Area 7
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The next Chozo Seal requires 3 Metroids, so I guess draining this poison water will lead down to a passage that loops around back up, to an elevator going up to Area 8, and Area 8 is where I will fight the Queen Metroid, and then find the baby, and a path leading back up to the Surface... just my educated guess based on what I remember from the original game.
The door to the left of the purple area goes to a really cool looking laboratory area.
There's mechanical enemies everywhere... I just realized I can kill some of them with Screw Attack, so you're not completely screwed if you don't have aeion. Although I still can't seem to kill those annoying Power Bomb robots with anything but Beam Burst...
*light goes on over my head*
or... I could also kill them with power bombs... heh, that works.
I'm just space jumping around everywhere to kill all the mechanical enemies with screw attack, because that's the most convenient method. It's very easy to slip up and get killed by these normal enemies.
Found a teleporter and a power bomb expansion a bit passed it by spidersharking, and then further up, in the same room, the scenery seemlessly transitions into a snowy cave area... or rather, the lab is in ruins, so some parts are snowy cave and some parts are lab structure.
Got to the 3rd save point... this place has really started to open up now. I'm like, swamped with choices... there were also some other paths in the purple area I could've chosen to take as well I think. Right now I'm in a way higher part of the Area 7 map, and there's a few paths going further up and a few paths going back down.
Oh shit, I'm out of power bombs, and some paths require you to spidershark across... This area makes good use of all your abilities. I really probably should've used Beam Burst instead of power bombs on that one enemy type.
Went down, found an ammo recharge, and then further down... now into another part of the lab with more relaxed music... but still unrelenting enemies everywhere. The Metroid detector is going off...
Woah, this place is giving off major Metroid Prime vibes...
Almost died to that Omega Metroid... these are still pretty tough.
Then I went further down, and it lead back into the poison water area, near the entrance elevator. This gives me the perfect opportunity to explore the purple area, then go back through the bottom entrance of the lab again and explore more of the paths I passed by earlier...
More Chozo Lab exploration... it feels really nice knowing I'm no longer locked away from any areas now that I have all the ablities.
By now, I've figured out that the bronze mechanical enemies can be destroyed with plasma beam or screw attack, while the silver variations
are stronger and can only be destroyed by Beam Burst or power bomb.
2nd Omega Metroid fight, at the top right part of the laboratory... I started the fight with almost half my health already gone, and I wanted to try and beat it without going back to grind my health back up...
I realized you can actually roll underneath his legs in ball form, and this made it a lot easier to dodge his laser attacks and prevent him from cornering me... but still, he gets really hard near the end, constantly cycling between attacks and almost never giving you a chance to hit him.
phew... that took a few tries.
More aeion puzzles and spidershark puzzles... and I'm finding a lot of hidden paths from bombing around without using Scan Pulse.
Got the 8th energy tank.
Oh wow, I found a really cool shortcut at the top using spidershark, that lets you get between the left and right side of the laboratory really quickly. There's even an ammo restore and energy restore station on both sides.
Hmm... I'm still 1 Metroid away from opening the next seal... I've almost explored everywhere I can in this lab... except for one broken white line I see on the map that I don't remember if I just passed over it or if I couldn't go that way...
Yep I was right, that path at the bottom right side of the lab is where the other Metroid I'm missing is.
1 Metroid remaining...
Drained the water one last time... and as usual there's some morphball puzzles to distract you on your way to the next elevator...
I'm REALLY liking the 3D effect in the backgrounds at this area... I dunno something about it seems really aesthetically cool looking, even moreso than usual for this game.
and yeah I was right, the path U-turns and heads back upward, around the left side of the laboratory. I really like how the area around the next elevator already has a different aesthetic, it's like you're going into the temple where the Metroid Queen is located.
Almost there... I got 92.3% completion in Area 7, after exploring it as much as I could without using Scan Pulse... now going into Area 8 to fight the last Metroid...
I currently have 8 energy tanks, 192 missiles, 15 super missiles, and 7 power bombs.
Area 8
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This place has a purple water section too... but it's inside some sort of temple structure... it's a very linear path so far, with a ton of mechanical enemies... at this point I just always have Beam Burst activated now. I get enough aeion back from killing enemies as long as I aim good.
Then I get to this really gross looking organic area... there's pools of yellow liquid and stuff... The Metroids must have so much Aeion in their diet tfor their bodily fluids to be all yellow.
...and some not so hard organic enemies here like the ice shriekbat, they're nothing when I'm using screw attack.
Found the 9th energy tank very easily. That already puts me at 7.1% item completion for this area.
I get to a teleporter... and now I have a choice of either going up or down... okay down just leads to a missile expansion that's a bit tricky to get.
More easy linear stuff., gradually going further and further upward... You can really tell this area as well as Area 7 vertically spans up high enough to get up through where the previous 6 areas took me down...
Then suddenly it opens up into a big open room with a very ominous background... Space Jumping everywhere, I find a bunch more loot as well as an energy and ammo station... now I'm already at 50% completion for this area...
but... damn... I actually don't know where to go from here now... like, I'm actually legit stuck... for the first time in the entire game, I actually need to use Scan Pulse to figure out how to progress.
Even then, it takes me a while to find the one bombable piece of wall to get into the enclosed area in the middle. It's up passed that space jump between spikes part, where I assumed it was just a dead end with some loot.
It turns out the Scan Pulse isn't as broken as I thought... it only highlights blocks within the map square you are currently in, and for the rest of the map squares in the Scan Pulse's range, it doesn't highlight any blocks, it just reveals the map.
Woah, some structure in the background starts collapsing just as I'm passing through. I wonder what's going on...
The whole aesthetic of this area is like one big Metroid nest... like, the Alpha Metroid rooms only had a little bit of this aesthetic going on, and then the Gamma Metroids had more of it, and the Zeta Metroids even more, and the Omega Metroid rooms were almost entirely full of organic goopy stuff... but now, this last Metroid is big enough that its goopy organic stuff spans across the whole area.
Got to another save station... I can tell I'm getting close... As soon as I climbed up into that morph ball path, I instantly recognized where I was...
yep..;. this is the morph ball tunnel where I pass by a Metroid egg... and yeah the detector started going off just now... but it's not counting the unborn Metroid.
As of now, I'm at 64.3% item completion... 9 energy tanks, 210 missiles, 16 supers, and 8 power bombs.
It's flashing red now...
It's an actual classic standard metroid. it's been a while since I've had to fight these... now suddenly the Metroid counter has gone back up to 10. oh yeah, I remember this part. We're now fully into the Metroid nest..
These Metroids are so easy...
There, now back down to 1 left...
Wow, this last Metroid boss... lol this rendition looks an awful lot like the Biolizard boss from Sonic Adventure 2.
This boss is not kidding around... this might even be harder than I remember the original gameboy version's final boss being.
The Metroid Queen has a really neat variety of attacks, and you often need to use your spider ball to dodge stuff. In some cases, it's even beneficial to use spidershark to quickly switch between the floor and ceiling when the right wall is covered in flames.
Beat it on the 3rd try... it's actually not that hard once you learn the pattern... the most important thing is to aim well when it has its mouth open to get as much damage in as possible... and get all of the melee counters which are really easy to predict.
So now it's mission accomplished... however you can't go back the way you came, due to the crumble blocks... just like in the original, this boss is a point of no return where you have to go forward and meet the baby Metroid before coming back out onto the surface from an alternate exit. Except this time it won't be a point of no return...
THE BABY
it's so cute... seriously this is WAY better than the game boy version of this scene... you can really tell Samus and the Metroid have a special connection here.
Samus now has a pet Metroid following her around... the last one in existence... and now I can finally get through all those spikey blue blocks that blocked the way in so many different areas. The entire game is opened up now.
This music is suddenly a lot more upbeat... We seem to be out of the nest, and transitioning more to the lighter, more chill tone of the early caves up near the surface. The rest of Area 8 is just a relaxing linear stroll up to the Surface elevator.
Surface part 3
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Wow, this is actually a LOT farther left from where I thought the Area 8 elevator would come out into. I underestimated how big the Surface area is in this game.
Whoa, this is looks so epic... I finally got back outside of the cave... and now there's dark thunder clouds in the sky. I collected all the loot in the side areas of that western outdoor area in the Surface... and then as we got back to the gunship, Ridley shows up out of nowhere!
Unlike the usual bosses in this game, the Plasma Beam actually works against him, and I assume it's probably the most effective weapon to use here.
His first phase is pathetically easy, he just flies overhead and cycles between doing an easy to dodge projectile, and a tail whip attack that can be easily dodged by space jumping up in the air.
Then there's a cool action cutscene... then Ridley gets angry and actually starts fighting for real now, and his attacks are much more aggressive. It still isn't that hard though, once you get a rhythm going.
Then another cutscene... the baby Metroid comes and helps me fight Ridley... now the third phase... THAT's where it actually gets hard... he now does projectiles that cover the ground, and really fast air dash attacks that I'm not sure how to dodge...
I guess the safest strategy in the third phase is to just keep space jumping in the air and get a charged shot in whenever you can... I'm just like, constantly space jumping against the wall while baiting him into doing his ground projectile attack, and then turning around to get a shot in whenever he's between attacks... whenever he does an air dash move or something, I just jump way high up above him and shoot down a few times... this is REALLY slow, i bet there's probably a better strategy... I used up all my Beam Burst too, but still it took so long that I eventually made too many mistakes and died.
Actually, yeah, that doesn't work too well... I then figured out a much better strategy... running into the corner, and jumping over his ground projectile, baits him into just using his ground projectile over and over again. He does sometimes still jump ontop of me and I usually can't dodge that, but it's uncommon enough that I didn't have any problem beating him on the 4th try.
Finished the game in 13 and a half hours, with 63.3% total item completion.
At some point I'll come back and go through every area again and get the 100% ending... Then eventually I'm gonna want to go for all the speedrun endings on both normal and hard... but no rush, I'll get to it eventually. This is definitely one of those games that I'll want to come back to again every once in a while... The combat is really fun, and I love how you can learn the optimal strategy for the bosses to make them a lot easier, but they're still hard enough to keep you on your toes. I might even want to try a low % run some day.
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