I am a big fan of Super Metroid and to a much lesser extent Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Both are great games and continue to stand over all other games that are like them with an inescapable shadow. The shadow covers everything and games that think they can see light are mistaken as they slink backwards instead of forwards.
For me personally, one key aspect of Super Metroid that has made it the game to defeat is the flow of the game. It rarely if ever slows down. It only seems to get faster and faster as you play it and this is even seen in the running aspect. Instead of running and then all of a sudden hitting some sort of super speed, it is a build up to that speed. The only dialog is at the very start and item popups (should have been removed after the first encounter of said item).
Symphony of the Night is good its own way but I think it is also telling the Alucard is doing nothing other than backsliding his way through the game because it is quicker. I feel the story slows the flow of an otherwise fantastic game. All the same, I can't help but feel that if there was a run button, it might have actually been better than Super Metroid.
I have played many other games in both series and other games in the genre and I think they all fail completely in comparison to these masterpieces. I point to two flaws:
*Having a story that no one really gives a crap about
*A broken running system
*Asshole hint system
The second point is the stickler for me. No Metroidvania that I have played since has had a running mechanic that competes with Super Metroid. I could always hold the run button and go faster and faster even if I couldn't hit that super speed but it helped me to get where I was going quicker and every other game has basically 3 speeds.
troutty walking, Speed walking that happens to look like running and Super Speed which is basically running. There is no ramp up in speed to any of these levels of walk-running. You hit the button and you are automatically at the second speed. Hold down the button long enough and move unobstructed long enough then you will hit the 3rd speed. No build up and it pisses me off to no extent. I have always felt and will continue to feel this aspect could vastly improve every other game in the genre that has running of any sort. I think it works better as a game mechanic and feels more natural. If only when I was jogging at 5MPH (smurf your KM bitches!) I magically hit 10 MPH in an instant after 2 minutes. If that were the case then it would actually feel natural.
I discussed the first point above in how I feel story points tend to slow down a game where flow is practically everything so moving on to point 3. I HAVE THE smurfING INTERWEBS!!!1 I don't need your hint system. I always turn that stuff off and whenever I get stuck it never helps. Metroid Prime 2 is a great example for me. After about 2 hours of futility, I turned it on one time and it told me exactly where I needed to go...the only problem was I already knew that. It just confirmed my suspicions but provided no actual help. smurf you game!
It should at this point come as no surprise that I consider Metroid Fusion to be an abomination of a game. It does all 3 of these things thus it wasn't fun. I was never exploring just going to the dot on the map. Then just as any semblance of flow was coalescing, bam! TOO MUCH story. I nearly killed the series it was so bad.
Whatever. Talk about my points and what you like in this genre, this rant is over.