Released in 1991 for the Nintendo Gameboy and recently remade for the Nintendo 3DS Metroid 2: Return of Samus is the second game in the Metroid franchise and it was the first game to introduce players to the complicated order of the series as this game is not a direct sequel to the original Metroid but it infact takes place after Metroid Prime Federation Force and before Super Metroid.

Metroid 2 follows Samus on a mission to destroy all of the remaining metroids on the planet SR388 after many other bounty hunters had failed in their missions and had not returned from the planet and thats about it for the plot its simple but its not like a huge, crazy storyline is needed for a metroid game so I was satisfied with how straight to the point the story was in metroid 2.

The visuals are fantastic and a lot better than the first game, the designers have still stuck to the darker backgrounds and mostly empty environments which gives and eerie feeling while your playing but at the same time the labyrinth style game play here is much more complicated than it was in the first game, I found a lot of the environments here all looked very similar and it made it difficult for me to navigate my way throughout the planet especially considering the game yet again does not provide an in-game map, getting lost in metroid 2 happened far too often for me and it became frustrating very quickly, the graphics are very smooth and the animations are great but the ugly grey colour the game boy puts out was a little off putting I wanted more colors in this world and I think this would have made the navigation easier as well.

With the game play mostly focusing on Samus killing metroids players would hope that a large variety of challenging and unique types of metroids would be in the game and for the most part I can say this is true, there are a lot of metroids in this game and most of them are sub bosses the only issue I have with this is that you need missiles and a lot of health and even though this game finally includes areas which refill both of these there are so few of them that it makes fighting all of these massive sub bosses extremely frustrating especially when you have to back track so far just to get a refill, apart from this the game controls fluently and there are plenty of powerups for you to seek out and collect.

The soundtrack here has definitely taken a step down in quality compared to that of the first game,there is more variety in music in Metroid 2 but apart from a few tracks the limitations of the gameboy’s sound capabilities really took away a lot of the atmosphere from the music, the end credits theme and final boss music are both awesome and full of energy but most other tracks are short and repeat on a loop, it gets annoying and to be honest I spent most of the game listening to podcasts due to me not enjoying the sound track.

And that was Metroid 2 Return of Samus, this is a fantastic game boy game and a pretty good edition to the Metroid series, I had more issues with this game than I did the original but its still holds enough ground on its own to be considered a good title, the graphics are fantastic and the game controls perfectly however the annoying navigation and lack of a stellar soundtrack really knocks down my opinion of this title therefore Metroid 2: Return of Samus gets a not so high but still impressive 7.3/10

I hope you enjoyed my review of Metroid 2: Return of Samus for the Nintendo Game Boy

Want me to review a specific game/movie/product or do you have a general question you would like me to answer? if so please email me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com