This is one of those rare games where I think it's amazing and everyone should play it, but I also think it's incredibly overrated.

It's not groundbreaking or changing the genre in anyway, despite what all the reviews and hype seems to suggest. It's just a really, really good metroidvania that understands the genre perfectly. Its full of secrets that are fun to explore, and it really felt like I would rarely go the "wrong way".

That said, the only thing stopping this from being 5 stars is the save points system. It feels really out of place in a game like this, with such a focus on puzzles. Either spawning in the room you died in, like Celeste, or just having way more save points would have made this game so much easier to play - especially towards the end

It's great to finally have a high quality co op shooter that is just about simple objectives and killing enemies. It feels absolutely fantastic to play, mostly every weapon feels viable and fun to use, and the community is very friendly - at least in my experience. I don't feel bogged down by tiny stats to track or limited time events to keep up with. I can just hop on and shoot things.

That said, as much as I am absolutely in love with the game, I can't in good faith give it more than 4 stars with the amount of bugs (not those ones) it has. Crashes, disconnects, infinite loading, friend requests not working, loadouts resetting. I feel for the Arrowhead devs since I know they didn't expect such a massive amount of players, but it's getting to the point where it's no longer a fun game to just throw on and play a few rounds since I won't know what bugs I'll have to deal with.

Happily got the platinum on this because I really just wanted to see everything the game had to offer.

Incredible platforming with fluid movement, and fantastic combat with far more options than I ever would have guessed (honestly, my expectation of metroidvania combat is a 3 hit sword slash and a couple of tricks). The game looks absolutely beautiful too, it's got such a strong visual identity I don't think I would ever forget it or even think to leave it out of discussions about game art.

My only real problems are more technical nitpicks than anything else. Despite the main gameplay being polished to hell and back, there are random bugs here and there that just take you out of the experience at random times. I had a good few crashes, and some side quests got bugged resulting in not being able to get a 100% save file. I'm sure those will be fixed in time though. Other than that, the story isn't the strongest. The characters are well designed and fun enough, but everything just feels a bit under-explored. Would love to see a DLC focusing on the other Immortals.

Had a lot of fun with this. A classic 2D adventure similar to 2D Zelda games but with the fun twist of changing into various forms with different abilities. A bit grindy to get everything done, but as someone who likes that sort of thing they managed to hit a good balance.

It's not without it's flaws - the story wasn't anything special, and definitely the weakest element, and most of the time the game was too easy. There are also some crazy choices, like preventing quest progression in story dungeons, that really got in the way of me enjoying it at times. But I think the core gameplay loop, unlocking forms and experimenting with them to then unlock even more, was fun enough to keep me enjoying it throughout my entire playthrough.

Holy shit.

I know a lot of people would consider it a sin that I jumped in here instead of playing the previous games, but I absolutely loved this as my first experience of the series. The characters were great, the gameplay was fantastic, and the music is a bop.

My only real complaints were that I felt like jumping between 3 characters made it a bit hard to fully nail the feel of each character and use them to their full potential - made worse by Dante having so many weapon options that he feels like multiple characters by himself. All of that was improved upon by the Vergil campaign which has to be some of the best feeling action gameplay I've ever played, and lets you perfect his moveset over the course of the 20 missions.

Did not finish. I don't think Metroid is inherently something that can't work in 3D, but this really isn't doing it for me. The FOV is super limited which makes it not very fun to engage with the first person shooter elements, the controls for switching beams (which for some reason you have to do constantly to open doors) is atrocious - especially in combat situations, and the map is far too big to enjoy having to navigate without any sort of fast travel.

Even with the hint system on, I just found myself not enjoying having to get from one area to the next. Combat wasn't really difficult enough to keep me challenged but it also didn't feel good enough to keep me entertained - it was just a chore I had to deal with on my way to the next objective which involves travelling to 3 different elevators.

I'll probably still give the later entries a try at some point, but this just felt like it wasn't working at all for me. The best thing I can say for it is that it nailed the atmosphere, music, and sound. The environments were really well designed and, while I didn't like the overall size of the map, the individual rooms were fun as their own little segments.

While the plot threads can get a bit confusing at times, and some things seem to be given too much or too little weight depending on how they weave into the overall resolution, this was still an incredibly story and a really great example of how to handle narrative in gaming. It has cute little moments of having to use game systems like audio settings to navigate situations, but doesn't beat you over the head with it like some other "meta" games tend to do.

I think I would have liked a lot more time to be spent on that first night and navigating / working out curse triggers and trying to survive or use your own curses on others - but I guess they wanted to keep the story branching to a minimum since if can get confusing as is.

Had to abandon this at the last area when I realised I just wasn't having fun anymore. There's so much here that I love. The music is amazing, the models are really cute and charming, the level and creature design is very creative and fun. But I feel like this remake is, in a weird way, too faithful. There are a lot of dated design decisions in the game that I think would have felt fine if played on the original hardware, but when positioned against the modern improvements they stick out really badly. And there is just a strange sense of things being missing in the game. Like the lack of text writing noises or beepspeech during dialogue - and no character talking sounds at all in cutscenes which makes them feel unfinished.

The characters in general are just kind of... Okay? Bowser is probably the highlight. Peach's character is basically non existent. The party rarely feels like an actual party, and the villain is just a big sword I knew nothing about.

I feel like in a world where the M+L series and Paper Mario series exists it's hard for me to like this game outside of just recognising it's value for what it was the first to do. But there are plenty of better Mario themed RPGs these days to pick from so it's hard for this to compete. I hope the remake is really good for those who loved the original though.