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aro-aizawa · 5 years

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alright so i finished up playing all of pokemon shield including the post-game mini plot, so here’s a quick fire list of all the things i liked about it and disliked about it before i go on to explain it in more depth (also spoiler warning). here we go.

what i liked:

the graphics, a little weaker in handheld form but largely unnoticeable unless you were looking for it. GREAT graphics when playing on tv mode.

the new pokemon. they were all really cute, and i especially loved the alternate forms and new evolutions of older gen pokemon.

opal, she’s hands down one of my favourite gym leaders so far only shortly followed by bede.

bede is a nonbinary icon as proven by the fact that they didn’t use any pronouns to refer to them until after the fourth gym, and the fact that when they’re in their gym uniform its trans flag colour. it may not be canon, but its canon in my heart.

gym battles are treated as they should be -- huge spectacles that gets people amped the hell up.

dynamaxing. its so goddamn satisfying to finish off a gym battle with your best pokemon as a fucking giant behind you, no matter their actual size. tiny pyukumuku behind you? badass. huge ass wailord? bad. ass. an actual baby pokemon? bad. ASS.

the wild area. introducing camping was a good system, it definitely helped a lot when you couldn’t exactly jump back to a pokemon center so you cook your pokemon some curry to revive and heal them. i imagine they took some inspiration from breath of the wild, tho i haven’t played it to really confirm.

what i didn’t like:

they cut so many corners in the game, you can definitely tell it was made in a hurry.

a minor note here, but for me i have this annoying bug that makes it so some pokemon have the exact same cry. its a sort of whooshing noise that you’d expect for a flying type pokemon, but it frequently appeared instead of well known and familiar cries. i can’t pin down exactly what the cause of this is, or if i’m hearing things wrong, but it was infuriating.

the towns are empty and barely even give you flavor text anymore. you might as well not speak to any npcs except shop keepers and named characters.

there is exactly three cute outfits and three cute hairstyles and that’s about it. i know a lot of this point is mostly about personal taste but please nintendo, we had such a good range in the previous game.

don’t explore. there is literally no point in looking in all the nooks and crannies of this game, because i guarantee that if the game doesn’t tell you to go there, then there’s nothing there.

it’s too easy. it’s....actually crazy that i’m even putting this as a point, because i’m a strict believer in making games playable for everyone. but it’s just....too much.

the cut down pokedex will forever inject salt right into my veins. especially when they had the audacity to include one of the first starter pokemon, but not the other two. charizard is an okay pokemon but its overrated, nintendo please accept that.

the plot didn’t exist until suddenly it did and then it made no sense.

i hate the fact that the team in this game were just delegated to fans. i understand the whole “fake out” thing they might have been going for by getting the player to think that they’d turn out to be bad, but no. it just sucks.

fucking. swordward and shieldbert. i???? literally. have no. words. (i do but they’re super long so hmmm down below)

a game worth about £20 ($25) less than i paid for it. its a decent quality game, but not nearly nintendo quality.

wow this post is longer than i expected it to be already. but anyways, the rest is super long and under the cut further going into depth about the points i raised.

to start with, i’ll talk about the good points because honestly?? i really wanted to love this game. i really really did. maybe it was just the fact that at first i didn’t like sun and moon because they changed the formula so much, but it turned out to become my favourite game in the series. or maybe it was just that i don’t like being hypercritical of things i spent fifty fucking pounds on. either way, i wanted to like the game, and overall i sort of did but i sort of didn’t. lots of mixed feelings. anyways. onto explaining the good stuff. (or you can skip to “now on w the bad junk” for the bad stuff)

1. the graphics, a little weaker in handheld form but largely unnoticeable unless you were looking for it. GREAT graphics when playing on tv mode.

one of my favourite things about the pokemon series in recent times is seeing the process from 2d undetailed sprites to 3d incredibly detailed models. the most ambitious thing about gen 5 was the way the camera moved with your movements as you crossed the bridge, and now i just sometimes sit back and thing “wow 13 year old me would FLIP if she could see how good they got”. bc i kept just....admiring all the graphics and the quality of them.

2. the new pokemon. they were all really cute, and i especially loved the alternate forms and new evolutions of older gen pokemon.

definitely one of my favourite things about the game was seeing the new forms of pokemon we already knew and the alternate forms they’d take when dynamaxed. i love seeing pokemon with new types that completely flip the script, like darumaka becoming an ice type instead of a fire type. or the fact that they gave mr mime a galaran form and it actually doesn’t look bad.

i really loved that some of the galaran forms had unique evolutions, such as linoone evolving into obstagoon. or meowth into perrserker. it makes sense and i’m always super happy to see new evolutions for old pokemon, it keeps things interesting when pokemon other than eevee get new evolutions.

(tho that being said, still disappointed there’s still not another eeveelution. still holding out hope for that ghost type.)

3. opal, she’s hands down one of my favourite gym leaders so far only shortly followed by bede.

i’m not super well versed in the pokemon universe besides from gen 1 and gen 5 onwards (if you couldn’t tell), but its really refreshing to have an old gym leader that’s visibly elderly rather that just grey haired maybe retiree man. her personality was also really fun, it sort of felt like she literally had the most personality of all the gym leaders, which kind of sucked but it made me really love her character.

and bede i didn’t wholly expect to really like as much as i did? i mayhaps might have spoiled myself a little on their gym leader status by dipping into the swsh tag here on tumblr before i fully completed the game. but still, they seemed just generally really annoyingly stuck up? but something endeared me to the darl and i just think it mostly had to do w the fact that opal took one look at them and declared they was her grandchild now.

4. bede is a nonbinary icon as proven by the fact that they didn’t use any pronouns to refer to them until after the fourth gym, and the fact that when they’re in their gym uniform its trans flag colour. it may not be canon, but its canon in my heart.

argue with me on this point all you like, but you can’t deny the fact that in CANON they literally did not use any pronouns to refer to bede until after the fourth gym. the only mention of pronouns before that was their trainer card, which i did not check because good character development should be shown not told through an impersonal medium such as character cards.

5. gym battles are treated as they should be -- huge spectacles that gets people amped the hell up.

i’ve always loved the way the league is set up, because it makes sense. the pokemon formula works and its interesting, but in previous games most people only vaguely acknowledge it as something every kid tries but doesn’t really complete. it’s already set up people love pokemon battles, there just wasn’t a spectator sport about it unless in the anime or movies. they’re just a thing that happens that none of the npcs care about.

finally its treated like the spectator sport that it should be. like,,, hell yeah,,,

(also do you think that in the pokemon universe there’s various stories/tv shows about made up kids completing the league and becoming champions? because i definitely do.)

6. dynamaxing. its so goddamn satisfying to finish off a gym battle with your best pokemon as a fucking giant behind you, no matter their actual size. tiny pyukumuku behind you? badass. huge ass wailord? bad. ass. an actual baby pokemon? bad. ASS.

i p much summed up most of my thoughts in this point well. but i love when pokemon are so visibly powerful. like these creatures have powers that we’d equate to actual gods like summoning whole storms, creating giant waves, create earthquakes and so much more. pokemon are so powerful and to see them become giant and have so much weight and power? its so satisfying controlling that and bringing down other giant pokemon.

7. the wild area. introducing camping was a good system, it definitely helped a lot when you couldn’t exactly jump back to a pokemon center so you cook your pokemon some curry to revive and heal them. i imagine they took some inspiration from breath of the wild, tho i haven’t played it to really confirm.

i really appreciated the change that started in pokemon let’s go with some pokemon being visible and easy to encounter wandering through the grass. it makes it so much easier to search for the one pokemon that you don’t have in your pokedex yet, or if you’re looking for a specific pokemon to join your team.

i love how large and expansive the wild area is, and with the camping system you can just explore and fill out your pokedex without ever leaving if you’re fully stocked up on supplies. it makes you really believe the whole “yep this kid isn’t just blasting through the whole thing in one day”. kids sleep in tents on their journey with their pokemon and cook curry for them all. adds a nice level of immersion and convenience.

jesus fuck this is so long and i haven’t even gotten to my criticisms yet, is anybody actually reading this chunk of text??? well rip to you my friend and thank you. but now on w the bad junk.

1. they cut so many corners in the game, you can definitely tell it was made in a hurry.

they did a decent job considering it was in development for only two years w one only for the concept and the second actually making it. but they cut so many corners it doesn’t quite feel like a true installment into the pokemon universe. it feels like it was made by another dev studio rather than gamefreak. like how fallout new vegas and fallout 3 barely feel like the two installments in the same franchise.

this point sort of leads into many different points that i raised, so i’ll explain those a little bit more in depth there. but to sum it up, the easiest way to see it is just how...flat things are. if you only pay attention to the things the game directs you to, then you will not miss a single thing. flavor text is less about adding depth to the world and more just...pointless. it adds. nothing.

and in the post game when sonia gets a new assistant, even though she plays a fairly important part in the post-game plot, she doesn’t get a name nor a unique character model. she get’s a generic doctor model yet it’s treated like we should feel betrayed that nameless npc 234 went behind sonia’s back and stole from her.

OH! and i almost forgot!!!! but that one part where rose is trying to talk leon into something “mysterious”??? they straight up just used images!!!! like,,,, what???? you didn’t have time to program the minimal animations for that?? who’s fault is that for pushing the release!!! give your employees time to work at a decent pace and not crunch them to reach an impossible goal. game freak, you don’t have to release a game every november.

2. a minor note here, but for me i have this annoying bug that makes it so some pokemon have the exact same cry. its a sort of whooshing noise that you’d expect for a flying type pokemon, but it frequently appeared instead of well known and familiar cries. i can’t pin down exactly what the cause of this is, or if i’m hearing things wrong, but it was infuriating.

also p much just explain this in the point. BUT it happened all. the. time. the only pokemon i know for sure was effected by the bug was gyarados, because instead of the roaring cry i heard the whooshing sound that was probably meant to be another pokemon’s cry. it sounds wack when im saying it rn bc im not 100% convinced i wasn’t making this up, but it was the sole reason i turned the pokemon cries to get drowned out by the music and sound effects.

3. the towns are empty and barely even give you flavor text anymore. you might as well not speak to any npcs except shop keepers and named characters.

i touched on this previously in 1 but basically walking around a town and talking to npcs will not get you any interesting dialog. going into the houses/rooms, and you’ll only get one npc who’s all like “i’m brushing my hair!” and that’s about it. there aren’t any items tucked away in houses or corners of buildings for you to explore or battle people. when you acknowledge that there’s no flavor text from npcs all the towns feel practically empty whereas in the previous games it actually alive.

not to mention how little the diaglog changes? like it may just be my faulty memory at play but im pretty sure that the npcs in the previous games had more dynamic dialog in which they’d change what they said depending on your action in the town or for the plot. after a major event just happened, if you walked around and talked to everyone in that area they’d talk about it. but that happened like....once.

4. there is exactly three cute outfits and three cute hairstyles and that’s about it. i know a lot of this point is mostly about personal taste but please nintendo, we had such a good range in the previous game.

one thing i loved about the series was the increasing freedom in customisation of trainers. fashion kept getting wider and with more variety, clothes that were still cute and i’d frequently have about 2k because i just kept buying them. by the end of my playthrough of swsh i had almost a million saved up because i didn’t like most of the clothing options. i found one outfit and hairstyle i liked a quarter of the way through the game and stuck with it until the end. they drastically cut down on the options, and that sucked.

5. don’t explore. there is literally no point in looking in all the nooks and crannies of this game, because i guarantee that if the game doesn’t tell you to go there, then there’s nothing there.

again, already touched on this point but one example i know is this. when you go to the energy plant to battle rose, or go to the roof to battle eternus, i expected to go back to it when the event was over to see if something was left behind or because i’d been locked in a cutscene and unable to explore before, that meant there would be something now. but nope. don’t bother. even when you think you might be able to do something fun, don’t try until the game points you in that direction itself. if something interesting is going to happen in the game, i assure you they will point it out for you.

6. it’s too easy. it’s....actually crazy that i’m even putting this as a point, because i’m a strict believer in making games playable for everyone. but it’s just....too much.

hard games disinterest me. if a game is renowned for it’s difficulty, then i will avoid it. i don’t care if defeating dark souls is a badge of honor for your stubbornness or skill. i simply don’t enjoy playing a game that makes me want to quit in frustration because i am not good at video games. i appreciated how easy the games have been in recent years because it makes it a lot easier for me to actually complete them and enjoy them, it’s why i have trouble getting into the earlier gens of pokemon.

but when it got to the point where after only about an hour or two of dynamax farming, by the time that i got round to the championships i was literally one shotting every single pokemon. even when i didn’t have super effective moves. i was almost 20 levels ahead of the competition, and blasted through the whole thing in a total of 10 minutes battle time and 30 minutes dialog and cutscene time, with a 20 minute pause for a phone call.

i defeated leon with only very minimal struggle. i couldn’t one shot all his pokemon, i will admit. i two shotted them. i went into the championship fully stocked up on potions and revival items and left with all of them. none of my pokemon fainted or even sustained major damage.

while satisfying feeling that you’re op enough to utterly annihilate your opponents, there comes a point where it’s just “why bother i know i’ll win” which kind of sucks.

7. the cut down pokedex will forever inject salt right into my veins. especially when they had the audacity to include one of the first starter pokemon, but not the other two. charizard is an okay pokemon but its overrated, nintendo please accept that.

sorry to charizard fans, but please acknowledge that it’s overrated. its design is basic, and already has multiple different forms. the fact that they passed over the opportunity for the creativity that dynamax venusaur or blastoise could give, for another basic dragon design is so annoying.

not to even mention the fact that they didn’t even bother to keep the rest of the starter pokemon either. i vaguely remember one time some nintendo employee or big shot saying that the best thing about it is that every pokemon is at least one person’s favourite. the underused or underloved pokemon will always be ONE person’s favourite, and that’s why you can get the whole pokedex. but y’know fuck that philosophy in the name of getting the game out on time. when they could have very easily pushed the release date back. i’m lucky that most of my faves got included but i know that a fair amount did not. and i’m pissed.

8. the plot didn’t exist until suddenly it did and then it made no sense.

9. i hate the fact that the team in this game were just delegated to fans. i understand the whole “fake out” thing they might have been going for by getting the player to think that they’d turn out to be bad, but no. it just sucks.

these two go so hand in hand, that i’m taking the time to address them together considering in every single previous game so far the team has had some HEAVY influence on the plot in one way or another. they’re always linked to the legendary pokemon of the game and they’re always included in the overarching plot, either by driving the player to act or subtly there.

i kept seeing team yell show up and trying to work out how they were going to join the plot. were they a cult doing Science Shit in the background trying to revive the legendaries? was marnie the leader of this cult and going through the league to distract people from her totally devious going-ons? or would it turn out that marnie though the team harmless but really it was a front for her relative’s secret cult?

nope!!! they were annoying roadblocks who added literally nothing to the plot.

and when i realised that, it was the seventh gym battle and so far the only plot i’d glimpsed at was the mysterious explosions in hammerlocke city and the overarching tale of the sword and shield that had been obvious since literally the first time sonia started to talk about it. there had been no plot. there was literally no plot other than the gym battles which sonia and leon specifically called out to “leave this to the grownups, you two just focus on the gym challenge”.

and when i got my eighth badge and was completing the equivalent of the elite four, i was still confused as FUCK because where the hell was the plot???? and then the whole weird ass “we have to save leon” from a meeting with.....a chairman? how about you wait just an hour jfc it’s not that bad? he’s not being held against his will? the chairman wasn’t doing anything obviously evil or even hinted at?

the whole thing was vague and rose’s motivation was just ??????? i don’t know???? i still don’t exactly know what the whole deal was. it came out of nowhere and made. no. sense. it had completely lost me. along with the fact that they were suddenly introducing dynamax raids like we hadn’t already been doing that so many times in the wild area????

which leads me to my next point.....sigh.

10. fucking. swordward and shieldbert. i???? literally. have no. words. (i do but they’re super long so hmmm down below)

first things first, is that i hate everything about these characters. from their names, to their designs, to their motivations, to how they’re handled in canon. it was shitty and while i had fun playing with the whole “this is what a champion does after they beat the previous one” thing, it was just in general really bad.

like, i cannot get over how shitty their designs were. their hair was literally a sword and a shield. i kept thinking “wow swordward has a penis head that wiggles when he moves” and couldn’t take a single thing he said seriously. i literally wanted to weep at the horrible character design.

not to mention the suddenness of their whole schtick. “yeah we’re royalty and we’re “”””CELEBRITIES”””” even if none of you have heard of us”. like what????? the fuck????

it just sort of pisses me off to an astronomical degree that this low quality shit was jammed into a pokemon game when they were getting so good at storytelling. it felt like game freak were hammering me with a club while singing “YOU PAID 50 WHOLE POUNDS FOR THIS IN PARTICULAR!!!” like,,,, thanks. thank you. thank you for waiting until after i’d finished the game to really hammer home that point.

which somewhat leads me to my last point that really just sums up the majority of my thoughts on the whole game:

11. a game worth about £20 ($25) less than i paid for it. its a decent quality game, but not nearly nintendo quality.

if i knew what i knew about the game know, i wouldn’t pay fifty fucking pounds for it. it physically pains me to spend more than £30 in one sitting, that i actually winced while i was buying it even though i was being 100% optimistic that i was going to love it. at most i’d pay £30 for it, but only then. it’s a good game to really distract you and power through but other than that, i don’t see it as a game i’m going to come back to so i can complete the pokedex and i certainly am not going to buy the other game so i can play it again unlike how i’ve done in the past with my favourite installments.

maybe i’m just picky, or i don’t buy games often enough, but i really would not classify this as a quality installment in the pokemon franchise. if you get a free copy, or just the opportunity to play it for a few hours then fine it’s a great game. but not quite something you should want to spend your money on. but don’t pirate it. that’s a fast way to get bugs.

to sum this whole mess of a post up: immediately after finishing the game i said to myself “now time to go play a REAL pokemon game” before booting up pokemon moon.

#long post #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon swsh #pokemon #shut up danni #wow this got LONG its literally 4k words #i got a little salty #ooooppps #i really wanted to like this game #i really really did because i hate being negative about pokemon #its one of the few series that i love with barely any faults #but this......this is just painful #i should be thankful on some level because it distracted me from the fact that i was in the process of rehoming my dog #but still there's just....so many things wrong with it.....#sigh #(pls give this post attention it took me an hour and a half to write)

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morphogenetic · 5 years

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why you should play the ds version of 999 first and not the nonary games version: a thread

excuse the formatting of this bc im copying it from my twitter as text, but: why you shouldn’t play the nona/ry games version of 999 on your first run, a thread. lots of this has been said by other people too but i figured i would condense my opinions + what other people have said. 999 spoilers ofc, also vague vlr spoilers later on but the 999 spoilers are a lot worse lmao.

this is ABSURDLY long and i am sorry but tl;dr spoiler free version: buy tng anyway so you can easily play vlr in hd and to support the games, but play 999 on either a ds or an emulator if you have to because boy howdy the story is really meant for this platform (if you’re replaying 999 in the tng version after originally playing the ds version none of this applies LMAO)

(also this isn't meant to at ALL be angry at people who played the t/ng port first! im sad y'all didn't get to experience the dual screen version, but at this point t/ng is much more accessible and a lot of people don't even KNOW about the ds-original thing, so it's not your fault!! like i WISH to god that they had ported it in some dual-screen/two-screen way, but the fact that they didn't isn't anyone's fault. ok end this part y'all are so valid i just feel sad that you didnt experience the game in its Best State)

spoilers below the cut

1) the big one: the implementation of the dual screen thing. they were always going to have a hard time implementing this on not-a-3ds, but i'll start with the non-spoilery part: action mode...is bad. the fact that they force you into it. is bad. novel mode is more passable but the fact that they default you into a mode with nearly 95% dialogue-only, in a visual novel, is..pretty gross, and the fact that they force-switch you into novel mode sometimes anyway is. maybe an indication that having a 95% dialogue route in a visual novel...wasnt good

they EASILY could have done a split-screen mode instead, and while that wouldn't have been ideal either, it would still have allowed for the incorporation of both screens simultaneously without having to make compromises

also, petty spoiler thing, but some of the dialogue rewrites to make action mode flow better took out one of my fave pieces of foreshadowing. the main example of this is in junpei's flashback thing to getting kidnapped near the beginning of the game. in t/ng, they had him voice the 'huh, did i leave that open?' line, with respect to his window being open because, you know, zero 'bout to kidnap him. in the original, this is /not/ on the top screen (i.e. voiced by junpei) - it's on the bottom screen. without quotes, i.e. it's not something he's thinking but it's there, in the same formatting as the rest of the descriptions. in other words.....zero is the one saying 'huh, did i leave that open?' in real time, foreshadowing the dual screen twist. this is SO minor in comparison to everything else for SURE but the fact that this got left out still makes me so sad bc i LOVED it. anyway.

(also the fact that the narrative mode twist of all the random gore descriptions being food-like makes WAY more sense in retrospect with the dual screens, because of course a fucking 12 year old wouldn't know how else to describe gore lmao. this is kind of lost in t/ng because it makes it out to be more of something that jun/pei is thinking but i digress. dual screen for dual protagonists good thanks)

2) (YES IT TOOK ME THIS LONG TO GET HERE. SH) the final puzzle.....in t/ng....fucking sucks. not only because the puzzle itself sucks, which uh...it does (PASSWORD IS THE PASSWORD?? FUCKING REALLY??). but a) it loses the theme-ing of the sudoku itself since, yknow. 9s everywhere but,

b) more importantly, it just...doesn't have the same punch to it. even ignoring the fact that the sudden upside-down-ness is one of the best ways i've ever seen a puzzle suddenly hit you with a plot twist/a revelation, in this case the 'oh shit, we were solving puzzles from akane's viewpoint the whole time and /only now/ are we truly doing it with junpei being the input source' is just. fucking masterful. explaining this is so hard but i promise it makes sense. like obviously the twist w the dual perspectives thing is revealed right before but the fact that they suddenly (literally) flip the entire game on its head is just. *chef kiss* so good.

also, adding to this, c) the fact that the tn/g version took out the fact that you were seeing baby!kane's face while you were doing the sudoku just adds to the emotional impact of the puzzle. like, in that moment, the puzzle itself isn't the relevant factor, it's the fact that you're doing the puzzle to save her. i no joke started fucking CRYING irl when that happened bc of how hard that hit me emotionally and the fact that they didn't even have something to mimic that in t/ng makes me so goddamn sad. it's not about the puzzle, its about Saving someone via the puzzle, and they just...removed that part. h

(also another dual screen thing here bc i forgot to add it earlier: the constant perspective-swapping thing during the true end feels much less awkward on the ds since you can just naturally shift your eyes between the screens. again, minor, and there probably was never going to be a great way to implement this with a single screen regardless, but it really does flow so much better with two screens. 3ds port of tn/g when)

3) finally, a more Controversial Opinion, but the timeline flow, while absolutely great for replays, kind of ends up spoiling you on the fact that there are multiple timelines that you have to search through for the truth. i wouldn't have minded this so much if the timeline feature in t/ng only unlocked after you hit your first ending, but they didn't do that - they let you look at it from the very start, which really..misses the point of the game.

(minor vl/r spoilers incoming) in vlr, the fact that you know you have multiple branches from the start makes sense, especially both because it's SUPER obvious that there are branching points (door choices, allying/betraying, etc). obviously 99/9 has choices like that too ala the door choices, but you're actively -not- jumping between timelines. that's the point! because junpei CAN'T jump!! he's an esper, sure, though maybe only one by accident/strong emotional connection [thats a whole different thread LMAO], but the whole point is that he can't make timeline choices in the same way that phi and sigma can literally timeline shift.

(end v/lr spoilers here i think) tl;dr the timeline feature is great for replays bc its super anti-frustration but boy howdy they did not implement it well. final point: the fact that you have to play 999 from the beginning every time you get an end makes sense narratively since akane has to do the same thing - she has to go through the whole route (in junpei's head ofc) over and over, she can't just skip around. again, anti-frustration feature that i'm glad they added, but you still lose something w t/ng this way

like ngl, having to fast forward through things instead of just skipping around is annoying as hell, but akane had to do the same goddamn thing! probably way more than we actually have to do it in the game, tbh. definitely this is me prioritizing certain limitations of the ds hardware as important to the narrative but you really do end up missing out if you can just skip at will

4) very minor thing that isnt actually a plot thing at all but some of the puzzle dialogue is infinitely funnier when you have the ability to see the characters on the top screen talking at the same time you have the puzzle stuff on the bottom screen. this mostly applies to all the stuff with the cards w all the player faces on them in the...cargo room? like it's still funny without it but somehow seeing santa talking about himself on the card when he says 'that's one handsome son-of-a-bitch!' is 500x funnier when you literally see him TALKING about himself

JESUS FUCK THIS IS LONG IM SO SORRY IF YOURE ON MOBILE

#zero escape #am i tagging this? yeah. it needs to be said lmao #999 #9 hours 9 persons 9 doors #nine hours nine persons nine doors #ok to rb #long post #(i mean i put it under a cut but. jic)

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samusgoeszoomzippy · 7 years

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My Thoughts on Metroid: Samus Returns

I’ve now played through the game on normal and hard mode, 100% each time, and I wrote down a lot of random thoughts I had as I played. Even though I have no real need to do so and I doubt anyone will read this, I’ve decided to organize them and toss them into the void of tumblr. This is in no way a review, just a random collection of thoughts. Obviously, major spoiler warning if you haven’t played.

SPOILERS BELOW!!!

Metroids The metroid were done really well, unlike the ones in the original, it’s a lot harder to just missile spam them. And they were a lot more challenging; embarrassingly enough, I actually died to the first Alphas, but that might’ve just been my lack of familiarity with the counter and gameplay over all. The Gammas are pretty fun too, and I thought the whole chasing thing was fun at first, and it didn’t really get old until the second playthrough, at which point it just went to being super annoying bc of its randomness. I like that they had both fire and electric varieties, I wish they would’ve carried that over to the other forms. The ZETAS are amazing, they were my favorite in AM2R and they still are, I really love how reminiscent they are of xenomorphs. And between yanking it off the ceiling, and the super extra counter sequence, it’s such a satisfying fight. And the last one actually really surprised me, I was fully expecting an Alpha, and then suddenly he jumped out of the background and I was SHOOK, I really appreciated it though. The Omegas were good too, but not anything too much more special, although his entrance was amusing to me for some reason, he runs in stomping, then he starts slamming his tail on the ground, he’s just a big ole baby! The melee counter in this fight is a bit too extra though, it was honestly kinda amusing, that slo-mo backflip haha.

Bosses The bosses are my only really complaint that I still have, I really wish there were more early on. But oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ They once they had were good enough. I’m glad you could still utilize bombs for the Arachnus fight, but he was still pretty basic, AM2R spoiled me lol, that fight was so amazing. I love the whole build up to the Diggernaut; I got that wonderful metroid feeling of figuring out where to go/what to do, because I didn’t have the grapple beam when I first found him in Area 3, and it took me some time to figure out what to do, but when I did, he SPOOKED me so hard, because I lowkey expected the fight to happen right then and I was NOT ready. And then with the chase, I thankfully hadn’t been spoiled on that, and although I could tell something was coming, I didn’t expect it at all, and it was so exciting. The actual fight wasn’t too bad for me, even though I died a lot because I struggled to dodge his attacks at first. I had already seen to use the spiderball during the fight, so I knew what to do when I first stunned him, but phase 3 had me STUMPED and I got that wonderful satisfaction of finally figuring it out (tip: you can spiderball the floor and be 100% immune to getting sucked up). The Queen fight was great too, I’m so glad they kept the bombig the stomach method (idk why they wouldn’t), and again they’re giving the spiderball more use!!! Unfortunately, I was spoiled on Ridley being in the game, but just his presence. The fight was really hard at first, but it’s actually so easy now if you just use beam burst and spam supers during the melee counters. It wasn’t anything too special in terms of Ridley battles, but I LOVE how my squishy son (or daughter or child or whatever lol) helps so much, he’s such a good baby :’)

Music After my first playthrough, the music was one of my few complaints. I felt like it was too dull and quiet (I still think it’s a bit too quite), but after playing through again, and seeing other people comment on it, I realize that it did a wonderful job of staying faithful to the original’s atmospheric beeps and boops, (just not quite as annoying lol) and I think it was actually a good decision to do that. Area 3’s “outer area” theme is a particular favorite, the steady beat in the background feels very foreboding, plus, you can hear some of those beeps from the original OST. I also really love how the took the final metroid nest theme and slowed it down so much, it’s so creepy and made me so exciting for what I knew was coming. And on that note, the music that plays on the way to the first Omega and the Diggernaut do that really well too. Regardless, I still feel like it could’ve benefited from more upbeat tracks, like the surface remix and area 7. The boss music is also so good, especially the Omega theme, and although it took me a bit, I’ve really come to love the new Queen theme; as much as I would’ve liked to see the original theme, I think this one is better and it does its job really well, plus it isn’t so repetitive. Also, I find it interesting that they remixed Arachnus’s theme for Diggernaut and made Arachnus a new theme, but I’m glad they did bc it was a bit too epic for Arachnus. Lastly, I’m so glad they kept the original title theme, but kinda “hid” it after the iconic metroid title theme, and also how they incorporated it in the credits theme, I felt emotional when that part of the credits theme played lol.

Graphics I know a lot of people are upset that this game was on the 3DS, but I think it still looks so amazing. The backgrounds are beautiful and so detailed, they make rooms look so deep, even without the 3D (which, while I think it definitely enhances that, it not really that crucial of a thing to have). All the random creatures they have in the background is such a nice touch, I just sat there and watched as that giant slug in Area 6 crossed the screen, it was amazing. And just in general, all the areas look so nice, but Area 7 is one that stood out, I was really surprised by how techy everything looked, I wasn’t expecting it, and the music was surprising too!! I had no idea that the music from the first trailer was actually in the game. And then just all the character graphics as well, the enemies look really nice, and Samus looks amazing, I really love the new gravity suit, especially the morph ball, I love just rolling around bc all the lines on it look so nice, plus getting it felt even more refreshing when moving in water than it does in other games, but it’s probably just in my head.

Vs AM2R Long story short, I can’t really rank them. They’re both very different games and each have different strong points and weak points. Samus Returns has better metroid battles, but AM2R has a lot more unique bosses that are fun. AM2R has a lot more fun, “memorable” tunes, but Samus Returns has good music that recreates the atmospheric feel of the original. Basically, I feel like in every way, it could be easily argued that either game has the other beat. (Another random note about the two, I really like that both of them reference Fusion in different ways.)

Other Stuff (Just some other things that I wanna mention that idk where to put) There are a lot of random little things I noticed that I appreciated, like how the morph ball kinda catches on ledges if you turn around as you’re about to fall off, the shattering effect when you melee frozen enemies, the fact that the metroid tanks seen in the chozo memories are still in the background in Area 7, the tornadoes on SR388 as Samus flies away that kinda resemble the metroid nuclei. Something I find funny is how to Autoads are very different in the original/AM2R and in Samus Returns, but in both cases they’re super annoying, just for different reasons. And the new spider bomb thing is so satisfying to just FLY across the room, and the spooky appearance of the 11th chozo memory, it actually freaked me out at first bc it was late and dark when it happened. And then of course the BABY THE BABY THE BABY!!!! I love that he’s in the ship with you once you beat the game, and I even more that you can take him all around the planet and he helps you solve puzzles and sometimes just lets you skip them lol. One last thing I wanna mention is the Scan Pulse; I think it’s a great edition for those who don’t wanna have to bomb every wall to find items, new players, or just players who does care able the exploration as much, etc., but I was determined to get through the game without using it, and I did! I got 100% on two playthrough and I never used it once (except once to test it out, but in an area that was already all filled in). It doesn’t really matter, but it’s something I was proud of, and in the end, Samus Returns was such an amazing experience and I really love this game.

#metroid #metroid Samus Returns #metroid spoilers #sorry for the super long post lol

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