Metroid Dread is about the sequel to Metroid Fusion you'd have expected shortly after its release, albeit a decade or two late. Fusion had a heavier emphasis on difficult bosses, and so Dread doubles down on that with even harder bosses that are easily the best in the series. Fusion had a famous chase sequence, and so Dread doubles down on that by making chase sequences a standard mechanic instead of a one-off set piece. While Fusion went overboard on directing the player to avoid tedious backtracking, Dread has a generally more tasteful approach of directing the player primarily through clever level design and careful teleporters, while also giving some opportunities to wander around and get lost that Fusion completely omitted (though it still isn't above plot-locked doors and impossible jumps in its toolkit).
The surprising part is just how damn well executed it is. It's the kind of game where even if you don't love everything it does, it's just done too well to mind it. They added QTEs and an analogue of the much-overused dodge roll to Metroid, but I was ok with it (honestly the "dodge roll" is probably the best new powerup). Yeah, the chase sequences don't really achieve the same horror mood as Fusion because that's what happens when you turn something into a standard mechanic, but they're pretty fun platformer Pac-Man sequences in their own right. As much as I love slow clunky games, Dread's fast fluid movement feels great and also makes perfect sense as a necessity for the chases to function (a contrast to something like Nier Automata that made its combat faster just because it looks cooler and is more popular, but ended up making the bullet hell elements of the original game pointless in the process).
Of course while it manages to dodge most of my would-be complaints, it does have a few genuine flaws: the music fails to live up to the series standards, the art design is a little generic, the control layout is a tad awkward and heavy on shoulder button modifiers (my old hands literally cannot handle playing this game in portable mode), the load times between areas are really long, and not all the upgrades get that much love. Whatever. None of them add up to much consequence, other than the music.
Let's talk about what does matter: the bosses.Their designs follow a few basic rules that result in really great bosses:
- Invincibility windows are short and sparse, meaning you can almost always damage the boss.
- Damage is rarely "hit this specific attack pattern twice", but trends towards "500 damage for this phase any way you can", meaning that you're always making the fight faster the better your offense is.
- Boss damage tends to be extreme so that when you do get hit, it really hurts. But on the flip side, every attack is very avoidable. Meaning that finishing a fight near death is quite doable, rather than falling into "well this upcoming attack always hits me, so I'm just screwed now".
Of course most of what I just listed is pretty standard Metroid (aside from extreme damage didn't get introduced until Fusion). The bosses are just plain better designed, with more phases. Carefully done so that earlier parts of the boss often teach you about later parts. As you get upgrades, the bosses change in tandem so they never stagnate (the second half of bosses almost feel like a different game, and even a late game upgrade changes how you use missiles). The added mobility means you get to do a lot more evading, even beautifully weaving the space jump into a lot of fights. Even coming off Fusion, I just didn't expect to love the bosses so much.
So should you play Metroid Dread? If you have even the slightest taste for the genre, then absolutely. It's the kind of game that is so well crafted that it's hard not to enjoy it, and can proudly stand alongside Super Metroid and Metroid Prime 1 (though it'll take time to figure out where exactly next to them, probably underneath).
