After Zero Mission, my expectations were off the roof. Not only did that game capture everything that makes the Metroid franchise so unique and stand out among others, with that atmospheric, completely embracing music that keeps you on your toes while you explore dark, creepy corridors, not knowing what's going to be waiting for you, but it featured amazing map design as well, with compact yet surprisingly open areas that allowed for just the right room for exploration to be able to take small detours without traveling too far from where you were supposed to go.

If all that wasn't already enough, that game also featured one of the most memorable moments in the whole franchise, changing the play style completely from what we had experienced up until that point:
That one section when Samus is off her suit and you've got to sneak past enemies. That, and that section alone, is one of the most tense ones I've ever played in a videogame, to the point where that's the part I remember about Zero Mission the most. It was just that impactful for me.

In short, Metroid Zero Mission is an all-around great videogame.
Metroid Fusion is not.

Right off the bat, the "You are trapped inside a ship" premise felt cliché and lacking in identity.
The game tries to make up for it by dividing the ship into numerous different sections, each with a different theme; there's the obligatory water section, the fire one, and the jungle one, for example, and yet this does nothing but make the game even more shallow, like it's trying to complete an obligatory "To visit" list instead of creating a cohesive map.
And while that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if the gameplay was fun and did something interesting with each area, the issue is that, well, the game does nothing like that.

The difficulty spike in the last quarter of the game ruined my experience with it almost completely.
It's not only that your enemies are way stronger and would kamikaze straight into you on sight, nor that the last pack of bosses drain your life (sometimes literally) faster than the time you'll need to travel in order to fight them again, nor even the fact that they have a lot of BS attacks that leave you with little to no time to react, but it's also that you get no recharge stations to replenish both your ammo and health, which just forces you to grind for them, making the game really tedious.

I liked the narrative, being able to get inside Samus mind even if it was just for a little while was cool, and the idea of having a much stronger nemesis that can completely overpower you at any given time was a great decision.
It reminded me of Resident Evil: Nemesis, and that's always a good thing in my book.

The ending was fantastic. I liked it quite a bit!

Still, none of Metroid Fusion's positive characteristics can make up for its numerous negative aspects. I'd rather watch a gameplay instead of going through the whole thing again.

At least in my opinion, of course.