As someone without a lot of familiarity with Metroid, this is a gorgeous remake and a perfect entry point into the series. The map design is beautiful, with waypoints to ensure you don't get too lost while still leaning heavily into an open-ended, exploration-focused nature. Gorgeous, crisp spritework and detailed cutscenes really add to the immersion of traveling as a lone bounty hunter on a hostile alien world.

A notable weakpoint is the Mother Brain boss, which, while not impossible by any means, feels cheap, boring, and annoying in a way that only a remake of an NES game boss could be. There's also a strange "postgame" segment, consisting of a last-minute Metal Gear-esque stealth mission bit where your powerups are stripped from you. While not the ideal experience, it was a refreshing change of pace, and the reward for pushing through is well worth it. The segment itself feels very obviously tacked onto where the NES game ended, but it's a nice bit of extra content to help justify it as "more than" the original adventure.

Overall a fantastic experience with few flaws.