Thanks. I was mostly just trying to capture the raw feeling I have before it subsides and the opinion goes wishy washy.
tl;dr of that post: It's a good Metroid game, but it's honestly not worth $50, especially not with how rapidly it can be blazed through, even while dicking around to find upgrades (such as what I did.) It's honestly worth a rent. Metroid fans will probably find more joy out of it because of all the throwbacks and references, but will be very much put off by how linear and hand-holdy the game is, even more so than Metroid Fusion.
EDIT: As for replayability, it's something I considered too, given how short it is, but at the same time, I don't feel compelled that it's worth another playthrough. The game relied pretty heavily on the story to pace things along. Strip that out and, while the adventure is now MUCH faster, you're still screwed by the lack of true exploration and utilization of items. Most of the fun of replaying the earlier Metroid games, and even Zero Mission and Fusion, was finding what sorts of stupid stunts you could pull off to create sequence breaks to get things earlier than you should or to shorten your time radically.
While time shortening is an option, the others aren't. There's also hard mode, but the prospect of almost all late-game enemies and bosses being able to kill you in one hit makes the whole idea of playing it far too tedious than its worth.
That, and you get nothing for beating it outside of hollow bragging rights.
