Beautiful beyond its eye catching artwork.

I have no particular interest in platformers or puzzlers but was captivated by this one from start to finish. Lovely pace to the game, could easily imagine a determined player getting through it in a sitting. Took me about a week of playing 30 minutes here and there. No frustration to be had, simple and straightforward hand holding through the game makes me think about presenting it to lapse or new gamers. A seeming lack of a fail state to the game helps keep the player engaged.

The art design is gonna be the draw for a lot of people understandably but absolutely delightful soundtrack and great immersive experience through a Dualsense.

Definitely one to spend an afternoon with. Treated this myself as a palate cleanser and absolutely fitted that bill.

An improvement on the first game in every way. All the new combat and movement mechanics felt great and were fun to use. While at first I didn't care much for the story, as they expanded on the world and characters I found myself pretty invested. Easily the best part of the game is the bike sections. The speed and stunts the game asks you to perform are insane and feel awesome to pull off. Finally, the last two boss fights in this game are some of the best I have played in a while. Specifically enjoyed Madhu The Dismantler's design/fight. Overall an amazing game and I know the third one will be the best one yet.

Wasn't sure about this game at first, I tend to be non-comittal with Metroidvanias and then the first Emmi section gave me Mr. X ptsd.
but
I stuck with it on some urging from friends and they were 100% right. This game is fabulous. The gameplay, while sometimes a bit technical, is very fluid and you feel powerful and challenged. Also, Samus is a goddamn badass and these cutscenes are just 🔥🔥🔥. The cinematics director needs to make an action movie... lord almighty the choreography 😤

The exploration is quite suberb. It's generally pretty clear where you need to go except when finding a secret path is the intended challenge; the evironments are varied and set the tone of the game well; and the pacing of the progression is immensely satisfying.

Combat is great, though if you have a monkey brain like me, you will likely find some bosses a bit frustrating until you get a few attempts in. Once you understand the patterns the fights have a fun rhythm. The new counter system is the highlight for me as pulling it off is snappy, showy, and gives additional rewards. A great way to deal with basic enemies and also lets you shorten some boss fights if you find the opening during them.

Now, the EMMI's... it's kind of hilarious how the escape mechanism works. I remember hearing some discussion and frustration around this, so here's my take: It really is not intended to be relied on in the slightest. As in, if you even start the animation you should consider yourself dead. It is by design not reactable. It is almost purely luck. A good human reaction time is around 180ms, and the time you're given to react here is less than that and there's random variance in the timing. You should always try, because it's exciting on the rare occassion you get it, but play under the assumption that touching an EMMI means death.

Last critique, it is a bit of a shame that this game is stuck on the Switch. The art direction is phenomenol, but it's clearly forced to use lower fidelity assets than it could on anything else. Probably looks fine on a SWOLED but any larger screen just makes you a bit sad at the unmet potential.