Metroid II: Return of Samus / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation: The heart of this game rests upon the question of the morality of Metroids. Are they ravenous bioweapons that devour anything they see, or are they mere animals defending their home? Is the Queen Metroid a big boss frustrated by Samus' persistence, or is she a mother protecting the last of her children? The docile Baby finally paints them in a sympathetic light, while still leaving room for interpretation.
Awesome Music: The surface theme of SR388, an upbeat adventurous theme, and one of the few songs in the game that has an actual melody instead of ambiance.
Cult Classic: Compared to its iconic predecessor, absolutely revolutionary successor, and the game's own remakes (both fanmade and official), the original Metroid II tends to get overlooked quite a bit — that being said, fans of the game very much exist, and tend to be very devout in their love of the game, placing it firmly into the Cult Classic territory.
Demonic Spiders: Omega Metroids, the nastiest stage of Metroid evolution. They hit hard and are very hard to dodge, and they take a whopping 40 missiles to kill. Not even the classic Metroid larvae you encounter in the end are as tough!
Disappointing Last Level: Phases 8 and 9 contain no upgrades, few enemies, and almost no branching paths. They're just one long, long tunnel that you follow until you finally reach the Queen.
Even Better Sequel: Despite sharing some the same flaws (mainly the lack of a map screen), Return of Samus is generally considered to be a step up from its predecessor thanks to its less confusing world design, new abilities, impressive spritework, and various gameplay tweaks and additions to the series' lore that would be expanded upon in the following game.
Fridge Brilliance:
- The last part of the game is considered a slog by many players. You've been fighting highly evolved Metroids for hours and by the end, there's no recharge rooms or even enemies to farm for energy and missile drops. Most players have to detour ten or fifteen minutes out of their way to find a recharge room. From there on out, the only thing you fight is Metroids... and that's the whole point. The last hour or so is such a lifeless, quiet, eerie grind because the game is telling you something. This is what happens to a planet overrun by Metroids. The indigenous life, the ecosystem... it all dies.
- As an additional touch of Brilliance and Horror, you find a destroyed Chozo statue in this area. Something has ripped the head and arm off it, and attempted to hide or destroy the Ice Beam powerup it was holding. This is the only such destroyed statue in the game. Now recall the only things left in this area are evolved Metroids...a species that is cripplingly weak to ice attacks. They are able to recognize Samus as a predator of Metroids and are also able to recognize the Ice Beam as a threat to them... but only if Samus is able to retrieve it and turn it on them. Oh, Crap! It Can Think.
- Additionally, the oppressive atmosphere of this last part can be bothersome for players because that's the whole point. You are exterminating an entire species, which should not be misconstrued as a zany joyride nor as a walk in the park.
Growing the Beard: While nowhere near the level of what Super Metroid did for the series, Metroid II made some significant improvements over the original in gameplay. The environments aren't as confusing or repetitive in design as the original and are much less cryptic in hiding weapons, and you start off with full health and your basic upgrades (Long Beam, Missiles and Morph Ball) right off the bat. Convenient Save Stations and Recharge Stations have also been added, you can crouch and shoot down instead of just straight forward or up, and the enemies aren't nearly as merciless or frequent, alleviating the notorious Fake Difficulty of the original game. It even attempted to have mostly atmospheric music in lieu of standard video game tunes, which was a tall order for a Game Boy game, but it was a surprisingly ambitious move for a video game soundtrack of the time. The new power-ups started to get more creative around this game as well, such as the Spider-Ball and the Space Jump.
Harsher in Hindsight: You can see the underground ecosystem of SR388 gradually regain ground as Metroid numbers drop. As it turns out, this isn't entirely a good thing, but most of the Chozo were thinking of doing it anyway.
It Was His Sled: Samus takes the last Metroid hatchling home with her rather than kill it. The Story Arc it sets up is so central to the plots of all chronologically subsequent games that it's impossible to not bring up the twist.
Nightmare Fuel: Nowhere near as noticeable by itself on an actual handheld console, but playing the game with headphones or on an emulator highlights that most of the "music" is just eerie ambiance, and every Metroid encounter as well as the surprise counter increase late in the game is punctuated with a Scare Chord. As cool and memorable as the theme of SR388's surface is, there's almost nothing like it for the entire rest of the game until the credits. Even the Final Boss's theme isn't even really a song but more like chaos as you try to survive the onslaught.
Once Original, Now Common: The game suffers a massive amount of this, especially after the game got a 2017 remake (along with the fan remake released in 2016). Despite the game introducing many things that would become series staples like the Varia Suit's design and save rooms, it also suffers from the NES game's clunky controls, locations that all tend to look the same with no in-game map, and various other design problems caused by the Game Boy's limitations. It doesn't help that, despite the game looking far better on a Game Boy Color and being marketed as one of the games for the Super Game Boy, the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console rerelease uses the monochrome palette of the standard Game Boy.
Padding: The last third or so of the game drops its non-linear aspects. Phases 8 and 9 almost entirely consist of one ridiculously long tunnel, with very few enemies until you reach the queen's nest.
Scrappy Mechanic: The Spider-Ball is a very useful item for exploring the game, but its controls tend to be wonky, especially when you try to bomb through a ceiling wall without getting knocked off.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: The game is considerably easier than the original, thanks to Samus's greater maneuverability, save points, more linear structure, and less-opaque solutions to navigation and puzzle solving.
Signature Scene: The scene after the Final Boss, during which Samus spares the last newborn Metroid and the two quietly head back to her ship together. It's widely considered one of the most heartwarming and effective moments in the series, to the point that part of why Super Metroid was even made is simply because series co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto was so moved by this game's ending.
Sophomore Slump: While the game is still fairly well-regarded, most fans agree that it doesn't match up to the genre-defining standards of Metroid or Super Metroid. The main reason is simply because for all of its improvements over the original game, it downplayed its action heavy, frantic exploration into a more slow paced, linear "Search and Destroy" adventure.
That One Level: Almost the entire second half of the game could count, but the second half of Phase 8 (also known as Area 7 in the remake) is especially aggravating. The player has to fight 3 Omega Metroids in a massive maze with only about 5 enemies to grind for health from. It doesn't help that the last health recharging station is in an entirely different area, several minutes away. And those Omega Metroids? They each require 40 hits with Missiles to defeat, resulting in 120 Missiles used to defeat them all. If you come in here with less than 120 Missiles, you either have to do immense grinding or go back to the last Missile Recharge Station in Area 6, which can take minutes to get to.^note
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: While it would make sense considering Samus drove them all to near extinction in this game, the various alternate Metroid life cycles never get shown again in any game since, the sole exceptions being the Omega Metroid and the Metroid Queen, as well as the various forms in stasis in the Restricted Laboratory in Fusion. All other Metroids in the series are the base infant forms, despite their evolved forms looking vastly different. In games where Metroids CAN change form, they have vastly different forms compared to this game, usually with some sort of justification. Many are interested in seeing how they would look and fight in 3D. Somewhat justified in that this is the only game where they exist in their natural environment; in almost every other Metroid game, the Metroids that appear are clones, presumably with their life cycles truncated as a result. Additionally, Fusion implies that the evolution process seen in this game only seems to work in the same conditions that exist on SR388, hence the existence of that station's Sector 1. Prime 3 explicitly states that the Metroids in that game are different due to Phazon exposure.
Ugly Cute: The Metroid hatchling. On one hand it's a jellyfish-insectoid larva that looks no different from the standard Metroids. On the other hand, the way it considers Samus its mother and how helpful it is in escaping the final area has endeared it to many fans.
Vindicated by History: Rather paradoxically, while the release of both a fan-made and official remake has caused most fans to view the original game as outdated, it has also sparked another fan movement that regards this game in a whole new light. For years, Return of Samus was viewed as a Sophomore Slump in the series, with narrow cramped level design, an emphasis on combat rather than exploration, a long endgame area devoid of any enemies that felt like mere padding, and a soundtrack that attempted to be atmospheric but instead largely ended up as unmemorable and ear-grating. Especially after the release of Samus Returns, some Metroid fans have started to look back at this game and argue that it is an underappreciated masterpiece where every aspect of its game design (including those commonly regarded as flaws) were actually deliberately chosen to serve the greater purpose of atmospheric storytelling. Some more extreme critics even go so far as to say that neither remake was able to capture what made the original so brilliant, and any aspect that the remakes changed only demonstrates the developers' inability to truly understand the source material. Examples include this AM2R review and this Game Maker's Toolkit video.

YMMV / Metroid II: Return of Samus

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