visuals that got a genuine 'wow' out of me and good music but almost everything else is beyond bare bones. the setting, such as it is, is a lot of alice in wonderland and surprisingly, coraline (did anyone else clock that?). i could easily see this game captivating an 8- or 9-year old and eventually leading to other action rpgs with a little more depth.

it's easy to overlook a lot of this game's shortcomings but one actively got under my skin: as pointed out by another reviewer, your attacks make exactly one sound effect. by the end of the game you are hitting enemies 5-15 times and it's just that same sound effect over and over. i also have thoughts about the typography (cococucumber hire me to do your typography)

bounced right off the original back in 02 but this was a pretty fun time. i played this with a walkthrough as i wanted to experience the vibe without having to worry about keeping track of routing and completion. maybe that makes me soft but i think it helped this games strengths shine through. they really nailed the whole isolated, space anthropologist-with-an-arm-cannon feel of metroid, and the unforgiving and sometimes janky difficulty was just present enough to be nostalgic instead of frustrating.