Honestly this is probably the best Zero Mission hack I've played so far. Very unique and well crafted new backgrounds and good new songs, though a few return from the original game which is fine. The Halloween aesthetic is very fantastically done and sells the spooky aspect of this hack. It's got a lot more meat to it and a lot more going for it in general compared to any other Metroid Zero Mission Hack I've played so far, big kudos to the modder here.

It's also pretty fun, a fairly big map that's built from the ground up, and typical Metroid fare, which is to say, it's good. The only thing I don't care for is the whole "Ooo, sell your soul to the devil" thing they do with the save points, that's blegh in my opinion as an Orthodox Christian. Otherwise this hack is great though, very great work went into it and I enjoyed it.

In-Game Final Playtime: 1 hour, 58 minutes, 15 seconds.

Total Playtime (according to activity log): 3 hours, 51 minutes.

Item Completion Rate: 86%.

I took a long break from 2D Metroid after beating Dread, and I want to replay the 5 mainline titles again, but I've been waiting for Zero Mission to get on NSO so I can use the rewind if needed to get all the best speedrun times needed to get every image reward in the game. So while I waited around for Nintendo to stop twiddling their thumbs on stupidly slow GBA game re-releases, I decided to play AM2R finally as I'd heard many good things about it.

I think the game from a technological standpoint of non-Nintendo devs is incredible! The sprite work is really top notch for the environments and it looks very beautiful, though I do feel like the Metroids themselves have a very uncanny valley look to them. I wish they would've based their designs more off the Metroid 2 manual than the chunky archaic GameBoy sprites specifically. Still, the hard work the creators put into this to make the game look as good as it is should not be undercut all the same, I really appreciate it.

The gameplay is also pretty great too. It's very much taking a lot of cues from Zero Mission and succeeds very well there, I do like the snappy pacing of the gameplay and combat as I did in ZM. The hidden items and power up progression are typical Metroid fare as you'd expect, pretty well designed and fun to seek out.

However, now we get to the story... and I have to be brutally honest, I don't really like the way they tackled it. I will preface this saying that there wasn't a lot else the dev team could try to do story wise given the limited context of the original game and how little they had to work with, but even so, compared to Samus Returns, the official remake's take, I find this one lacking honestly.

For starters, I get that they wanted to break up the monotony of the gameplay loop of doing the same 4 types of boss fights for 90% of the game, and so they took a Zero Mission approach of adding a ton of new bosses and trying to tie it into the lore. However, I think it doesn't really fit here in this game, at all. In any other Metroid game, it would, definitely. But not here specifically.

See, the whole point of the original game's story is Samus goes on a genocide quest that is later proven in the series to have been the wrong decision that screws over Samus multiple times and nearly jeopardizes the entire universe because she killed the X-Parasite's natural predator. The whole monotony of the original game's quest and how the atmosphere being so haunting, forboding, and isolationist was placed there to show and prove that you were doing a very bad thing. Samus Returns, while adding 2 new bosses still maintains that same sentiment, as the retained monotony of the quest and how much they really show in their cinematic cutscenes the pure pain and suffering of these living creatures as they die from Samus's attacks really do carry over that same impact from the original game. Meanwhile that AM2R completely erases that in the service of making the statement, "Oooo, look at Samus! She's so cool and badass fighting off all these powerful machines and robots!" It completely loses the message the original game and official remake went for, as it wasn't supposed to be inherently fun systematically destroying an entire race one member of the species at a time. It's a grueling, taxing endeavor that wears away at one's soul should they have a heart, which Samus is shown in many of the games to be very compassionate, such as when she saved the Etecoon and Dachora at the end of Super despite the fact it nearly got her killed. The fact she spares the baby at all is a sign of the regret of doing what she had to, and that she probably wishes things could've been different.

Speaking of, I also was very disappointed with the end where Samus finds the baby being too 1:1 with Super's prologue, where it doesn't show anything about her hesitation to kill the baby due to limitations of the time the game was made. Samus Returns fixes that and shows her regret, as well as further builds up her bond with the baby through their fight with Ridley which pays off hard in Super. But here in AM2R they just don't bother to do anything with it even though they easily could've. Of all the places to take a liberty with reimagining the original game, they chose not to here when it really would've benefitted the game story wise. Bad move.

Anyway, long story short, these added boss fights just make the game seem like another usual bounty hunt Samus goes on to stop some great evil and look cool doing it, when the story of the game really isn't that at all. Narratively I just feel like AM2R misses the mark on nailing what the point of the game story wise really was in the first place, and I don't like that.

I also don't really like how said new bosses tie into the lore of SR388 either. By the time AM2R was made it was known that the Chozo were the ones who populated the planet and made the Metroids there in general Metroid lore, but the lore makes them seem like this more normal colony alien race and such than the highly advanced, prosperous, and far beyond "menial race squabbles" they're known for being. It doesn't fit them at all, the lore logs make it sound like some other alien race colonized SR388 before the Metroids populated it. It feels like something Metroid Prime would do rather than what 2D Metroid would in terms of characterizing the Chozo and their history and civilization.

The music is good enough, I will say it's better than Dread's soundtrack, but that's the lowest bar in the series so... I don't really think the OST really stands out when compared to Zero Mission or Super though.

Overall I think the game is a solid fan-game, but misses the mark narratively on what this game is supposed to signify in Samus's journey, and the way said changes are tied to the gameplay also hold much less weight as a result and don't really fit. They took me out of the experience personally, and I'm probably going to be one of the only people who will say Samus Returns is a better game and die on that hill. I also just prefer how Samus Returns was a beta-Dread and had a lot of cool stuff like the new lore connections that flesh out the Chozo in-character, the cinematic cutscenes, and stuff like the counter and more precise aiming. It all fits the Metroid world and lore so much better, and adds to Samus's character and her bond with the baby all the better too.

I respect this game and am glad it came out at a time when the Metroid community was in dire need of something when Nintendo forced Metroid into a dormant state, but it's not a game I plan to ever return to. I am glad I checked it out and judged it on its own merits though.

Final playtime: 7 hours, 0 minutes, 9 seconds.
Item Collection: 84%.