[Personal thoughts for my future self to retrospect to]

100%'d on 31st March 2024.
Pretty good, solid music, very fun. Gem stones stages are quite hard if you want to do them under the 'bonus' time limit.
I think it's more fun to play it any% instead of going for 100% because some parts of 100%-ing it are tedious, so I'll probably have a great time whenever I'll replay it again without going for 100%.

(No spoilers, but two abilities are mentioned, so read as you will)

Metroid Dread is fantastic and is probably now my favorite Metroid. I have enjoyed the environment and atmosphere of the game, it's probably going to give some chills at first even if it wears off with time.

Overall, I found the game to be increasingly hard with some little difficulty spikes at some moments, especially at bosses. But with some attempts, I found myself getting used to the bosses' patterns fast enough for my liking, which made it enjoyable and rewarding.

As weaknesses, first, I wish the game had two, maybe three more hours of gameplay. I personally finished it with 11 hours which felt a bit short, but I prefer that instead of feeling eternally long. Just a wish.

Second, some collectibles are hard to obtain because of tricky uses of the Speed Boost/Shinespark ability. While the way of getting them is indeed challenging, I found that most of the time, what annoyed me in them is that the distance you have to run to activate the ability is way too short, sometimes requiring almost perfect inputs. In short, the challenges took time not because it was hard, but because I couldn't even start running properly. It was especially annoying when the enemies respawn once you're far enough, instead of a respawn when you cross two, three rooms.

And third, I wish the controls were a little improved. I felt like sometimes there wasn't enough buttons on the controller for all the abilities and items you could use. And I also hated the fact that to use the scan, I had to hold down the button and not just press it to activate. It didn't felt comfortable or efficient when you want to explore at a normal/fast pace, instead of having to stop to activate it.

Nonetheless, these three weaknesses are very light, and it's pretty much nothing compared to the myriad of qualities this game has. As a final note, I really liked the designs of the enemies.

I really didn't enjoy it. There are several things in this one that I didn't like, even though some of these are purely subjective. I can easily see how people would really like or love this game, though.
I think what I didn't like the most was the level design. While I think the use of Kirby's friends is a good idea, I found myself not liking it very much. Most of the time I preferred to play as Kirby because I didn't struggle so much to walk around with him.
Several times through the game, there are situations where after crossing a door, you have to react very quickly, because either an enemy is dropping on you, or because you're on a disappearing block that will make you fall into spikes. That's kind of scummy in my opinion, but it wouldn't be as big as an issue if they had implemented the double tap to run, like in Kirby's Adventure.
Compared to the previous game, the final boss didn't do much for me.
And Dark Castle 6 can choke on a cactus.