Been playing this slowly over the past few days. Latest upgrade I've achieved is the Grappling Hook and am in Area 3 with 27 metroids down. I'm surprised that with still over half the metroids to hunt down that I've gotten so many upgrades at this point.
The game is a bit odd for me. I'm loving being back in this series and sci-fi atmosphere yet the game is coming off across as a bit linear. I just keep travelling deeper and deeper into SR388 and even though I could go back to some starting areas to get some upgrades I was locked out of before by not having the necessary upgrade at the time, I haven't seen the need to do so or felt it necessary to go back to them. Even though you enter into areas with no map, using the Aeion ability to slowly piece it all onto screen doesn't require much searching or wondering where to go next. Plus, it also reveals where items and "hidden" rooms would be to access them or get around which doesn't require much searching through the maps and levels to find hidden secrets.
I, personally, really like the look of the game. This is a true 3D screen gem. I love the depth and distance and care that was made in the backgrounds of the game to give the 2D plane you are operating on make sense and feel more organic. It's a shame the map just has generic names like Area 1 or Surface. I miss the Prime touch of every room having its own name and description. I was also impressed with Area 2 and getting to the water caves near it's bottom portion of the map. You can see these alien beasts drinking out of them and one even seemed to notice me in the foreground and retreated. I was wondering if it was going to be a boss I'd have to fight but, nope, it was just background eye-candy. There was another room that had some pillars falling in the background to emphasize the decaying structure. Again, that just comes across as, shall we say, very Prime-esque. I'm expecting different types of visors to come into play because of that vibe but I don't think that's going to be happening.
Another thing I'm surprised about is the lack of boss fights. I guess every Metroid is like a boss fight but they feel more like sub-bosses. I'm expecting huge alien monsters I need to defeat to unlock a necessary upgrade or move onto another portion of the world but there hasn't been anything I've encountered so far that feels like that. It's just hunting down and finding all the metroids in the area to unlock the seal and move on to the next world. It might seem a minor thing but it's like a sign of progression for me of beating the major enemy for an area which means the rest of the area should just be mopping up for any remaining upgrades.
The game has been pretty challenging and there's been a learning curve with new type of metroids I encounter to learn their attacks and how to counter or fight them. I'm probably around 20 deaths or so. Again, it is a bit surprising that I've gotten probably half the suit upgrades already and 13 metroids down yet have only recently gotten my fourth energy tank. I wonder if this game is still going to have the traditional 14 energy tanks or not. Keeping the energy amount low is helping keep the difficulty level a bit higher, I suppose, and maybe that's why I'm mostly facing a lot of the same enemies from the Surface down into Area 3 instead of more powerful ones. That is another minor gripe in that I'm getting tired of facing a lot of the same creatures over and over in every room. Changing the color of the enemy with a slightly new attack isn't really fooling me into thinking this is some kind of new enemy. Combined with the lack of a major boss, it just feels like I'm still playing the first or opening level of a game. However, even though I may be tired of blasting all these flying monster bats, it definitely has helped me get used to the melee counter technique so I'm a lot more comfortable with the control scheme and gameplay ideas for this Metroid game than I was when I first started playing.
Overall, it's a bit of a mixed bag for me. I'm still quite positive on the game and I'm glad to be playing another 2D Metroid after a decade but I'm not over the moon positive nor has the game gripped me so that I want to just keep playing it non-stop like Super Metroid, Zero Mission or Prime 1 and 2 did. It can be a bit hard to tear myself away from it but, once I have, I don't find myself suddenly hurrying back to it the next chance I get. Guess we'll see if things change more the further I get into it.