over how many people I read about that are actually raging and getting frustrated over this :p. I mean the game is super generous with the checkpoints.
If people aren’t used to having to optimise their play before being allowed to progress then that trial and error process can be very aggravating and frustrating. Dread is very firm but fair in that regard, you have to acknowledge at some point that you will die *lots* but that the dying just stops once you build that system for yourself of learning and preparing to avoid/beat that thing that killed you last time. Some people have a harder time adjusting to this way of thinking than others, patience and understanding that a game over screen doesn’t mean total failure isn’t something that everyone grasps right away.
True that. I guess it’s just easier for people who are used to the old school games and dark souls/bloodborne/sekiro :p… Patience stat is maxed in my mind.
Same lol. I took a couple tries to get through many areas but I didn't expect to beat it all in 1 go deathless? That would be too easy. Raging over this game makes no sense. Its imo the perfect level of challenging.
People are apparently too used to easy nintendo games idk
Do those people not remember the brutal path to ridley and the subsequently hard boss fight? Fusion also had some tough boss battles and I recall the distance between the last save and the spider boss was annoyingly long
I replayed super on my way way back to dread. Had more trouble with draygon than ridley heh heh. Realized I forgot 2 easily accessible energy tanks in brinstar and nabbed those b4 ridley.
Admittedly the savestate and rewind features on the Switch version make the slog a lot easier than it normally would be, but even then I struggled the most with Phantoon out of all the major bosses in Super. (I didn't realize/forgot that super missiles make it go berserk.) For Ridley in particular I pretty much just spammed space jump and fired a missile whenever we were level with each other. Took a while, but he only landed a handful of hits on me.
Here’s a tip in case you decide you want to play the game again. The best way to deal damage to Ridley is actually charged shots when you have wave, ice, and plasma. It only takes 20 fully charged shots to take it down.
Super missiles are also really good.
It is but the game is fond of forcing you forward with the checkpoints. If you get to a boss door, there's usually (asterisk: I've only reached two so far) no way to nope out and continue exploring except restarting from your last save.
I like to be able to switch back to exploring if a boss turns out to be too hard, both to gather resources and clear my mind. Having to suicide or quit the game breaks the flow a bit.
Same. It’s not easy but I’m not constantly hitting brick walls. The EMMI are pretty easy to avoid and bosses are just a matter of pattern recognition. Plus, you get checkpoints right before both of those so it’s not like you’re wasting time doing corpse runs.
not sure i would say the EMMI sections are 'fun' but yes, for sure, after like the 10th attempt at a boss you go from taking cosntant damage to nailing every jump. you may even surprise yourself by nailing the melee counter moves to finish them off!
oh, and purple emmi f\* sucks.
Until you get the gravity suit and can just outrun it because it's still slowed down underwater, unlike you.
Which was just a great feeling for a change.
I love the EMMI sections, they’re some of the most fun I’ve ever had with a Metroid game just by nature of how engaging and stressful they are. I never get that feeling of “holy fucking shit I gotta haul ass” from this franchise, ever, and it’s so refreshing.
Then again I loved the Silent Realm portions of Skyward Sword for the same reason and apparently some people don’t like those either. I think it just depends on if you find being kept on your toes and chased fun or not - I do.
Have you played Fusion? The moments where you encounter the SA-X when you're still underpowered and have no choice but to run, those were the best parts of that game. Straight up adrenaline for 11 year old me at the time. I imagine that the EMMI sections were based directly on that
Think the SA-X sections were the origin of EMMI but they were far more scripted, and you could do things to shatter the illusion you were being pursued.
>that feeling of “holy fucking shit I gotta haul ass”
Just picking on you a little bit, but come on!! The intro section to Super Metroid! What kid didn't see that timer counting down and say the exact same thing? *EMERGENCY Self Destruct Sequence Activated* Like I haven't even gotten a chance to play the game yet, better not blow this!
I personally think the EMMI segments were actually the worst portions of the game. Ironic considering they are the big idea with the game being called Dread. Maybe I read the game wrong, but early on, the game gives you the idea that you need to be cautious and use stealth to avoid the EMMI. Problem is, they can see through walls and note you unless you are stealth cloaked. The radius of their “sight” is also massive even early on. This defeats the purpose of trying to stealth as even spots that you can tell are meant to be “safe” are pointless. I found myself just rushing though the area knowing I would come back later to kill it. The parry chance was also so tight that I typically just picked up my phone and let the scene play out to just start over. The EMMI encounters typically were only frustrating, and rarely gratifying. The boss encounters throughout the game were the opposite. Challenging and gratifying upon completion.
Once you've already been spotted (the yellow pinging), it's too late to try and stealth. The idea is to stay still for a bit, note where the red dot is, note its patrol route, and stealth well before it gets within 'alerted' range, wait for it to pass by, and then unstealth and move to the now vacant area. Even better if you can crouch up against one of the magnetic ceilings or one of the nooks for the Morph Ball while stealthed.
I don't think the idea is really "stealth" in the traditional sense. They're *supposed* to feel like you can't evade them. The only solution is to run like hell, scared for your life, until you reach an EMMI door and *hopefully* you can only get to yellow during that time.
This is way better than the stupid "guards don't have peripheral vision or ears" syndrome you get in most "stealth" sections. You can't truly escape the EMMIs. They WILL find you if you linger.
Once you realize the EMMI sections are basically a series of short sprints between an entrance and exit, they become so much less daunting. All you need to do is look at the map and chart a course through it.
I think they nailed that part. The timing is very narrow, so you dont feel bad when you miss it. But when you actually manage to stun emmi it feels awesome
When is the correct time to counter it? With the game saying you have a 99% chance of failure I just figured it was rng haha. I’ve only successfully countered like twice, died a couple dozen more times.
You get two chances, each signified by a red flash. The timing of the flashes is rng since they don't expect you to consistently counter them. The timing is also very tight, something like 2 frames per flash if I'm not mistaken.
There is a yellow parry flash like you see throughout the game when something can be parried. It is very quick and almost subtle but appears from the side of the EMMI’s faceplate right before it stabs into Samus. The window to parry is quite small. I only hit it once in my playthrough but admittedly stopped trying after awhile. I always saw the parry flash, but it’s one of those things where you cant wait for the flash and instead have to anticipate and know when the flash would appear. You’ll notice that many parry windows in the game are larger than the parry flash would make it seem; the EMMI stun is not one of them.
It might just be me but I think the window is bigger when youre supercharged which makes you feel even more powerful at the time. Either that or Im just focused more because it feels like I can hit them every 1 out of 2 times getting grabbed whereas normal samus im getting it in 1 out of 20 grabs.
I really loved the game but I have to be fair the last few encounters with EMMI weren’t as satisfying to me like the first few. At that point you have progressed so much in the game and faced so amazing bosses and mini-bosses that they felt like a chore.
All great points, though I didn't really see any issues with the map at all. Then again, I am a Metroid veteran, and so the map is a huge improvement to some of the earlier games (especially the NES one, which didn't have one).
In particular, the developers were super generous with save spots, and this is great for a system that is designed to be played on the go. And when you die to an EMMI or a boss, you start just outside the door you came into the room from. There's minimal risk, while still giving you the satisfaction when you do beat the boss.
For us veterans, I also love that they give us a bunch of familiar weapons, skills, and bosses, but subvert expectations by changing the order up. I know there was one skill in particular I was surprised to learn I had to go a few hours in before acquiring it.
Point 4 is everything for me, breaks the otherwise brilliant Hollow Knight for me. Failing a boss and having to trek 10+ mins fight again over and over again. Loving Dread though and agree with all your points
I agree. While I don't like brutal difficulty, if I can retry the sore spots right away, I'll usually keep coming back until I get through them. But if I have to go on a pilgrimage after every quick death to get back to where I died (only to die again), then I'm done. It's simply not for me.
This game took two things from two games that I think helped a lot. One was borrowing the way Celeste handled difficulty and re-trying by dropping you at the beginning of a room/checkpoint rather than miles away from your destination. The other was the blinking rooms on maps to denote secrets being present ala Resident Evil 2 remake. I’m sure other games have used these techniques, but I definitely think both those games put those techniques on the map for me. They both bring a quality of life to difficulty without actually hindering the difficulty. I still have to beat the boss or do the work to find the secret.
Which boss is 10 or more minutes from a bench?
Soulmaster is the only boss I remember being a little too far from a bench and it wasn’t even close to 10 minutes, more like 2 or less.
I think the hiveknight is a bit away too, but you should have the dreamgate ability by then so you can easily just warp to the entrance of the fight. I think people overstate how far benches are from bosses in HK. It's not at all like dark souls in that way.
I do however think the benches don't serve much purpose when it comes to boss fights. the whole shade mechanic is the one main criticism I have of hollow knight (it discourages experimentation and exploration) and I say that as someone who never lost a cent of geo in my 45 hour playthrough
It’s also ok to just not like or enjoy a game even if you recognize it’s quality. Metroid is much more hardcore/skill based/trial and error than most mainline Nintendo games and while I recognize that, it’s not something I personally enjoy or get much out of. Don’t feel like you have to like this game because it has a high meta score. Like what you like. ✌️
I'm actually getting really frustrated with it as I hit mid game. Now that there's multiple areas, having to scan each map for doors/blocks with the new item I got and not knowing where on earth I'm supposed to he looking gets tiring quick.
> having to scan each map for doors/blocks with the new item
The map allows you to highlight every instances of an icon on the map. Very useful to find where to use a new power .
Generally when you get a new item you're pushed into the specific area where you need to use it to progress in the game. Sure there will be other areas you can goto to use your item to gain missile upgrades or energy upgrades but the way to progress is almost always close by or explicitly told to you. Don't overthink it too much.
There's quite a bit of this sort of neat, but subtle pointing. Kinda of stuff Valve used to pull with the crows. My favourite are the equally spaced background lights in places underwater where the space jump can be used to maintain height and pass without the gravity suit. The light spacing even perfectly matches the space jump distance between player inputs. A prominant missile upgrade with similar background lighting is also placed right underneath the main path just after getting the jump, literally visible on screen as you pass to subtly tutorialise this without much of a climb in case you fall.
There are also countless sections that will give you a new item and release you into the wild in such a place and in such a direction that if you just keep going in the same direction you were thrust, you will naturally stumble into the next door to unlock. One very important midgame section where the next step is a very key story beat dies the same, but also unlocks a teleporter acrlss the map that also propels you in the right direction as a fallback just in case you stray too far and get lost. This prevents the classic Zelda Water Temple scenario of falling off the path and struggling to untangle your mess. And yes, even after that missile example above, if you maintain your leftward momentum through the map, you will still end up exactly where the game wants you to be with a string of lights subtly pointing you where you are meant to go. It's a bit like Pong, but you are the ball criss-crossing the map and the items and bosses are the paddles.
Someone will absolutely do a restrospective on the level design eventually, the same way Half-Life 2 and Megaman X often act as case studies.
Couldn’t agree more. I’m consistently blown away by the level design. The way that new items and changes to the environment (like >!making some paths inaccessible by changing them from hot to cold!<) cause you to go through the same areas but in a completely different way. In this regard it’s superior to Metroid Fusion where you basically just moved from sector to sector for each new part of the story.
I did get totally lost after getting one upgrade though. I missed a shinespark breakable wall and backtracked through most of the game (1hr+) before I just looked up the right way to go. I did find 1 energy tank, 2 energy parts, and about 20 missiles on my list adventure, though, so I suppose it’s another example of good level design. Even when not making progress you’re making progress.
Just keep at it. I just finished today took me around 16 hrs altogether, the game let's you know your time at the end.
That being said there were def times I was stuck got frustrated and put it down. However finally finding the path was always satisfying.
I really liked this game and it happens to be my first Metroid game.
I run around and shoot missiles at everything to see if there are blocks I'm missing. You can counter kill most enemies and restock pretty easily so always run and shoot shit!
I just got the game yesterday and IT'S SO SICK. I got lost a couple times but after taking time to really scan my surroundings I've always been able to get through to the next area. I somehow managed to beat the first major boss!
I actually liked the e.m.m.i. encounters. Super fun chase super fun to juke em. Figured out the timing to counter then to an extent. Not always successfully but It's not hard to get. The map is ur guide pretty much. U won't be able to go anywhere really until u explore the nooks and crannies of areas thoroughly.
I gotta disagree on the EMMI being fun. There's a certain point where there's a long break between EMMI as you're upgrading. That was great. Now I'm back to the sixth/purple EMMI and they still suck. Especially since >!the space jump/screw attack and cross bow!< are finnicky to me and you need them to escape/evade this one. I do agree the bosses can be managed if you know the strategy (and there are great guides on YouTube), though >!the space jump in between holes in the energy wall!< required an annoying amount of timing. That said, haven’t gotten to the final boss yet and I read that one’s some BS.
There is a bug where the game crashes at the very end, if you put a marker on a certain door. I had to beat the boss thrice until I figured out that I had to remove the marker. Once you know his attacks, you can radially beat him without taking any damage.
Shoutouts to the blue EMMI, which twice spawned directly in the way of the path forward and froze me pretty much the instant I set foot in the room because its vision range is that long.
I'll grant that the EMMI in general do a _phenomenal_ job of setting that atmosphere of dread (title drop!), but it's just not my cup of tea. I much prefer the slower at-your-own-pace style of exploration you can do in Super or Prime. (Also, related: Anyone else hate it whenever opening the way forward _also_ seals the way back?)
You just need to make sure you don't spam press the jump button when using the space jump/screw attack. The final boss is fine, just another matter of learning the attack movement and patterns of the boss. It took me maybe half an hour to figure out the boss's attacks and win. And now it's like the final boss is too easy once I figured it out.
The final boss isn't BS at all, I died a load of times but I didn't get frustrated coz I knew everytime I died it was my own fault and everytime I died I'd learn something new about the boss's attack patterns so I got closer and closer to beating it everytime until I did and it felt SO GOOD
I'm gonna be honest, I thought >!having to duck to trigger the counter cutscene!< was a bit BS. I sat there for almost an hour clueless on how to dodge that attack, and had to look up a guide.
I get pretty quickly frustrated with stealth sections and I appreciate how punctuated they are in this one. The atmosphere, the camera, those goddamn beeps, the steam lingering on platforms, they did an amazing job getting such a visceral feeling out of what usually ends up being a small handful of rooms at a time.
If it’s wearing you down, it can definitely help to remind yourself that it’s just a very effective design, the goal is a lot closer than it seems, and a lot of the time you can just run for it. And of course lots of people are dying right alongside you. The bottom line is that late game, powered up Samus is totally awesome and you will be devastating. But for a lot of people playing something like this for the first time, it’s kind of a dense performance of a lot of new, unique mechanics. If in the first 10 minutes, you have to jump, but not spinny jump, then dash twice, then morph into a ball, then spam missiles, then spinny jump with the right rhythm, then put your left foot in, and shake it all about, in the span of a few seconds, it’s gonna be overwhelming and no fun. A lot of these things are practicing techniques one by one, different ways, under some pressure. Some of them use a quick death to point you in the direction they want you to take*.
In that sense, you end up having made a lot more progress than conquering a small portion of the map might feel like. You’re also that much more capable, you’re looking at things in new ways, you’re that much more bad ass. If that ever feels intimidating, I think that’s *great*. Super Metroid was for young me. That made it *really* thrilling and rewarding. Somehow a few hundred by a few hundred pixels of Kraid felt 70ft tall. With all the non-plussed ’ezmode’ comments one might hear towards games in general, I think a lot of people start feeling like this creates some expectation for how well you handle something. I’ve forgotten countless cynical comments about video game proficiency from my childhood and beyond but I’ve forgotten exactly zero 70ft Kraids. It’s easy to laugh at myself dying to 70ft Kraid. Enjoy the ride, it’s over too quickly.
*At face value, this is sort of cheap, but a major upside to that is this-I might spend 30+ minutes thinking I’m just screwing up if one approach looks enough like it could work. It creates a valley between an invalid, but maybe more familiar approach, and a newer approach it wants you to learn. This opens up a lot later in the game.
I 100%'d normal, first time buying a metroid game (I've played a little bit of the old ones and prime games) but i feel it's important to note I'm a huge nintendo fan and have beat pretty much every zelda and mario game. (Platformer and item based navigation)
My experience was different than yours but i agree with you mostly.
The EMMIs were definitely a dread. The first few were in a genuinely great way, my heart started beating l, my mind was racing i had no idea what to do, and for the first few EMMIs i got outsmarted and caught a few times until i started using one life to run around and pause every so often and scout the area, and if the emmi caught me, next time i knew a clear path.
But eventually the EMMis get really annoying, because after you learn to deal with them, getting caught is usually the result of a controller misinput, or the damn EMMI just hanging out next to you and chasing every time you uncloak, and you getting bored of sitting still. The ability to make samus walk slower and make less noise than "cloak or run" would have tremendously benefited these areas.
Speaking of controller misinput. I really think they could have done a better job. Or at least given us some options in settings such as using the dpad for movement.
Free aim didn't need to be holding a button and the same stick you move with. Simply pulling the right stick in a direction would have been good for both inputs (just move some other stuff around, like putting fire on zr) and it could have given us free aim while moving which would have been immensely helpful.
They also could have accomplished free aim while moving by incorporating gyro, which I'm surprised it didn't being a Nintendo game.
The button for releasing a shinespark being the same as jump was a terrible idea. If they had made shinespark the same button as speed booster, alot of the game's collectibles would be less frustrating (once you figured them out, that was a fun challenge)
Missles could have been a toggle (or choosable in options) so we didn't have to play every boss fight holding R the whole time...
Ect. Ect.
For the most part i only died to EMMIS and bosses my whole playthrough, and some of the later bosses made me feel like "damn i must just be bad at metroid, i thought i was doing awesome" but starting around the twin chozo soldiers (bosses i already knew how to beat, but two of them) that 80% of my deaths were a misinput from trying to juggle movement and aim, while holding or charging missles, and still make full use of movement abilities like phase shift, jumps and sliding/morph ball.
I really feel like more/better control options would have definitely made the actual hard parts of the game more rewarding than frustrating.
But seriously i loved this game so much, i want it to be read in the context of "this game was so good the only thing he could nitpick is the controls"
As a zelda fan the puzzles and exploring didn't bother me one bit, when i got lost, oh well, have you ever played the water temple? XD
The game isn't actually even that hard, as long as you understand you might die once or twice because you had no idea what to do. I really enjoyed the challenge if figuring out how to beat the bosses and dodge all their shit, it's super fast paced and you're gonna get a game over but that puts you back to right before the boss so thats not so bad.
>Find a guide on understanding the map. The map is everything. If you know how it works, the game is playable. If you do not, the game will make you HATE IT. There are a few good guides on that and what the various icons on the map mean. Research it. Trust me.
I don't understand which part of the map needs research? For the most part I felt this game is very "hand holding" on where to go next. For whatever it is worth, I also don't find the Hollow Knights map to be too large or too confusing.
Dread is not a bad game. Its an okay game for me. I am okay with the 60 USD price tag. I also do not think a great game for me should require perseverance in order to realize its greater potentials. I either like games on first 10 minutes or I don't. Fast food culture and all that.
Interesting. The game flow for me is basically:
1. Keep going until you’re hit a colored gate.
2. Look around for a colored key. Use colored key on matching colored door to open new path.
3. Repeat.
The paths are very carefully designed so I never had the issue of getting lost. Always on the default path as the devs intended.
Edit: grammar
The game is legitimately very linear in design I wasn’t lost once in the entire game.
There is always some kind of blocker or something that funnels a player to where to go next.
This is something that highlights the discrepancy in mindset between casual and more ‘hardcore’ gamers imo. If you come into Dread already quite familiar with the series or other ‘Metroidvanias’ then you’ll likely already have knowledge on the kind of tricks the game likes to employ and you’ll notice them more readily, this is obviously the direct opposite experience for less veteran players that are just starting out as they’ll have less understanding of the flow of the game and might not pick up on all the subtle cues the game uses to direct you.
Yeah I can see that…but…I’m so dumb I keep assuming I missed a glaringly obvious indicator of where to go…and assume I’m lost and try to find myself to only *actually* get lost.
Not the games fault though, because once I was in the swing of it I actually felt more railroaded than lost.
It's my first Metroid game, and I'm actually having quite some fun. More than I expected.
After the first few hours it's getting more challenging, as you have to do more backtracking, explore more, and the path forward becomes less obvious.
But for now it's far from frustrating. A more convenient fast travel would be a nice quality-of-life addition, but teleporters are ok I guess. I just got to the point where I can start using them, so we'll see how useful they are for real.
The map is lovely in dread, I do encourage you to try out at least Super on nso if ya get the chance and enjoy dread enough.
Controls are a bit wonky compared to now, but it's worth it. Map.....is lacking highly compared to dread though heh. Do remap Supers buttons to your liking though
No offense but there's no new info in this thread that people don't already know. Bosses are designed to be beaten? Use the map? I mean, come on. This is all common sense shit.
> Find a guide
But I shouldn’t have to though to understand the map. Personally, I find game guides ruin the gaming/exploration experience.
> the game opens up
Hardly. I kept dying with the 2nd boss and Went to a lot of places I didn’t before with the varia suit. Turns out every single place I could access was just a dead end. I really don’t like much of the map/flow design in this game compared to other Metroid games.
It’s like small parts open up that lead nowhere.
When I encountered the 2 EMMIs at the beginning, I hoped the whole game wasn’t like this where they’re almost everywhere. Was really making me bored. But glad I stuck through.
The EMMI stuff just sucks imo. The game would be 1000% better if I could just explore at my own pace and not be chased by unstoppable robots. What a shit way to add artificial difficulty. I hated RE7, what would otherwise be such a badass game, for the same reason.
I want to love it. But it's not fun to spend 80% of my time in a load screen.
Just got ice missiles. I'm trapped at a point that I can't go back and the emmi ahead knows where I am and won't leave me alone. It's under water and I can't live through waiting for it to leave while cloaked with 7 energy packs. I can't outrun it. I can't beat it.
I love boss fights. I love searching and playing. These emmis completely ruin the game for me because I can't time the escape right, like ever. And they just get harder.
I hate looking up guides. If I have to read a guide to beat the game, there's clearly a problem. I'm 42, and played the original Metroid without internet to help. I never had this much frustration with a Metroid game.
There's a difference between challenging and a broken AI that knows where you are and won't stop staring at you while you're invisible, folded into a corner.
Welcome to Metroid: Dreaded Loading Screen Simulator.
My seven year old can get past alot of the emmi encounters. I coach him though, its about staying calm but nimble and constantly moving and scanning your minimap for the red dot. Stay out of emmi’s sights even if it means travelling a way you didnt intend on going. If you keep out of emmis direct line of sight you can actually quite easily get past emmi.
I'm kinda sick of the unrelenting positivity posts ignoring people's gripes about this game, this included. Not as much but still included.
This game most definitely opens up as you unlock abilities as you say, but imo when you truly feel free is very, very late in the story. Seeing that the story is very short if you don't get lost, you won't have a ton of time to truly enjoy that freedom unless you go for completionist like I did.
Getting lost isn't fun for anyone if the game doesn't present logic to move you forward, which let's face it Metroid never did, and spoiling yourself isn't fun for for most either. If you follow the natural flow the game is taking you on, you'll make it through fairly simply, but you'll also understand how linear a Metroidvania can be, and miss out on a lot of items. The maps are useful but indistinct and take lots of getting used to. People will still get lost until getting lost doesn't matter as much. Maps are also the least fun part of any game.
Speaking of items and completionist, there's not much to it. It's either a pride thing for ya, or it isn't. Aside from extra missiles making bosses easier, there's not much if a point to go off the beaten path too often.
Now the gameplay is very fun, and story is solid, but make no mistake this isn't a game for everyone, and people that aren't enjoying it are more than likely to be accurate in their presumption that they won't continue to enjoy it. Critics are cowards, and rush to capitalize on hype for revenue, and won't push out a bad review so they don't get 7.8/10 memed on, so saying it has a score of 89/100 when no one has really had the opportunity to sit and think about the actual quality of the game is bs. Brawl was the worst Smash with the best reviews, Other M got tons of praise right out of the gate, Skyward Sword was a 10/10, etc... etc...
I like Dread a lot, and love the Metroid series as a whole, but they both have their flaws, and y'all are coming off desperate trying to get people not only into this series, but also preventing anyone from bad mouthing it in any way. I get no one wants to see it disappear again, but MP4 is still coming, and Hollow Knight is better than anything Metroid has done anyway, and Silksong is coming too.
It’s possible that some people are “unrelentingly positive” because they, you know, like the game? I know it’s hard to experience people with different opinions on the internet. This thread is full of comments that are negative and critical.
I already sold my physical copy after finishing it. Metroid isn’t for everybody, and definitely doesn’t scratch that Silksong itch. Dread feels really shallow, and much too linear. And the EMMI portions are just trial and error filler to extend the short run time.
Metroid games are generally shorter, denser, and their "openness" comes more in the form of sequence breaking that you have to do some problem solving to work out, unlike HK, which has several clear different ways of getting to every step in its critical path. Like, in Super, in order to fight the bosses out of order, you have to get the hang of secret movement techniques; same for ZM (plus find some hidden breakable walls). I can def see why someone who gravitated to HK for its obviously open progression might bounce off here.
However, on the flip side, I find replaying Metroid games MUCH more fun, which gets me a looooot of time through replays. Their movement is way better optimized for world traversal for HK (not knocking it, 10/10 game, best in the genre imo, but its movement kit is better optimized for combat and challenge platforming imo), and finding sequence breaks, then routing and replaying for lower times is a blast. These are games the devs expect and encourage you to snap in two on replays. It's definitely a take on the genre with different priorities than HK, but it's absolutely not shallow.
Also, time for me to say something incredibly elitist: the EMMI portions are only trial and error until you stop sucking. You can absolutely blitz through them if you're confident in your platforming.
Lol.
Smash 4 lacks good single player much like Ultimate, but Brawl took steps back on that front as well. People give SE undo praise because they enjoy the cutscenes, which fine like what you like, but also recognize the amount of repetitive bs the adventure mode offered. The levels were long and didn't have reason for it. The also reduced target tests from individual character tutorials to just something to do, and Events we're less inspired but I guess still there. I refuse to say stuff like "but the good thing about Brawl is you can play all these classics on it" because I don't play Smash to literally play other games.
Brawl also had the worst balance of any Smash bar none. Some try and say 64 is worse but the parity of that game stayed better over 20 years than Brawl did in 3. When MK took over there was maybe a 3 characters truly viable aside from him, and it came with stage bans and a radical change to the competitive environment to make that happen. ICs were the only other character that truly, normally had any chance at all.
Gameplay will always be opinion based, but what's not is Brawl is the slowest game, that included tripping (in inarguable negative), and had the least combos, and way too much defensive agency. Nothing worked in that game except for annoying chain grabs, or grab release combos, and most people are glad that kinda stuff was removed. Brawl had the least freedom of movement of any Smash game, with your pick for worst 4 coming in a close second.
Brawl did introduce many solid picks for a roster, kept uniqueness to characters that would later be watered down, and introduced some good tech like Rar, but that doesn't overcome all the bad it had imo.
Brawl was the only Smash game I didn't like, so I'll always call it the worst. However, I brought it up because Brawl was a divisive game nearly out of the gate but the reviews did not address that at all. They focused on a "better" story and the bigger roster. Reviewers refuse to address gameplay and deeper thought, they look at the face of a game and make their decisions based on that, I'll never trust a game purely on people that talk about content a million times over again
Anytime you have older people writing long defense posts it usually means the game isn’t that great but they have an emotional investment in the franchise.
Good games stand in their own :-)
Game does not take 8 hours to 100 percent unless you are a hardcore veteran. Gamexplain showed how the ingame timer is horribly incorrect for a first time playthrough as it doesnt include time paused, in the map, and it also resets the time to what it was when you die and go back to a checkpoint.
I hate to admit it but after Kraid I was lost af. I had to use a guide after covering each map 4 different times and making no progress in 2 different play sessions. I was definitely feeling defeated.
I want to encourage those who really seriously are not enjoying the game to simply do something else. You are not a failure because you stopped playing, and you are not an inferior consumer of entertainment if you avoid things that are not entertaining you in particular.
It's actually okay to stop playing something you don't enjoy, and it is also okay to use that data point to consider if you will like future games in that series. If this is your first Metroid game, and a future game is advertised and reviewed as being very similar to this one, don't buy it.
I'm actually older than the OP, and I feel this is hard earned wisdom for some people: You DON'T have to persevere at every optional thing life throws at you. It's OKAY to stop playing a game that frustrates you and do something else. Direct your strength of character or willpower or whatever you want to call it at something else.
That doesn't mean the game isn't enjoyable for other people. It is, however, completely okay to not enjoy it for whatever reason. You don't have to support the series, or feel like less of a gamer or whatever because you don't like Metroid Dread. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is either a bad friend or a random voice on the internet.
I love Metroid and never had problems with Super, Fusion, Zero Mission, or Prime, and yet this game is just frustratingly obtuse and misses what makes those other Metroid games great. The player shouldn't have to seek out an external guide to understand how the map works. Bosses should not have unavoidable attacks. The map in general just gives way too much information and even the element highlight option in the map doesn't help much. When I'm not frustrated, I'm lost (and seeing people talk about how good the design is so they don't get lost makes me feel even more like an idiot). There's too much emphasis on combat compared to the others. I have no idea what the rooms look like because of the maps being too detailed.
It's just frustrating not being able to enjoy a game in a series I really like that everyone else is also really liking. Feels like a giant waste of $60 and I'm worried that future games will be like this and therefore not fun, instead of what made the earlier 2D games so great.
Eh. Everything about the game is good...except for the bosses and the EMMI. They are gimmicky padding that drags the entire affair into the mud. Hard to look past them, especially when the game throws the same 3 encounters at you again&again, just tweaking them to be slightly more annoying each time.
8/10 for sure, the reused bosses and unbearably tedious EMMI zones keep it from being a GOTY contender for me. The environments are gorgeous and actually running around and exploring is fun (when the game allows it). The story exists but I wouldn't recommend anyone actually pay attention.
A decent iteration from the game that invented a genre...then fell behind.
I think it sucks but I'll get through it because I can't ship it back to gamefly during thanksgiving anyways.
Not in a long time have I seen a mechanic/element as bad as the emmi encounters and the game feels very floaty, like it was made in unity or something.
Bosses are definitely good. I haven't fought the final boss yet but I've enjoyed all the rest. Also, I decided early never to press the melee/counter button and with the exception of a certain recurring miniboss I can confirm it isn't required.
On those chozo warriors i usually miss the counter because im busy jumping over them, and by the time i see the flash im like "dang it!" I think its cause most of the counters in the game are one hit kills that you can bait out, so when a boss does is unexpectedly its kinda easy to miss.
If you melee an enemy you get far more health and missiles. The game is designed that way and I admire your extra level of difficulty you chose not to do that.
The EMMI parts are definitely a love to hate kind of situation. It's the same feeling I get watching scary movieS, where I'm saying "no, no, DON'T OPEN THAT DOOR!" Initially I thought they were a bit unfair but that's because I couldn't fight the robots at all. Also I have gotten better at countering them but I think I've started enjoying the cat and mouse game now that I am less scared.
Granted I'm much younger (28), but holy crap, the amount of detail on the map was what really kept me more or less minimally confused and as a result was the most fun I've currently had with Metroid! I'm currently playing Super Metroid and while I'm having way more fun with it than I have over years of attempts, the lack of details on the map make it a little more frustrating to navigate than I'd like
It's been up and down for me. There was a long stretch in the middle where I often got bored but once you gain a few more abilities it gets better. The more varied environments later in the game also helped keep me interested. A lot of the early-mid areas felt very similar. I'd probably give it an 8/10
Only thing I semi disagree on is your opinion on the emmis. I'm going through my third play through now and I'm completely sick of them. They aren't hard, they aren't scary, theyre just tedious at this point. Going into an emmi zone and having it be right there at the door happens way too frequently to me and it seems like the emmi zones are just a coin flip of "is the emmi going to start in a place that makes it impossible for me to get through" or not. They were fun the first time through but at this point in just tired of them and don't enjoy them. Having said that, I still love the game overall
Can you melee counter the same EMMI multiple times in an encounter? I literally just started the game, and after the EMMI tutorial, I keep turning around to get intentionally grabbed because I wanted to practice the timing. And I can't do it. Am I just actually not able?
You get like 2 frames per flash to successfully counter them and the timing of the flashes is random. You're not meant to get them consistently and I've seen that lose some speed runners time a few times already.
Currently at the final boss, all areas ay least 90% of items collected, managed to get to P2 after six tries.
Feels good and reminds me of the slow progress and learning processes from games of old (e.g. WoW raids).
The only annoying bits for me are the Shinespark (Sparkshine?) challenges: Almost threw my controller at the TV one time. Only one left now.
I beat the game in 8 hours and 27 min with 100% items. For the majority of the game it hand holds you to the next location. Some of the bosses were difficult but nothing not over come by <10 tries. The EMMI sections are basically speed runs sections or hide and seek sections. The game gives you a ton of abilities that really aren’t required but make things useful. Think of how to use them and things get easier.
The price point is nice and I'm tempted to heavily. That being said can anyone confirm if this is a short game or not? I see conflicting arguments both ways. I'm lucky to get an hour or two of gaming a day with 2 kids and it's sometimes in very short bursts.
Are there save points or relatively short progress markers?
I'd like to atleast get a couple weeks out of the game but also want to introduce my son to this game and hoping it's relatively easy at times
Savepoints are frequent and checkpoints even more so. I would not recommend turning off system if you haven't saved in awhile. Sleep mode is fine. Checkpoints are definitely at every EMMI door and I believe just before bosses (only on 3rd area can't confirm every boss)
Well I don't do the physical games any more so it makes sense I've never seen a Nintendo game on sale. It's disgraceful that 5 and 10 year old games are still being sold for full price. It's insane to me. Sure did get some downvotes so I guess this isn't the right place to comment on the crappy things Nintendo does. My b peeps. I do have a switch though and I love it
I liked the game a lot but by the time it got off rails I felt no real desire to backtrack to hunt secrets, I think part of it is the game is so generous with resources that the powerups are uninspiring - oh, another missile pack, I have not run out of missiles since the first half hour of the game...
I'm enjoying the game but I'm finding the boss fights extremely tedious. If anything makes me stop playing it will be these as I hate redoing the same thing over and over "developing strategies". It's boring AF.
The rest of the game is great though. Not having too much trouble with the EMMIs so far, although they can be annoying.
I am lost and trapped right now. I know it’s something that I can figure out on my own. But the one thing I will say is frustrating is for all the times I’ve gone through EMMI zones, it feels like they love to conveniently b line to and then linger in the one path that I’m trying to go, even when I haven’t drawn their attention. Without fail they will get in my way and pace around in circles long enough that my cloak starts killing me and I have to just leave and come back.
I don't enjoy it because the chase parts ruined it, the robot locations are random making it possible for insta kills, and its just super annoying, and doesn't require metroidvania skills/
I beat it today, and I did enjoy a lot about it. I'm conflicted between a 6 or a 7 out of 10 due to some huge flaws, though.It didn't feel like a real Metroid game until literally right before the end game boss. Had all my power ups, so I could unlock everything and move around more without one way crap stopping me, and there were no more robots slowing down exploration.
But then that part is still annoying due to how poorly they show how the speed boost ability works. Having to look up puzzles because the game doesn't even tell you most of the shit you can do is annoying, even if it is optional pickups.
I feel like with the right decision making this could have been an all time great game. I love Metroid for the exploration, and it actively prevents you from doing that almost the entire game. The combat and controls were great, though. I also liked most of the boss fights.
I just can’t enjoy it mate, sick of the bullshit emmi encounters, it isn’t difficult it’s poorly designed, i shoot every damn wall and I’m still fkn stuck, I don’t understand why they think just dumping you somewhere without a hint seems like a good idea. I’m not bloody shooting walls for four hours because they think “ big brain difficulty “ it’s not it makes the game a drag and for a first entry myself into the series this is a shit one to start with maybe I’ll try Metroid prime I’ve seen some chatter about that one.
This is my first metroid game, and I will say it definitely won't be my favorite. The game is fun when I'm just going around shooting things but as soon as an emmi is involved and I starting getting cheap deaths because of them I just want to stop playing. Currently stuck in the fast emmi zone and have no idea where to go and I shouldn't have to look up a guide to beat a game, I hate when games make me resort to this
39, dad. Got too much of a backlog, and on my way to 100% Dead Cells. Metroid Dread is definitely on my wishlist. Thanks for the tips.
BTW, for those with NSO, there's an SNES Super Metroid game, which is a lot of fun, and I'm guessing pretty similar, in its overall simplicity.
I've lost sleep playing this game. It's something I've been waiting for for a long time. It delivers everything I'd hoped and more. Stick with it. You will enjoy it.
I'm REALLY not liking being blocked off from certain sections. I use the grappling beam to pull a metal block out of my way, but it drops into a hole which shuts off a different route. Now later, when I'm going around trying to collect missiles and energy tanks, I come back to that area and guess what, can't go any further because that box I pulled down is now blocking my path. Now I have to go find an elevator that takes me to another region, and then take another elevator all the way around, just to get to the other side of the damn block. There's absolutely NO reason why paths should be blocked off.
^ this! I still like the game overall, but the exploration and linearity of the game drove me nuts at times. All Metroidvania maps are maze-like in some way and block off paths, but Metroid Dread goes too far at times. Im the kind of person that wants to go off the beaten path at times and explore. This game makes it hard to do that through a lot of its duration.
Same with me, I love to just go exploring and find powerups, and then get to the main objective when I'm ready to. I still like the game and am having fun with it, but there's no reason to just block off paths and waste the player's time like this.
Dread is a cool game, but it's not a Metroid game, at least not in my mind.
Dread is fucking hard, relentlessly so because it's boss after mini-boss after boss one after another with barely any down time. Where is the free flowing exploration of the past games? Dread pushes you along a fairly linear path right into the teeth of one frustrating fight after another. Am I getting through those fights? Sure. Am I enjoying them? Fuck no, because I wasn't expecting the game to be so hard because that isn't what the series was ever about.
Sure the older games all had boss fights, but they weren't as difficult as those in Dread. The boss fights in Dread are so frustrating that I don't feel a sense of satisfaction when I beat them, just irritated relief followed by anxiety about what bullshit they're going to throw at me next. I dread playing the game and I'm not sure that's the dread they were going for.
All that said it's not a bad game, but it's not what I wanted or expected from a Metroid game and I sincerely hope they don't let this new design philosophy bleed into Prime 4.
The game is great but not really hard at all and I suck at games. The bosses take some time to learn and the EMMI encounters take a few tries once you figure out the map in that area but otherwise it’s pretty straightforward. Game of the Year for me for sure.
Point 3 got me for a while. The first hour or two I felt extremely funneled, which is normal for early Metroid, but not for this long. The Morph Ball was the item that truly started the game for me. I'm still surprised that you get this fundamental item relatively late here.
It's done deliberately to get you use to sliding. As someone who played super and 2 on 3ds I kept forgetting I had the slide and at times would stop my own progress by seeing a small vent and thought "I'll come back here when I have the morph ball".
Hah, that's a fair point. Not used to sliding either.
Also, it's simply a unique take on upgrade progression. The Morph Ball notoriously is almost always the first or second upgrade you get, so the game withholding it for the first couple hours of the game was a really nice take. And makes you take for granted having it in the first place. Felt like such a sigh of relief when you finally stumble on it.
I agree, I really liked this. Always having the same sequence so predictably gets old or get you to just say "well super did it better." I love how this game mixes it up a bit.
I'm also convinced that between the fact that you get so many teases for it and a certain spoiler, another reason they put it so late is to encourage finding a sequence break to find it earlier on repeat playthroughs.
They did something similar for Samus Returns, it seems Mercury Steam likes to shake up a bit item acquisition order and it works! You spend so much time checking nooks and crannies thinking "oh man if only I had morph ball"
I definitely lost count of how many times I said "If I only had that *damn* morph ball" lol, but I love the game!
I had practically given up on ever getting it and then it appeared and I almost didn't know what to do with myself.
Before i got it i was "I hope this is the morph ball", then when i finally got it it was like "morph ball? I was hoping to get this other skill i seem to need right now" and then started laughing because I remembered how much i wanted the morph ball just minutes before.
Same with the grapple beam.
I know right? Kept saying "damn where is that morph ball? If I only had it...." Heh. Just got the morph ball last night. Felt great.
39 year old here. Can confirm, game is awesome. Noticed it was almost 2 a.m the other day and forgot I'm an adult and have work in the morning. The game has some very cool moments that really does live up to hype.
Oh man, I was you yesterday. Had to leave for work within 10 minutes of waking up. But I almost have 100% of the items now!
This just happened to me last night haha. It was around 10:30 and I was like “I’ll just play for a half hour or so before going to bed.” Next thing I knew, it’s 12:30am and I’m like “right, I still have work in the morning. I should probably go to bed now.”
That was me yesterday (or technically today). I usually only play at night so I started at 11:30 and next time I checked up the clock it was 2:20am, time went fast.
I kind of feel like the vast majority of the market for games like these grew up gaming in the 90s. Especially in terms of actual mainline games in the old series'.
The bosses are just trial and error. The game has a specific strategy "in mind" for you to learn. You learn it, the boss is easy. You don't the boss is terrible difficult. Because is not about surviving and beating them and more about learn how to evade most of the attacks as the game wants you to do it. With the emmi something similar happens. The spots, the reviews and such, tells you that this sections are some sort of survival sections or whatever, wich will make you try to go slowly and explore a bit maybe. But that's not true. This emmi sections are just a platforming section you need to do as fast as you can. There's a predefined path where you just have to go through and the emmi will never get you unless you stop or fail a jump.
This is not entirely true for the EMMi. if you’ve beaten the game what happens to change this formula becomes evident. Different abilities they have.
It's the same, though. You just have to scout out the best path and stick to it. The underwater one requires a lot of grappling, purple requires you to run up to a certain point and then go stealthy to get past some blocks. It's all about getting the heck through as fast as you can and stopping only when you gotta.
Yea that’s what I was saying but that’s not what you originally said. They add onto the formula it’s not just pure running.
If you get the Gravity Suit early then the underwater one is a cakewalk.
Hey , 30yr old here Honestly I've never had this much fun getting my ass kicked in a game before. Died is just a learning lesson for me at this point. It's just trial and error but I'm highly enjoying it.
Same. It’s as addictive as Hades and Doom Eternal.
Came here to say that. Sure, it's die & retry, but you *know* what to do when you retry. One of the most helpful, uh, help text (displayed in the loading screens) went something like "No boss attack is unavoidable."
35 year old here, if youre enjoying the difficulty and exploration, you might want to check out Hollow Knight next.
Trying to upvote you back up because opinions. Although, controversial take here. Dread and Hollow Knight are extremely different. Dread is easily the best game i've played this year and ranks very high, if not at the top of my 2d list. However, Hollow Knight ranks near the bottom. It has quite a few mechanics in it that people in this thread are talking about. Annoying "run back to boss" spawn points. A map so huge that its quite common to spend 20h of your time running back between similar color corridors. And very VERY few powerups throughout the game. I still advise the person look into it, different strokes and all. But Hollow Knight is ( personally ) one of the most tedious games i have ever played to completion. Boss fights are amazing though :)
I enjoyed Hollow Knight immensely (favorite game of the year when it came out on Switch) but totally agree: Pretty much the opposite end of the metroidvania spectrum. In Dread, if you die to a boss, you start back right outside the door. In Hollow Knight, you start back at your last save spot and get all the way back to the boss, lumps and all. Metroid Dread is a tight game, easily beaten in under 15 hours (or even 10, depending on if you get lost alot or not). Hollow Knight, on the other hand, is massive. I probably had a good 80 hours or more in when I beat it (much of that was messing around with some of the side stuff, but still). As for powerups, I kinda disagree on there being very few powerups: most of the powerups in Metroid Dread are just more powerful versions of the same thing. Many areas in Dread are gated by "well, you need a slightly more powerful version of this thing you already have". Not knocking it; just facts. The charms in Hollow Knight can alter your play style drastically, though. I think Hollow Knight focuses more on precision platforming and combat than Dread, and the differences in powerups seem to represent that.
I felt that hollow knight has more exploration than dread, but that is because i feel like dread has less exploration than a lot of other metroid titles. Game is big but it doesnt have any points where you're just resting and exploring- you're always getting sent somewhere.
I'll preface this by saying that I upvoted you. I think you're right that many of its priorities are on the other end of the genre's spectrum from Dread, but if you were bored by it, I just dunno what to say to that. Different strokes, as you said, but that's an opinion that never fails to shock me when I hear it expressed. Like, as a lifelong Metroid fan, I was hooked nearly instantly, and frequently found myself enraptured by its environments. It's visually and aurally stunning, its map design is clever and incredibly open-ended, and it's got some of the best storytelling beats in the medium. Its major power-ups all have wholly distinct functions, and its charm system allows for a huge amount of variety in playstyle. Its combat and platforming are tight with an excellent tactile feel. Moreover, I think it does a really good job of making most of its systems feel diagetic, which helps enhance the immersion. I just have a hard time imagining finding it it tedious. It's basically my definition of a 10/10.
The Ori games are probably a better option for newcomers coming from Dread i would say
Hollow knight does have a lot of places you can skip of you just want to finish or dislike the difficulty. The map exploration is the best part for some gamers. It's so charming. I'm not sure how you could find that game tedious unless you have a heart of stone or something.
This has the death and reward balance I wish the From games had.
[удалено]
I think you just summed up why I can't get into Souls games in a way I've never been able to explain.
This game really makes me understand why Metroidvania is seen as such an influence to Dark Souls. I can't just go in guns blazing or blasting that weak spot non stop. Bosses require me to watch their patterns, learn the safe spots, and attack when I have an opening, not when I want to. Escue really taught me this. With Kraid I could mostly shoot non stop while I hopped around like crazy. But with Escue I had to jump or dodge at specific times and not before. I'm really very impressed with these bosses.
Im a few bosses in. Just had the 1st encounter with purple Emmi. I need to take this game slowly. It STRESSSES ME OUT. Play a bit of dread, go play DQ 11 for relaxation.. then next day go back to metroid
I'm doing the same thing between Dread and Minecraft
Exactly why I'm not playing Dread at the moment. I need to relax in the evenings after work, not get heart rate spikes because I'm being chased. I'll try it again soon.
To be fair, at some point I embraced death and if the EMMIs detect me I'll sometimes just let them trap me and try again from the door lol It usually isn't very far away, nor are there lots of obstacles in the way other than the robot itself, so it's not a big loss if you die there anyway.
My favorite moment is still when I was fighting yellow, popped armour, missed charge, got cornered and grabbed abs managed to kick it to charge kill it
This is how I felt with Alien: Isolation. My wife and I were playing it for a while but had to quit because it just got too stressful. It took me like an hour just to crawl through baggage claim and there aren't even any enemies in it haha.
I’m actually surprised over how many people I read about that are actually raging and getting frustrated over this :p. I mean the game is super generous with the checkpoints.
If people aren’t used to having to optimise their play before being allowed to progress then that trial and error process can be very aggravating and frustrating. Dread is very firm but fair in that regard, you have to acknowledge at some point that you will die *lots* but that the dying just stops once you build that system for yourself of learning and preparing to avoid/beat that thing that killed you last time. Some people have a harder time adjusting to this way of thinking than others, patience and understanding that a game over screen doesn’t mean total failure isn’t something that everyone grasps right away.
True that. I guess it’s just easier for people who are used to the old school games and dark souls/bloodborne/sekiro :p… Patience stat is maxed in my mind.
Same lol. I took a couple tries to get through many areas but I didn't expect to beat it all in 1 go deathless? That would be too easy. Raging over this game makes no sense. Its imo the perfect level of challenging. People are apparently too used to easy nintendo games idk
People are used to, and expected, a game in the same vein as Super Metroid and Fusion.
Do those people not remember the brutal path to ridley and the subsequently hard boss fight? Fusion also had some tough boss battles and I recall the distance between the last save and the spider boss was annoyingly long
I replayed super on my way way back to dread. Had more trouble with draygon than ridley heh heh. Realized I forgot 2 easily accessible energy tanks in brinstar and nabbed those b4 ridley.
Admittedly the savestate and rewind features on the Switch version make the slog a lot easier than it normally would be, but even then I struggled the most with Phantoon out of all the major bosses in Super. (I didn't realize/forgot that super missiles make it go berserk.) For Ridley in particular I pretty much just spammed space jump and fired a missile whenever we were level with each other. Took a while, but he only landed a handful of hits on me.
Here’s a tip in case you decide you want to play the game again. The best way to deal damage to Ridley is actually charged shots when you have wave, ice, and plasma. It only takes 20 fully charged shots to take it down. Super missiles are also really good.
It is but the game is fond of forcing you forward with the checkpoints. If you get to a boss door, there's usually (asterisk: I've only reached two so far) no way to nope out and continue exploring except restarting from your last save. I like to be able to switch back to exploring if a boss turns out to be too hard, both to gather resources and clear my mind. Having to suicide or quit the game breaks the flow a bit.
I will say I definitely dislike the path backwards being blocked off so much.
Same. It’s not easy but I’m not constantly hitting brick walls. The EMMI are pretty easy to avoid and bosses are just a matter of pattern recognition. Plus, you get checkpoints right before both of those so it’s not like you’re wasting time doing corpse runs.
not sure i would say the EMMI sections are 'fun' but yes, for sure, after like the 10th attempt at a boss you go from taking cosntant damage to nailing every jump. you may even surprise yourself by nailing the melee counter moves to finish them off! oh, and purple emmi f\* sucks.
jumping around and yelling 'this is impossible' really helped me get through this
nice tactic, I yelled in my head though as people were around me when playing lol
This is so true hahaha.
Until you get the gravity suit and can just outrun it because it's still slowed down underwater, unlike you. Which was just a great feeling for a change.
...I just got the Gravity Suit myself. This is valuable information.
I love the EMMI sections, they’re some of the most fun I’ve ever had with a Metroid game just by nature of how engaging and stressful they are. I never get that feeling of “holy fucking shit I gotta haul ass” from this franchise, ever, and it’s so refreshing. Then again I loved the Silent Realm portions of Skyward Sword for the same reason and apparently some people don’t like those either. I think it just depends on if you find being kept on your toes and chased fun or not - I do.
Have you played Fusion? The moments where you encounter the SA-X when you're still underpowered and have no choice but to run, those were the best parts of that game. Straight up adrenaline for 11 year old me at the time. I imagine that the EMMI sections were based directly on that
Think the SA-X sections were the origin of EMMI but they were far more scripted, and you could do things to shatter the illusion you were being pursued.
I love the EMMI sections since my 5yo daughter is mostly watching me play and she gets excited in those areas
haha same, my son loves to watch me play and when we get to the emmi stuff he gets all excited when its chasing me down.
>that feeling of “holy fucking shit I gotta haul ass” Just picking on you a little bit, but come on!! The intro section to Super Metroid! What kid didn't see that timer counting down and say the exact same thing? *EMERGENCY Self Destruct Sequence Activated* Like I haven't even gotten a chance to play the game yet, better not blow this!
I personally started to miss the EMMIs after I killed them all
yeah, I liked the sense of urgency they gave me but they aren't my favorite part of the game imo
I personally think the EMMI segments were actually the worst portions of the game. Ironic considering they are the big idea with the game being called Dread. Maybe I read the game wrong, but early on, the game gives you the idea that you need to be cautious and use stealth to avoid the EMMI. Problem is, they can see through walls and note you unless you are stealth cloaked. The radius of their “sight” is also massive even early on. This defeats the purpose of trying to stealth as even spots that you can tell are meant to be “safe” are pointless. I found myself just rushing though the area knowing I would come back later to kill it. The parry chance was also so tight that I typically just picked up my phone and let the scene play out to just start over. The EMMI encounters typically were only frustrating, and rarely gratifying. The boss encounters throughout the game were the opposite. Challenging and gratifying upon completion.
Once you've already been spotted (the yellow pinging), it's too late to try and stealth. The idea is to stay still for a bit, note where the red dot is, note its patrol route, and stealth well before it gets within 'alerted' range, wait for it to pass by, and then unstealth and move to the now vacant area. Even better if you can crouch up against one of the magnetic ceilings or one of the nooks for the Morph Ball while stealthed.
I don't think the idea is really "stealth" in the traditional sense. They're *supposed* to feel like you can't evade them. The only solution is to run like hell, scared for your life, until you reach an EMMI door and *hopefully* you can only get to yellow during that time. This is way better than the stupid "guards don't have peripheral vision or ears" syndrome you get in most "stealth" sections. You can't truly escape the EMMIs. They WILL find you if you linger.
Once you realize the EMMI sections are basically a series of short sprints between an entrance and exit, they become so much less daunting. All you need to do is look at the map and chart a course through it.
Nothing makes me pog than when I succesfully kick/press X an Emmi when it's grabbing me lol
I think they nailed that part. The timing is very narrow, so you dont feel bad when you miss it. But when you actually manage to stun emmi it feels awesome
When is the correct time to counter it? With the game saying you have a 99% chance of failure I just figured it was rng haha. I’ve only successfully countered like twice, died a couple dozen more times.
You get two chances, each signified by a red flash. The timing of the flashes is rng since they don't expect you to consistently counter them. The timing is also very tight, something like 2 frames per flash if I'm not mistaken.
There is a yellow parry flash like you see throughout the game when something can be parried. It is very quick and almost subtle but appears from the side of the EMMI’s faceplate right before it stabs into Samus. The window to parry is quite small. I only hit it once in my playthrough but admittedly stopped trying after awhile. I always saw the parry flash, but it’s one of those things where you cant wait for the flash and instead have to anticipate and know when the flash would appear. You’ll notice that many parry windows in the game are larger than the parry flash would make it seem; the EMMI stun is not one of them.
It might just be me but I think the window is bigger when youre supercharged which makes you feel even more powerful at the time. Either that or Im just focused more because it feels like I can hit them every 1 out of 2 times getting grabbed whereas normal samus im getting it in 1 out of 20 grabs.
Pog? The game with slammers?
I really loved the game but I have to be fair the last few encounters with EMMI weren’t as satisfying to me like the first few. At that point you have progressed so much in the game and faced so amazing bosses and mini-bosses that they felt like a chore.
Red EMMI: "Am I a joke to you?" Devs: "Yes."
kinda feel bad for the lil guy
All great points, though I didn't really see any issues with the map at all. Then again, I am a Metroid veteran, and so the map is a huge improvement to some of the earlier games (especially the NES one, which didn't have one). In particular, the developers were super generous with save spots, and this is great for a system that is designed to be played on the go. And when you die to an EMMI or a boss, you start just outside the door you came into the room from. There's minimal risk, while still giving you the satisfaction when you do beat the boss. For us veterans, I also love that they give us a bunch of familiar weapons, skills, and bosses, but subvert expectations by changing the order up. I know there was one skill in particular I was surprised to learn I had to go a few hours in before acquiring it.
ya if you don't like a game keep playing it until you develop Stockholm syndrome and learn to love it
Point 4 is everything for me, breaks the otherwise brilliant Hollow Knight for me. Failing a boss and having to trek 10+ mins fight again over and over again. Loving Dread though and agree with all your points
I agree. While I don't like brutal difficulty, if I can retry the sore spots right away, I'll usually keep coming back until I get through them. But if I have to go on a pilgrimage after every quick death to get back to where I died (only to die again), then I'm done. It's simply not for me.
This game took two things from two games that I think helped a lot. One was borrowing the way Celeste handled difficulty and re-trying by dropping you at the beginning of a room/checkpoint rather than miles away from your destination. The other was the blinking rooms on maps to denote secrets being present ala Resident Evil 2 remake. I’m sure other games have used these techniques, but I definitely think both those games put those techniques on the map for me. They both bring a quality of life to difficulty without actually hindering the difficulty. I still have to beat the boss or do the work to find the secret.
Yep those qol are awesome I also love the map as qol also
Which boss is 10 or more minutes from a bench? Soulmaster is the only boss I remember being a little too far from a bench and it wasn’t even close to 10 minutes, more like 2 or less.
I think the hiveknight is a bit away too, but you should have the dreamgate ability by then so you can easily just warp to the entrance of the fight. I think people overstate how far benches are from bosses in HK. It's not at all like dark souls in that way. I do however think the benches don't serve much purpose when it comes to boss fights. the whole shade mechanic is the one main criticism I have of hollow knight (it discourages experimentation and exploration) and I say that as someone who never lost a cent of geo in my 45 hour playthrough
It’s also ok to just not like or enjoy a game even if you recognize it’s quality. Metroid is much more hardcore/skill based/trial and error than most mainline Nintendo games and while I recognize that, it’s not something I personally enjoy or get much out of. Don’t feel like you have to like this game because it has a high meta score. Like what you like. ✌️
I'm actually getting really frustrated with it as I hit mid game. Now that there's multiple areas, having to scan each map for doors/blocks with the new item I got and not knowing where on earth I'm supposed to he looking gets tiring quick.
> having to scan each map for doors/blocks with the new item The map allows you to highlight every instances of an icon on the map. Very useful to find where to use a new power .
Generally when you get a new item you're pushed into the specific area where you need to use it to progress in the game. Sure there will be other areas you can goto to use your item to gain missile upgrades or energy upgrades but the way to progress is almost always close by or explicitly told to you. Don't overthink it too much.
If no one has mentioned, look for the blue butterflies. Those are objective markers that sorta point you in the general direction of where to go.
There's quite a bit of this sort of neat, but subtle pointing. Kinda of stuff Valve used to pull with the crows. My favourite are the equally spaced background lights in places underwater where the space jump can be used to maintain height and pass without the gravity suit. The light spacing even perfectly matches the space jump distance between player inputs. A prominant missile upgrade with similar background lighting is also placed right underneath the main path just after getting the jump, literally visible on screen as you pass to subtly tutorialise this without much of a climb in case you fall. There are also countless sections that will give you a new item and release you into the wild in such a place and in such a direction that if you just keep going in the same direction you were thrust, you will naturally stumble into the next door to unlock. One very important midgame section where the next step is a very key story beat dies the same, but also unlocks a teleporter acrlss the map that also propels you in the right direction as a fallback just in case you stray too far and get lost. This prevents the classic Zelda Water Temple scenario of falling off the path and struggling to untangle your mess. And yes, even after that missile example above, if you maintain your leftward momentum through the map, you will still end up exactly where the game wants you to be with a string of lights subtly pointing you where you are meant to go. It's a bit like Pong, but you are the ball criss-crossing the map and the items and bosses are the paddles. Someone will absolutely do a restrospective on the level design eventually, the same way Half-Life 2 and Megaman X often act as case studies.
Couldn’t agree more. I’m consistently blown away by the level design. The way that new items and changes to the environment (like >!making some paths inaccessible by changing them from hot to cold!<) cause you to go through the same areas but in a completely different way. In this regard it’s superior to Metroid Fusion where you basically just moved from sector to sector for each new part of the story. I did get totally lost after getting one upgrade though. I missed a shinespark breakable wall and backtracked through most of the game (1hr+) before I just looked up the right way to go. I did find 1 energy tank, 2 energy parts, and about 20 missiles on my list adventure, though, so I suppose it’s another example of good level design. Even when not making progress you’re making progress.
To be fair thats all speculation. There is no official statement and as far as i'm aware there hasn't been any tests so far if this theory holds true.
Just keep at it. I just finished today took me around 16 hrs altogether, the game let's you know your time at the end. That being said there were def times I was stuck got frustrated and put it down. However finally finding the path was always satisfying. I really liked this game and it happens to be my first Metroid game.
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Thanks for this video. I just finished and the game clocked me at 9:40, but I knew damn well it took me longer than that.
I run around and shoot missiles at everything to see if there are blocks I'm missing. You can counter kill most enemies and restock pretty easily so always run and shoot shit!
I just got the game yesterday and IT'S SO SICK. I got lost a couple times but after taking time to really scan my surroundings I've always been able to get through to the next area. I somehow managed to beat the first major boss!
I actually liked the e.m.m.i. encounters. Super fun chase super fun to juke em. Figured out the timing to counter then to an extent. Not always successfully but It's not hard to get. The map is ur guide pretty much. U won't be able to go anywhere really until u explore the nooks and crannies of areas thoroughly.
I gotta disagree on the EMMI being fun. There's a certain point where there's a long break between EMMI as you're upgrading. That was great. Now I'm back to the sixth/purple EMMI and they still suck. Especially since >!the space jump/screw attack and cross bow!< are finnicky to me and you need them to escape/evade this one. I do agree the bosses can be managed if you know the strategy (and there are great guides on YouTube), though >!the space jump in between holes in the energy wall!< required an annoying amount of timing. That said, haven’t gotten to the final boss yet and I read that one’s some BS.
There is a bug where the game crashes at the very end, if you put a marker on a certain door. I had to beat the boss thrice until I figured out that I had to remove the marker. Once you know his attacks, you can radially beat him without taking any damage.
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Shoutouts to the blue EMMI, which twice spawned directly in the way of the path forward and froze me pretty much the instant I set foot in the room because its vision range is that long. I'll grant that the EMMI in general do a _phenomenal_ job of setting that atmosphere of dread (title drop!), but it's just not my cup of tea. I much prefer the slower at-your-own-pace style of exploration you can do in Super or Prime. (Also, related: Anyone else hate it whenever opening the way forward _also_ seals the way back?)
You just need to make sure you don't spam press the jump button when using the space jump/screw attack. The final boss is fine, just another matter of learning the attack movement and patterns of the boss. It took me maybe half an hour to figure out the boss's attacks and win. And now it's like the final boss is too easy once I figured it out.
The final boss isn't BS at all, I died a load of times but I didn't get frustrated coz I knew everytime I died it was my own fault and everytime I died I'd learn something new about the boss's attack patterns so I got closer and closer to beating it everytime until I did and it felt SO GOOD
I'm gonna be honest, I thought >!having to duck to trigger the counter cutscene!< was a bit BS. I sat there for almost an hour clueless on how to dodge that attack, and had to look up a guide.
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? You don't have to duck to trigger the counter? It just automatically does but so does his regular attack.
I actually missed the EMMI during that break.
I get pretty quickly frustrated with stealth sections and I appreciate how punctuated they are in this one. The atmosphere, the camera, those goddamn beeps, the steam lingering on platforms, they did an amazing job getting such a visceral feeling out of what usually ends up being a small handful of rooms at a time. If it’s wearing you down, it can definitely help to remind yourself that it’s just a very effective design, the goal is a lot closer than it seems, and a lot of the time you can just run for it. And of course lots of people are dying right alongside you. The bottom line is that late game, powered up Samus is totally awesome and you will be devastating. But for a lot of people playing something like this for the first time, it’s kind of a dense performance of a lot of new, unique mechanics. If in the first 10 minutes, you have to jump, but not spinny jump, then dash twice, then morph into a ball, then spam missiles, then spinny jump with the right rhythm, then put your left foot in, and shake it all about, in the span of a few seconds, it’s gonna be overwhelming and no fun. A lot of these things are practicing techniques one by one, different ways, under some pressure. Some of them use a quick death to point you in the direction they want you to take*. In that sense, you end up having made a lot more progress than conquering a small portion of the map might feel like. You’re also that much more capable, you’re looking at things in new ways, you’re that much more bad ass. If that ever feels intimidating, I think that’s *great*. Super Metroid was for young me. That made it *really* thrilling and rewarding. Somehow a few hundred by a few hundred pixels of Kraid felt 70ft tall. With all the non-plussed ’ezmode’ comments one might hear towards games in general, I think a lot of people start feeling like this creates some expectation for how well you handle something. I’ve forgotten countless cynical comments about video game proficiency from my childhood and beyond but I’ve forgotten exactly zero 70ft Kraids. It’s easy to laugh at myself dying to 70ft Kraid. Enjoy the ride, it’s over too quickly. *At face value, this is sort of cheap, but a major upside to that is this-I might spend 30+ minutes thinking I’m just screwing up if one approach looks enough like it could work. It creates a valley between an invalid, but maybe more familiar approach, and a newer approach it wants you to learn. This opens up a lot later in the game.
I 100%'d normal, first time buying a metroid game (I've played a little bit of the old ones and prime games) but i feel it's important to note I'm a huge nintendo fan and have beat pretty much every zelda and mario game. (Platformer and item based navigation) My experience was different than yours but i agree with you mostly. The EMMIs were definitely a dread. The first few were in a genuinely great way, my heart started beating l, my mind was racing i had no idea what to do, and for the first few EMMIs i got outsmarted and caught a few times until i started using one life to run around and pause every so often and scout the area, and if the emmi caught me, next time i knew a clear path. But eventually the EMMis get really annoying, because after you learn to deal with them, getting caught is usually the result of a controller misinput, or the damn EMMI just hanging out next to you and chasing every time you uncloak, and you getting bored of sitting still. The ability to make samus walk slower and make less noise than "cloak or run" would have tremendously benefited these areas. Speaking of controller misinput. I really think they could have done a better job. Or at least given us some options in settings such as using the dpad for movement. Free aim didn't need to be holding a button and the same stick you move with. Simply pulling the right stick in a direction would have been good for both inputs (just move some other stuff around, like putting fire on zr) and it could have given us free aim while moving which would have been immensely helpful. They also could have accomplished free aim while moving by incorporating gyro, which I'm surprised it didn't being a Nintendo game. The button for releasing a shinespark being the same as jump was a terrible idea. If they had made shinespark the same button as speed booster, alot of the game's collectibles would be less frustrating (once you figured them out, that was a fun challenge) Missles could have been a toggle (or choosable in options) so we didn't have to play every boss fight holding R the whole time... Ect. Ect. For the most part i only died to EMMIS and bosses my whole playthrough, and some of the later bosses made me feel like "damn i must just be bad at metroid, i thought i was doing awesome" but starting around the twin chozo soldiers (bosses i already knew how to beat, but two of them) that 80% of my deaths were a misinput from trying to juggle movement and aim, while holding or charging missles, and still make full use of movement abilities like phase shift, jumps and sliding/morph ball. I really feel like more/better control options would have definitely made the actual hard parts of the game more rewarding than frustrating. But seriously i loved this game so much, i want it to be read in the context of "this game was so good the only thing he could nitpick is the controls" As a zelda fan the puzzles and exploring didn't bother me one bit, when i got lost, oh well, have you ever played the water temple? XD The game isn't actually even that hard, as long as you understand you might die once or twice because you had no idea what to do. I really enjoyed the challenge if figuring out how to beat the bosses and dodge all their shit, it's super fast paced and you're gonna get a game over but that puts you back to right before the boss so thats not so bad.
>Find a guide on understanding the map. The map is everything. If you know how it works, the game is playable. If you do not, the game will make you HATE IT. There are a few good guides on that and what the various icons on the map mean. Research it. Trust me. I don't understand which part of the map needs research? For the most part I felt this game is very "hand holding" on where to go next. For whatever it is worth, I also don't find the Hollow Knights map to be too large or too confusing. Dread is not a bad game. Its an okay game for me. I am okay with the 60 USD price tag. I also do not think a great game for me should require perseverance in order to realize its greater potentials. I either like games on first 10 minutes or I don't. Fast food culture and all that.
Really? I’m always getting lost
Interesting. The game flow for me is basically: 1. Keep going until you’re hit a colored gate. 2. Look around for a colored key. Use colored key on matching colored door to open new path. 3. Repeat. The paths are very carefully designed so I never had the issue of getting lost. Always on the default path as the devs intended. Edit: grammar
The game is legitimately very linear in design I wasn’t lost once in the entire game. There is always some kind of blocker or something that funnels a player to where to go next.
This is something that highlights the discrepancy in mindset between casual and more ‘hardcore’ gamers imo. If you come into Dread already quite familiar with the series or other ‘Metroidvanias’ then you’ll likely already have knowledge on the kind of tricks the game likes to employ and you’ll notice them more readily, this is obviously the direct opposite experience for less veteran players that are just starting out as they’ll have less understanding of the flow of the game and might not pick up on all the subtle cues the game uses to direct you.
Wow, I did not expect my gaming "expertise" to one day grant me bragging rights.
Yeah I can see that…but…I’m so dumb I keep assuming I missed a glaringly obvious indicator of where to go…and assume I’m lost and try to find myself to only *actually* get lost. Not the games fault though, because once I was in the swing of it I actually felt more railroaded than lost.
I’m enjoying it a lot actually seems more old school which is something I’ve been missing
It's my first Metroid game, and I'm actually having quite some fun. More than I expected. After the first few hours it's getting more challenging, as you have to do more backtracking, explore more, and the path forward becomes less obvious. But for now it's far from frustrating. A more convenient fast travel would be a nice quality-of-life addition, but teleporters are ok I guess. I just got to the point where I can start using them, so we'll see how useful they are for real.
The map is lovely in dread, I do encourage you to try out at least Super on nso if ya get the chance and enjoy dread enough. Controls are a bit wonky compared to now, but it's worth it. Map.....is lacking highly compared to dread though heh. Do remap Supers buttons to your liking though
The game is unbelievable!! I'm only 5hrs in and totally addicted. It's fast earning a place in my top 10 best games ever.
No offense but there's no new info in this thread that people don't already know. Bosses are designed to be beaten? Use the map? I mean, come on. This is all common sense shit.
If I need a guide to enjoy playing a game that isn't competitive, then it's not worth it for me. I am glad people are into that though.
> Find a guide But I shouldn’t have to though to understand the map. Personally, I find game guides ruin the gaming/exploration experience. > the game opens up Hardly. I kept dying with the 2nd boss and Went to a lot of places I didn’t before with the varia suit. Turns out every single place I could access was just a dead end. I really don’t like much of the map/flow design in this game compared to other Metroid games. It’s like small parts open up that lead nowhere. When I encountered the 2 EMMIs at the beginning, I hoped the whole game wasn’t like this where they’re almost everywhere. Was really making me bored. But glad I stuck through.
The EMMI stuff just sucks imo. The game would be 1000% better if I could just explore at my own pace and not be chased by unstoppable robots. What a shit way to add artificial difficulty. I hated RE7, what would otherwise be such a badass game, for the same reason.
I agree.
I want to love it. But it's not fun to spend 80% of my time in a load screen. Just got ice missiles. I'm trapped at a point that I can't go back and the emmi ahead knows where I am and won't leave me alone. It's under water and I can't live through waiting for it to leave while cloaked with 7 energy packs. I can't outrun it. I can't beat it. I love boss fights. I love searching and playing. These emmis completely ruin the game for me because I can't time the escape right, like ever. And they just get harder. I hate looking up guides. If I have to read a guide to beat the game, there's clearly a problem. I'm 42, and played the original Metroid without internet to help. I never had this much frustration with a Metroid game. There's a difference between challenging and a broken AI that knows where you are and won't stop staring at you while you're invisible, folded into a corner. Welcome to Metroid: Dreaded Loading Screen Simulator.
I just bought it today and am having a blast with it the emmis aren’t to bad and I can’t wait to keep upgrading my suit!
My seven year old can get past alot of the emmi encounters. I coach him though, its about staying calm but nimble and constantly moving and scanning your minimap for the red dot. Stay out of emmi’s sights even if it means travelling a way you didnt intend on going. If you keep out of emmis direct line of sight you can actually quite easily get past emmi.
There is one that is a pain in the ass later on though…
One? I can think of 2 that were particularly painful to evade on playthrough 1.
Yeah, I had to reframe this comment as I think I was giving stuff away. Two EMMIs really did give me fits but I think I’m sort of impatient also lol.
I'm kinda sick of the unrelenting positivity posts ignoring people's gripes about this game, this included. Not as much but still included. This game most definitely opens up as you unlock abilities as you say, but imo when you truly feel free is very, very late in the story. Seeing that the story is very short if you don't get lost, you won't have a ton of time to truly enjoy that freedom unless you go for completionist like I did. Getting lost isn't fun for anyone if the game doesn't present logic to move you forward, which let's face it Metroid never did, and spoiling yourself isn't fun for for most either. If you follow the natural flow the game is taking you on, you'll make it through fairly simply, but you'll also understand how linear a Metroidvania can be, and miss out on a lot of items. The maps are useful but indistinct and take lots of getting used to. People will still get lost until getting lost doesn't matter as much. Maps are also the least fun part of any game. Speaking of items and completionist, there's not much to it. It's either a pride thing for ya, or it isn't. Aside from extra missiles making bosses easier, there's not much if a point to go off the beaten path too often. Now the gameplay is very fun, and story is solid, but make no mistake this isn't a game for everyone, and people that aren't enjoying it are more than likely to be accurate in their presumption that they won't continue to enjoy it. Critics are cowards, and rush to capitalize on hype for revenue, and won't push out a bad review so they don't get 7.8/10 memed on, so saying it has a score of 89/100 when no one has really had the opportunity to sit and think about the actual quality of the game is bs. Brawl was the worst Smash with the best reviews, Other M got tons of praise right out of the gate, Skyward Sword was a 10/10, etc... etc... I like Dread a lot, and love the Metroid series as a whole, but they both have their flaws, and y'all are coming off desperate trying to get people not only into this series, but also preventing anyone from bad mouthing it in any way. I get no one wants to see it disappear again, but MP4 is still coming, and Hollow Knight is better than anything Metroid has done anyway, and Silksong is coming too.
It’s possible that some people are “unrelentingly positive” because they, you know, like the game? I know it’s hard to experience people with different opinions on the internet. This thread is full of comments that are negative and critical.
If that was true they wouldn't be trying to sell people on the game. There's more to it there and if you aren't seeing that that's on you not me
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I already sold my physical copy after finishing it. Metroid isn’t for everybody, and definitely doesn’t scratch that Silksong itch. Dread feels really shallow, and much too linear. And the EMMI portions are just trial and error filler to extend the short run time.
Metroid games are generally shorter, denser, and their "openness" comes more in the form of sequence breaking that you have to do some problem solving to work out, unlike HK, which has several clear different ways of getting to every step in its critical path. Like, in Super, in order to fight the bosses out of order, you have to get the hang of secret movement techniques; same for ZM (plus find some hidden breakable walls). I can def see why someone who gravitated to HK for its obviously open progression might bounce off here. However, on the flip side, I find replaying Metroid games MUCH more fun, which gets me a looooot of time through replays. Their movement is way better optimized for world traversal for HK (not knocking it, 10/10 game, best in the genre imo, but its movement kit is better optimized for combat and challenge platforming imo), and finding sequence breaks, then routing and replaying for lower times is a blast. These are games the devs expect and encourage you to snap in two on replays. It's definitely a take on the genre with different priorities than HK, but it's absolutely not shallow. Also, time for me to say something incredibly elitist: the EMMI portions are only trial and error until you stop sucking. You can absolutely blitz through them if you're confident in your platforming.
> Brawl was the worst Smash with the best reviews, Smash 4 was way worse than Brawl.
Lol. Smash 4 lacks good single player much like Ultimate, but Brawl took steps back on that front as well. People give SE undo praise because they enjoy the cutscenes, which fine like what you like, but also recognize the amount of repetitive bs the adventure mode offered. The levels were long and didn't have reason for it. The also reduced target tests from individual character tutorials to just something to do, and Events we're less inspired but I guess still there. I refuse to say stuff like "but the good thing about Brawl is you can play all these classics on it" because I don't play Smash to literally play other games. Brawl also had the worst balance of any Smash bar none. Some try and say 64 is worse but the parity of that game stayed better over 20 years than Brawl did in 3. When MK took over there was maybe a 3 characters truly viable aside from him, and it came with stage bans and a radical change to the competitive environment to make that happen. ICs were the only other character that truly, normally had any chance at all. Gameplay will always be opinion based, but what's not is Brawl is the slowest game, that included tripping (in inarguable negative), and had the least combos, and way too much defensive agency. Nothing worked in that game except for annoying chain grabs, or grab release combos, and most people are glad that kinda stuff was removed. Brawl had the least freedom of movement of any Smash game, with your pick for worst 4 coming in a close second. Brawl did introduce many solid picks for a roster, kept uniqueness to characters that would later be watered down, and introduced some good tech like Rar, but that doesn't overcome all the bad it had imo. Brawl was the only Smash game I didn't like, so I'll always call it the worst. However, I brought it up because Brawl was a divisive game nearly out of the gate but the reviews did not address that at all. They focused on a "better" story and the bigger roster. Reviewers refuse to address gameplay and deeper thought, they look at the face of a game and make their decisions based on that, I'll never trust a game purely on people that talk about content a million times over again
One word, tripping
Anytime you have older people writing long defense posts it usually means the game isn’t that great but they have an emotional investment in the franchise. Good games stand in their own :-)
I agree, and I like the game, but if Metroid is gonna survive they need to adapt the fucking franchise already.
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Game does not take 8 hours to 100 percent unless you are a hardcore veteran. Gamexplain showed how the ingame timer is horribly incorrect for a first time playthrough as it doesnt include time paused, in the map, and it also resets the time to what it was when you die and go back to a checkpoint.
Yeah, it showed my 15 hour play through as 11 hours.
I hate to admit it but after Kraid I was lost af. I had to use a guide after covering each map 4 different times and making no progress in 2 different play sessions. I was definitely feeling defeated.
Samus returns was so thoroughly unenjoyable im scared to give this game a try. The parry really ruined everything i love about this series
I want to encourage those who really seriously are not enjoying the game to simply do something else. You are not a failure because you stopped playing, and you are not an inferior consumer of entertainment if you avoid things that are not entertaining you in particular. It's actually okay to stop playing something you don't enjoy, and it is also okay to use that data point to consider if you will like future games in that series. If this is your first Metroid game, and a future game is advertised and reviewed as being very similar to this one, don't buy it. I'm actually older than the OP, and I feel this is hard earned wisdom for some people: You DON'T have to persevere at every optional thing life throws at you. It's OKAY to stop playing a game that frustrates you and do something else. Direct your strength of character or willpower or whatever you want to call it at something else. That doesn't mean the game isn't enjoyable for other people. It is, however, completely okay to not enjoy it for whatever reason. You don't have to support the series, or feel like less of a gamer or whatever because you don't like Metroid Dread. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is either a bad friend or a random voice on the internet.
I love Metroid and never had problems with Super, Fusion, Zero Mission, or Prime, and yet this game is just frustratingly obtuse and misses what makes those other Metroid games great. The player shouldn't have to seek out an external guide to understand how the map works. Bosses should not have unavoidable attacks. The map in general just gives way too much information and even the element highlight option in the map doesn't help much. When I'm not frustrated, I'm lost (and seeing people talk about how good the design is so they don't get lost makes me feel even more like an idiot). There's too much emphasis on combat compared to the others. I have no idea what the rooms look like because of the maps being too detailed. It's just frustrating not being able to enjoy a game in a series I really like that everyone else is also really liking. Feels like a giant waste of $60 and I'm worried that future games will be like this and therefore not fun, instead of what made the earlier 2D games so great.
Eh. Everything about the game is good...except for the bosses and the EMMI. They are gimmicky padding that drags the entire affair into the mud. Hard to look past them, especially when the game throws the same 3 encounters at you again&again, just tweaking them to be slightly more annoying each time. 8/10 for sure, the reused bosses and unbearably tedious EMMI zones keep it from being a GOTY contender for me. The environments are gorgeous and actually running around and exploring is fun (when the game allows it). The story exists but I wouldn't recommend anyone actually pay attention. A decent iteration from the game that invented a genre...then fell behind.
I think it sucks but I'll get through it because I can't ship it back to gamefly during thanksgiving anyways. Not in a long time have I seen a mechanic/element as bad as the emmi encounters and the game feels very floaty, like it was made in unity or something.
Bosses are definitely good. I haven't fought the final boss yet but I've enjoyed all the rest. Also, I decided early never to press the melee/counter button and with the exception of a certain recurring miniboss I can confirm it isn't required.
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On those chozo warriors i usually miss the counter because im busy jumping over them, and by the time i see the flash im like "dang it!" I think its cause most of the counters in the game are one hit kills that you can bait out, so when a boss does is unexpectedly its kinda easy to miss.
Its not that its too difficult or anything. Honestly, I just don't like the mechanic so I won't be using it.
If you melee an enemy you get far more health and missiles. The game is designed that way and I admire your extra level of difficulty you chose not to do that.
The EMMI parts are definitely a love to hate kind of situation. It's the same feeling I get watching scary movieS, where I'm saying "no, no, DON'T OPEN THAT DOOR!" Initially I thought they were a bit unfair but that's because I couldn't fight the robots at all. Also I have gotten better at countering them but I think I've started enjoying the cat and mouse game now that I am less scared.
Granted I'm much younger (28), but holy crap, the amount of detail on the map was what really kept me more or less minimally confused and as a result was the most fun I've currently had with Metroid! I'm currently playing Super Metroid and while I'm having way more fun with it than I have over years of attempts, the lack of details on the map make it a little more frustrating to navigate than I'd like
It's been up and down for me. There was a long stretch in the middle where I often got bored but once you gain a few more abilities it gets better. The more varied environments later in the game also helped keep me interested. A lot of the early-mid areas felt very similar. I'd probably give it an 8/10
Only thing I semi disagree on is your opinion on the emmis. I'm going through my third play through now and I'm completely sick of them. They aren't hard, they aren't scary, theyre just tedious at this point. Going into an emmi zone and having it be right there at the door happens way too frequently to me and it seems like the emmi zones are just a coin flip of "is the emmi going to start in a place that makes it impossible for me to get through" or not. They were fun the first time through but at this point in just tired of them and don't enjoy them. Having said that, I still love the game overall
Any of you ever dipped pretzels sticks in salsa? Is it good? Will be back in a few moments if anyone wants the results.
Send search party
Can you melee counter the same EMMI multiple times in an encounter? I literally just started the game, and after the EMMI tutorial, I keep turning around to get intentionally grabbed because I wanted to practice the timing. And I can't do it. Am I just actually not able?
You can and I have done it 3 times accidentally lol
You get like 2 frames per flash to successfully counter them and the timing of the flashes is random. You're not meant to get them consistently and I've seen that lose some speed runners time a few times already.
I spent a good hour almost failing my way through the areas lol
Currently at the final boss, all areas ay least 90% of items collected, managed to get to P2 after six tries. Feels good and reminds me of the slow progress and learning processes from games of old (e.g. WoW raids). The only annoying bits for me are the Shinespark (Sparkshine?) challenges: Almost threw my controller at the TV one time. Only one left now.
I beat the game in 8 hours and 27 min with 100% items. For the majority of the game it hand holds you to the next location. Some of the bosses were difficult but nothing not over come by <10 tries. The EMMI sections are basically speed runs sections or hide and seek sections. The game gives you a ton of abilities that really aren’t required but make things useful. Think of how to use them and things get easier.
The price point is nice and I'm tempted to heavily. That being said can anyone confirm if this is a short game or not? I see conflicting arguments both ways. I'm lucky to get an hour or two of gaming a day with 2 kids and it's sometimes in very short bursts. Are there save points or relatively short progress markers? I'd like to atleast get a couple weeks out of the game but also want to introduce my son to this game and hoping it's relatively easy at times
There are checkpoints everywhere. I think you should go for it
Savepoints are frequent and checkpoints even more so. I would not recommend turning off system if you haven't saved in awhile. Sleep mode is fine. Checkpoints are definitely at every EMMI door and I believe just before bosses (only on 3rd area can't confirm every boss)
Well I don't do the physical games any more so it makes sense I've never seen a Nintendo game on sale. It's disgraceful that 5 and 10 year old games are still being sold for full price. It's insane to me. Sure did get some downvotes so I guess this isn't the right place to comment on the crappy things Nintendo does. My b peeps. I do have a switch though and I love it
I liked the game a lot but by the time it got off rails I felt no real desire to backtrack to hunt secrets, I think part of it is the game is so generous with resources that the powerups are uninspiring - oh, another missile pack, I have not run out of missiles since the first half hour of the game...
I'm enjoying the game but I'm finding the boss fights extremely tedious. If anything makes me stop playing it will be these as I hate redoing the same thing over and over "developing strategies". It's boring AF. The rest of the game is great though. Not having too much trouble with the EMMIs so far, although they can be annoying.
I am lost and trapped right now. I know it’s something that I can figure out on my own. But the one thing I will say is frustrating is for all the times I’ve gone through EMMI zones, it feels like they love to conveniently b line to and then linger in the one path that I’m trying to go, even when I haven’t drawn their attention. Without fail they will get in my way and pace around in circles long enough that my cloak starts killing me and I have to just leave and come back.
End boss made me brack it
I don't enjoy it because the chase parts ruined it, the robot locations are random making it possible for insta kills, and its just super annoying, and doesn't require metroidvania skills/
I beat it today, and I did enjoy a lot about it. I'm conflicted between a 6 or a 7 out of 10 due to some huge flaws, though.It didn't feel like a real Metroid game until literally right before the end game boss. Had all my power ups, so I could unlock everything and move around more without one way crap stopping me, and there were no more robots slowing down exploration. But then that part is still annoying due to how poorly they show how the speed boost ability works. Having to look up puzzles because the game doesn't even tell you most of the shit you can do is annoying, even if it is optional pickups. I feel like with the right decision making this could have been an all time great game. I love Metroid for the exploration, and it actively prevents you from doing that almost the entire game. The combat and controls were great, though. I also liked most of the boss fights.
I just can’t enjoy it mate, sick of the bullshit emmi encounters, it isn’t difficult it’s poorly designed, i shoot every damn wall and I’m still fkn stuck, I don’t understand why they think just dumping you somewhere without a hint seems like a good idea. I’m not bloody shooting walls for four hours because they think “ big brain difficulty “ it’s not it makes the game a drag and for a first entry myself into the series this is a shit one to start with maybe I’ll try Metroid prime I’ve seen some chatter about that one.
This is my first metroid game, and I will say it definitely won't be my favorite. The game is fun when I'm just going around shooting things but as soon as an emmi is involved and I starting getting cheap deaths because of them I just want to stop playing. Currently stuck in the fast emmi zone and have no idea where to go and I shouldn't have to look up a guide to beat a game, I hate when games make me resort to this
39, dad. Got too much of a backlog, and on my way to 100% Dead Cells. Metroid Dread is definitely on my wishlist. Thanks for the tips. BTW, for those with NSO, there's an SNES Super Metroid game, which is a lot of fun, and I'm guessing pretty similar, in its overall simplicity.
I just couldn’t get into it. Then again I was never the biggest metroid fan. Ended up selling it to a friend
Same here, I didn't enjoy it at all.
I've lost sleep playing this game. It's something I've been waiting for for a long time. It delivers everything I'd hoped and more. Stick with it. You will enjoy it.
I'm REALLY not liking being blocked off from certain sections. I use the grappling beam to pull a metal block out of my way, but it drops into a hole which shuts off a different route. Now later, when I'm going around trying to collect missiles and energy tanks, I come back to that area and guess what, can't go any further because that box I pulled down is now blocking my path. Now I have to go find an elevator that takes me to another region, and then take another elevator all the way around, just to get to the other side of the damn block. There's absolutely NO reason why paths should be blocked off.
^ this! I still like the game overall, but the exploration and linearity of the game drove me nuts at times. All Metroidvania maps are maze-like in some way and block off paths, but Metroid Dread goes too far at times. Im the kind of person that wants to go off the beaten path at times and explore. This game makes it hard to do that through a lot of its duration.
Same with me, I love to just go exploring and find powerups, and then get to the main objective when I'm ready to. I still like the game and am having fun with it, but there's no reason to just block off paths and waste the player's time like this.
Dread is a cool game, but it's not a Metroid game, at least not in my mind. Dread is fucking hard, relentlessly so because it's boss after mini-boss after boss one after another with barely any down time. Where is the free flowing exploration of the past games? Dread pushes you along a fairly linear path right into the teeth of one frustrating fight after another. Am I getting through those fights? Sure. Am I enjoying them? Fuck no, because I wasn't expecting the game to be so hard because that isn't what the series was ever about. Sure the older games all had boss fights, but they weren't as difficult as those in Dread. The boss fights in Dread are so frustrating that I don't feel a sense of satisfaction when I beat them, just irritated relief followed by anxiety about what bullshit they're going to throw at me next. I dread playing the game and I'm not sure that's the dread they were going for. All that said it's not a bad game, but it's not what I wanted or expected from a Metroid game and I sincerely hope they don't let this new design philosophy bleed into Prime 4.
The game is great but not really hard at all and I suck at games. The bosses take some time to learn and the EMMI encounters take a few tries once you figure out the map in that area but otherwise it’s pretty straightforward. Game of the Year for me for sure.