E.M.M.I. Defeated: 7
Mission complete! 100%. My first run of Metroid Dread is over and I had a blast at the end. Final game spoilers incoming, so don't keep reading, unless you've already beaten the game yourself or you simply don't care.
Now, I've went into the final part of the game expecting the worst, only to be greeted with the very best it has to offer. While my fear that the last E.M.M.I. has the Power Bomb ability came true, you're essentially getting it for free, because Samus's true powers finally awaken and make quick work of the machine. So, out of the seven E.M.M.I., you only really have to deal with five of them, since both the first and the last are essentially freebies.
I suppose that the developers didn't know how to handle the threat of such an E.M.M.I. either, though it could have really forced you to use the Phantom Cloak more, if you truly want to survive, which is something they were already trying to achieve with the Wave Beam E.M.M.I., but that didn't really work for me there.
Instead of the E.M.M.I. you're fighting a new color of the X-infected Chozo Warrior, where at the end of the Hanubia area you're also against the golden version, the one that was shown in the second trailer... Now, many people completely avoided Nintendo's coverage of the game after E3 and those people will have gotten lot more out of their first time experience.
Sadly, I'm not one of those people, because I'm too curious by nature, where I've read all the "Metroid Dread Reports" and so on. I was hoping that Nintendo would show us about half of the game in advance at max, but of course I was a fool to believe that. In fact, with the exception of some of the bosses, they've shown us pretty much everything in advance. They even went over all the major areas of the game...
This also completely shifted my expectations, where I kind of saw Ferenia as the middle point of the game and that there will be a variety of additional areas past this point. And since Adam kept teasing how Samus doesn't stand a chance against Raven Beak, I also expected that you would get past the usual set of upgrades, like Gravity Suit, Screw Attack, Wave and Plasma Beam, Power Bombs and so on. But the only real new ability was the Cross Bomb.
And many of the things that you get back don't feel as powerful anymore. Take the Wave Beam for example, which is one of the last upgrades you obtain in the game. Therefore I would fully expect it to shoot through the armor of this guy, the Golzuna:
But it doesn't. You still have to get behind it and shoot it from there. It also doesn't penetrate the shield of the Chozo Warriors. It can shoot through walls, but that's really it, where it feels less like an upgrade than it used to in certain other Metroid titles. Same with the Plasma Beam, which you get much earlier this time.
The missiles and their upgrades are also not very satisfying, especially when compared to Metroid Fusion, where the Ice Missiles were quite good. Only the Storm Missiles can be really useful, like against the Chozo Robot Warriors, when set to a single target. Otherwise, I've only been using the missiles when I had to against certain bosses, because they didn't seem to have the right impact. This was different in Samus Returns, but that's mainly because it had a lot of bosses where your normal beam shots didn't do anything, like all the Metroids.
At least the Screw Attack is as satisfying to use as ever and made backtracking (as well as filling out the map) a total breeze. Who needs weapons, when you can just jump through enemies, right?
Now, after getting the Power Bombs it was finally time to explore the depths of ZDR once more. This is where you want to be backtracking through all the areas and pick up any leftovers. I've did so a couple of times already, but usually you're still missing something. And some of the Shinespark puzzles had me convinced at first that I'm still missing a power-up somewhere, something like the "secret" Ball Spark in Samus Returns, where you combine the Power Bombs with the Spider Ball. But there is no such thing and instead you're simply dealing with some really tricky puzzles...
Shinespark Shenanigans
Well, yes, the Speed Booster... It can be an amazing power-up to do all sorts of crazy things within a Metroid game. It's the best tool for speedrunning and sequence breaking. But it can also be a nightmare for completionists if those Speed Booster Blocks turn up in the weirdest places. Now, I absolutely hated those puzzles in Metroid: Zero Mission, to a point where I would never play the game without save states. And therefore I very much dreaded the return of all this in Metroid Dread.
But... it's actually not that bad. In fact, whenever I was struggling with getting one of the puzzles done, it was often because I was overcomplicating it and trying to achieve something that was impossible or near impossible to execute. Sometimes the "obvious" solution isn't the best and you have to find other ways, where this really turns into Shinespark puzzles. With some of them I was also simply missing crucial information... Well, let's just get over the most interesting ones.
So, this one in the upper areas of Artaria is probably one of the most difficult Shinespark puzzles in the game and therefore probably a bad example to start with. You have to run from the room to the right, shoot the monsters when you enter the room, store a charge, get into the Morphball tunnel and drop a Cross Bomb, then quickly use Flash Shifts to get through the shutter and the end of the room, where you can activate the Shinespark to destroy the blocks above you. It's a tight and execution-heavy sequence, where a single mistake will screw you up. Especially the respawning monsters at the beginning are very annoying.
The above puzzle at the center of Dairon is another tricky one and I'm not sure what's the best solution here. I came running from above, stored a charge and then laid some bombs on the Bomb Blocks. Now, you have to jump up again, release the Shinespark against the slopes, so that you are speed boosting again and store another charge. Then slide through the crawl space and space jump up.
Now, getting out of Space / Spin Jumps into the Shinespark is the real tricky part here. I had no idea how to do it properly, so I just fired some beams and then quickly pressed B without moving. But it turned out that you can simply press L (for aiming) to get out of the Spin Jumps. (Update: simply pressing Y + B at the same time also works.)
You want to remember this, because this method also comes in handy for the Shinespark puzzle in the frozen upper area of Darion, where I came in running from the Map Station, stored a charge at the end of the way and then quickly used Space Jumps to get up again. But there is actually another way to do it, which leads us to the following:
The Shinespark puzzle at the very top of Ferenia is probably the one that had the most people confused and frustrated, including myself. My original "solution" was to run in from the room to the right, store a charge, jump up, shoot the beam blocks, use a Cross Bomb to get over the pitfall blocks and then destroy the Bomb Blocks (where Samus is standing in the above picture). However, the Shinespark simply doesn't last as long. Maybe if you're doing it just perfectly it may work, but there is a much, much easier and faster solution anyway.
I had to look this up, because I had no idea that you can do this. But the crucial piece of information was that you keep a Speed Boost even after sliding and Wall Jumps. I suppose you can figure this out quickly by yourself by playing around with the Speed Booster, but I haven't really used it that much, unless it was necessary. But this allows for some really cool tricks.
Now, the solution is very simple. You start boosting at the outside shuttle area to the left. You then spin jump up at the end of the path, jump against the wall above the door and then slide immediately into the crawlspace, which boosts you into the little room to the left (which otherwise would have been pointless). There you finally store your charge, then simply roll back, drop bombs and use your Shinespark. Easy.
This actually made me appreciate the feature so much more, because this gives you so many possibilities, also for some of the other puzzles, like the one above at Dairon, where you can actually start boosting from the E.M.M.I. Zone below. No Shinespark needed at all. I can't wait to see what speed runners will do with this. And after some of the Shinespark puzzles in Zero Mission felt like torture, I think that Metroid Dread really struck a good balance between making challenging puzzles and not making them too heavy on the execution. I like it. It's so that you don't lose motivation to keep trying, just like with the bosses in the game. Which brings us to...
The Great Finale
When Adam first told me that Raven Beak was waiting in a fortress in the sky, my first thought was that Samus would need her ship to travel there. But the path to your ship was still blocked by a massive gate, where it became immediately clear that there would be an escape sequence and that you could use something like the Omega Blaster during this sequence, because the door with the red, round light on it looked like that... So, I was already mentally prepared for this while going up.
Overall this setup feels very similar to the Sky Temple in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and is equally relaxed at first. You can go up there, refill everything and save your game right before going into the final boss battle. You can also go back and collect any missing Energy, Missile or Power Bomb Tanks if you want to.
I personally love this, because it's a really good way of finishing a Metroid and making yourself at home there. I remember how Metroid Fusion completely shut you out from backtracking before the final boss, which was bad. And I'm also not a fan of having some kind of hazardous obstacle course as the final area, like Tourian (despite my name) or the Impact Crater. I like it simple, where the focus should be on the final boss.
And that was one great final boss. If you see people asking for Raven Beak to make it into the next Super Smash Bros., you know why. It's really well executed and fully shows the strengths of MercurySteam. At first this boss will completely overwhelm you, but if you keep trying, you will learn all the patterns and all the tricks, up to a point where you can take him on without getting a single scratch.
For me the turning point was when I learned that you could destroy his giant orb attacks with your Power Bombs (or Missiles), which even gives you ammunition and health back. It's actually rare for the Power Bombs to be this useful in a final battle, where that's another similarity to Metroid Prime 2. But finding this out made things click and from there it was just all about familiarizing yourself with all his attacks. The game really means it when it says that every attack can be avoided.
It's like learning a dance. If you get hurt, then that's because you've screwed up somehow. And this is a very satisfying and addicting way of designing boss fights. It's also one of the reasons why I've enjoyed playing through Metroid: Other M in Hard Mode twice, because it just feels really good to master the bosses there.
And I think this will be very similar here, where I might like it even more than Metroid: Samus Returns on that regard, because there some of the boss attacks were just incredibly difficult to dodge and I kept abusing the Lightning Armor way too much. There is no Lightning Armor in Metroid Dread and it's also not needed... You have the Flash Shift instead, which is a much better use of the Aeion feature.
Speaking of Aeion abilities, I love how Raven Beak uses some of them himself, which makes a lot of sense, because those are Chozo techniques. He effectively has a Hazard Shield in the first phase, he uses the Flash Shift, and one of his attacks in the second phase is basically the Beam Burst.
That Samus effectively turns into a Metroid in the end, where her suit looks completely organic and like the armored skin of the later Metroid evolutions, was a really nice twist and also quite poetic. She finally became the thing that she has been hunting down for so long.
And it also made the escape with that crazy beam weapon a lot of fun. It's similar to Super Metroid in many ways, but I found the escape sequence there to be too stressful, where in Metroid Dread it really is more about having fun with the blaster in crazy ways, without getting too comfortable with it. It's a cool sequence and a very crazy ending for this game, where I'm hyped to see where the Metroid series will be going after this.
With this evolution in mind, it somewhat makes sense why the story insisted
on throwing back the X into all of this, because Samus kept growing
stronger from absorbing them, which ultimately turned her into a Metroid herself. Though, this could also be explained from her absorbing all those Central Units / E.M.M.I.s and it's still a shame that the Chozo Warriors
had to take a backseat for this, but at least the final battle was purely focused on fighting their strongest without any X involved. Well, mostly...
Oh, and the credit music kind of reminded me of Twilight Princess for some reason. It didn't really fit the rest of the game, to be honest.
Post Game / Replaying
Like in Samus Returns, you get some Chozo Archive memories for every area with 100% item completion. These memories are all tied to the respective area and are equally sinister to the hidden memory in Samus Returns, which foreboded the evil of Raven Beak. He's not one to make prisoners.
The secret entry to the archive is just a nice artwork of all of Samus's adventures and you can also unlock artworks for the six different main Metroid games, which actually includes Other M in this case, unlike with everything inside the Special Edition for Metroid Dread. Or anything from Nintendo's coverage for the game. You get these based on your clear time in the two different difficulty modes (4 and 12 hours are the marks), where my first performance only scored me the one for Zero Mission:
Well, since this was my first playthrough I wasn't in a hurry and I did a lot of unnecessary backtracking. Plus, I've actually filled most of the map, because it looks so good and I'm crazy. Still, I wish the map completion would work the same as in Samus Returns with the larger chunks.
But I'm actually eager to replay this game. First I want to get better at it in Normal Mode and then later go for some good runs in Hard Mode. My first impressions weren't the best, as you may know from reading this series, where I didn't think that I would want to replay this game anytime soon, mainly because of the E.M.M.I. sections. But I think this is also something where you can learn lots of tricks to make those more bearable or interesting.
With the Temple of the Ocean King in Phantom Hourglass it was similar for me. When I first played the game I hated the thing, like most people probably did, but once I've learned all the shortcuts and neat tricks that you can do there, it actually became a fun challenge. Maybe it could be the same for the E.M.M.I. or maybe they are just too unpredictable for this, let's see...
But there is also some other things I want to try for myself, like some of the sequence breaks. For example I've learned that you can actually get the Bombs before Kraid by bypassing a puzzle that normally requires the Diffusion Beam. And the developers have actually anticipated this, where there is a neat reward here. If you have the Bombs during the second phase of the Kraid battle, there is a Morph Ball Launcher that can actually shoot you inside Kraid's stomach to finish him off quickly. Very awesome. Since I've never liked this part where you have to jump on Kraid's stomach projectiles, I will certainly make use of this in every run from now on.
Well, when I replay Metroid Dread I might post about it. Otherwise, see you next mission!
