Super Metroid is my favorite game, and this is that game's direct sequel. Despite picking up shortly after Super, this game carries little of that game's DNA. The game opens with Samus's iconic Power Suit being corrupted, a tonesetter for how this game is going to go. Metroid Fusion follows in the footsteps of other great sequels by subverting the expectations of veterans who expected more of the same.

Fusion is a perfectly paced action adventure with horror elements that brings the 2D Metroid quadrilogy to a satisfying close. It's surprisingly wordy for a series that has been endlessly praised for it's subtle environmental storytelling, but what they go for here works. Fusion toys with the player's agency to develop an atmosphere that's down right frightening at points. Samus is being manipulated by the shadowy Galactic Federation and the claustrophobic nature of the Biological Space Lab, as you're being actively hunted by a parasitic recreation of Samus's Power Suit, all amplify this feeling. Roughly halfway through the game, the power goes out, and it's a sharp change from what came before. From there on Samus (and you, by extention) reclaims her agency, defying orders and carving her own path for the future, uncovering the truth of the research lab, the creation of the Metroids, and more. The story is a top notch conclusion to the 2D series thus far, and elegantly sets up Metroid 5. PLEASE, Nintendo.

The level design is top notch, the controls are tight as hell, presentation and music are as good as can possibly be on such limited hardware. Boss fights are the best in the series.

If you go in expecting another Super Metroid, you will be disappointed. This is not more Super Metroid in the same way that Metal Gear Solid 2 is not just "more Metal Gear Solid." I guess the devs knew they probably weren't going to surpass Super Metroid, so they didn't try. But they did something completely different, something beautiful and amazing.

5/5.

The problem with this game in one example:

I was working with The Railroad, an underground movement attempting to take down the Institute.

The Institute made me their leader after I infiltrated them for the first time.

I thought, okay, now I can go back and relay to the Railroad that I'm now the leader of the Institute. You know, the group that our whole goal is to take down.

You can't. I felt like I was going insane when I walked back to the Railroad base and desperately tried talking to everyone to reveal this critical information about the war I was participating in. In that moment, the veil was lifted. This is not a world, it's a shooting gallery.

What is the point of even having a dialogue system if this very common occurrence that the main quest forces you down creates this level of dissonance due to a lack of options? Why even have factions? Why have dialogue? The game would not be any better or worse than it is now.

Update:
So, revisiting the game now in depth for the first time since it came out, I realize: there IS a whole side section of quests dedicated to exactly what I was talking about but it didn't trigger for me on my first run! This does make me feel less insane and I'm glad the game is more functional now, but it's insane that a bug occured nearly ten years ago and colored my perception of the entire story so strongly.

The pacing holds this game back hard. I'm a huge Fire Emblem fan and there's a lot to love here but I absolutely hate having to spend hours in between story maps doing nothing but wandering around and watching bars go up. I didn't mind it on my first playthrough, but it made subsequent playthroughs an absolute slog. The game's also obscenely ugly. This is probably one of the worst looking big budget games I've seen in a long time.

Beside those two key flaws, generally it's solid. I can see why a newcomer to the series would really love this, especially if you don't mind the slow pace. The characters are great, far more in depth than Awakening or Fates and the English dub cast does a great job, especially in the case of Dimitri. Speaking of Dimitri, this game's trio of lords are all phenomenal characters. It's good that they hinged the game's conflict on such likable characters, unlike a certain 3DS game I won't mention by name. The structure of the game into the two arcs was another solid choice. Classmates in the first act turn to bitter enemies in the second, creating a poignant feeling that I hadn't felt in a Fire Emblem game before. And I absolutely adored how the story changed in the second arc to accomodate what characters I did or didn't recruit to my house in the first.

Despite all my praise for the characters, the story has a terrible case of telling and not showing. The engine doesn't feel all that capable of telling a story like this. Whereas the 3DS games at least had itheir models for the story sections in a 3D environment, this game has them standing on a flat, weird looking, fucked up panorama that vaguely resembles the location it's supposed to represent. It's weird. Even worse, key story sections are rendered less effective by the poor presentation, as they all have this sort of plasticky quality about them. There's an abundance of moments that hit, of course, but there's a few oddball moments that don't hit the necessary beats due to the presentation.

Gameplay is about what you'd expect from Awakening or Fates: Birthright. Most maps are defeat the commander/rout the enemy, and aren't particularly complex, which isn't too awful, just not as compelling as I'd hope. There's a few maps (particularly in the first arc) that try a unique mechanic like warp tiles or switches and they all fall flat. Outside of map design, the freeflow character building of Awakening and Fates has been taken to a logical extreme, and while on paper more freedom is good, in the end characters end up feeling homogenized and sometimes there's no clear path for characters, as far as classes go. In general the sense of satisfaction you'd get from raising characters in past games (raising an early game cavalier into a busted paladin, or a frail mage into a versatile dark knight) is pretty much missing here.

Overall there's a lot I love here and some that I'm not so keen on, but it's a solid first FE game on the Switch; following the current trend, we'll probably see another Fire Emblem in 2021. Maybe that one will fix the graphics and general story presentatio problems I had with this one. I sure hope so. I'd say this is an about average Fire Emblem game. Doesn't come close to the heights of some other installments but it's not insulting in the way Fates was, and it does enough I like to put it above some of the more middling entries.

Edit: I didn't mention the soundtrack! It's excellent. The vocal main theme is amazing and so are most of the map tracks. I can see why some people might be bothered by the strange fixation on adding dubstep elements to some tracks, but it doesn't bother me all that much.