I recently played Metroid Zero Mission, Metroid Samus Returns, Super Metroid, and Metroid Fusion all for the first time. I also played SOTN for the first time recently and no other Castlevania games so far. I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but I had a way better time with the single SOTN than with all the Metroid games. I just like the style, combat, and RPG mechanics more I guess.
To me, exploration in Metroid is way less fun. Doing some tricky platforming for yet another missile pack is just boring to me. I might make a whole thread fleshing out my thoughts, but I'm not sure how people here are with that kind of opinion.
I mean, it's not only nostalgia, it's basically different tastes. I played Aria of Sorrow before Super Metroid and I prefer Super Metroid's more claustrophobic and laberinthic exploration. Hollow Knight is still my favourite metroidvania (yeah I know, I'm extremely original).
Yeah I guess that's a good way to put it. I never grew up with either series, so maybe I'll give a somewhat unique-ish opinion. I wanna play some more Castlevania games first though, wanna get the Advanced collection.
SoTN’s end game gave a lot of replay value and secrets. Playing with the different combination of hidden weapons, obscure spells, and discovering what happens when you train your familiars was really fun.
Metroid’s end game was collecting upgrades, but perhaps the puzzles of getting those upgrades was the reward in itself.
I loved the inverted castle. Metroid is too short. SOTN has a better sound track, more character and story progression, voice acting, more variety of enemies and a much bigger map. This new Metroid Dread is pretty great.
Its a really hard one for me because SM wins as far as nostalgia goes, but I think castlevania is more my style of game with its RPG elements n stuff. I have deep love for both so its hard for me to say I like over the other
Super Metroid achieved something no game has since it’s come out. It’s such an insanely atmospheric game with such iconic bosses, items, levels, music, everything. Even the intro ffs was so amazing! It’s just such a masterful platformer, what a fkn game. I would kill for a remake.
I prefer SoTN. I like the rpg elements -gaining xp, different weapons and armor to equip. The controls feel much tighter.
I like the atmosphere of SM, but the controls feel loosey goosey to me compared to other platformers of the same time.
Huh. Metroid's controls feel much better to me than SotN. Samus has a weight to her movement that feels much more satisfying and fitting once you start really zipping around the map. SotN feels positively clunky in comparison.
Different strokes, I guess.
I have to go with SOTN. Not only am I super nostalgic for it, I like the aesthetic and music more, gameplay's more varied, and Alucard's movement is fast and smooth while Samus is heavier than a safe stuffed with rhinos. Dread made her movement so fucking amazing that I can't even think of having to deal with SM's sluggishness again.
Well the original Metroid started it and a few others came before both SM and SotN, but those two seem to be the most popular in their respective series. Out of those two it’s SM for me.
It’s like asking to choose a favorite of my dogs 🐕
I chose Super Metroid, but only because of all of the ROM hacks it has spawned. Between Super Metroid and hacks, I have played thousands of hours of the game.
Hacks like Super Metroid Ascent are just as enjoyable as some of the top indie MV’s out today.
I prefer Super Metroid only because I don't like the rpg elements in Castlevania. I've tried getting into castlevania multiple times but it's just not for me, srry.
If I was trying to go based off my memory of playing them in the 90’s it probably would have been a pretty close toss up. But having played both within the past two years, it’s Super Metroid for me, no question.
SotN clicked for me immediately, loved the gameplay, the theme, the music, SM did not click for me immediately. Maybe it was the gloomy alien atmosphere, maybe it was me getting a little confused, maybe it was because I’m more of a fantasy than a sci-fi guy especially when it comes to games, idk. I did not revisit SM until having played several other vanias and some indies like Hollow Knight, Guacamelee, Momodora, The Messenger, Iconoclasts (those last 2 aren’t true MVs but still) and running out of vanias to play but I really started to like the Metroid series at that point. And that was before I truly fell in love with the genre and seeked out games of the genre (other than Castlevania or Metroid cuz I already played those) like a freak. Still I’d choose SotN over SM. Nowadays I like just about any kind of MV, but I tend to enjoy the ones with Igavania elements at least a little more. Probably because of the satisfaction of getting drops from enemies other than just health and ammo, and being a fan of older JRPGS like Final Fanatasy and Chrono Trigger.
I actually played SotN fully twice before beating SM (maybe only once, might’ve mixed up but I still played SotN twice in my lifetime) but did not come back to SM again after having beaten it the first time, My second playthrough of SotN was intended to be randomized but I didn’t feel like it and just went with vanilla instead. It is also worth noting that I played a lot of A Robot Named Fight before completing SM for the first time so I guess it makes less sense that it took me this long to play SM because of this.
EDIT: Forgot about the way jumping works in SM, at the time I really hated it and I think it played a major part in me dropping SM at first
Man I feel the same way about the setting, completely in reverse. The atmosphere of SotN was gloomy and boring for me. But I love everything about exploring a spaceship.
Honestly, I think exploring a castle sounds terrible on paper. Same reason Dark Souls doesn’t interest me much.
Symphony; Super Metroid was a big step up over its predecessors, but still had a lot of room for refinement.
Though it is important to note they *defined* the genre, not *started* it. Just as StarCraft defined base-building RTSs, but Dune 2 was the one that started them.
Super Metroid is the template SOTN knocked off whole (They even made the map rooms the same colour FFS). Super Metroid alone created the specific 'genre' formula, though the broader non-linear action adventure is much older. 2D Zelda games are basically the same thing except top down.
Finally, the term Metroidvania was factually coined in 2001 for Circle of the Moon on Game Boy Advance. It was created to distinguish between the two types of Castlevania, Action and Metroid clones, so they became Actionvania and Metroidvania.
Here is the first ever recorded use of 'Metroidvania':
https://groups.google.com/forum/?pli=1#!search/metroidvania/rec.games.video.nintendo/Iq7Q2fqdkIE/hOLAJKzHR8QJ
It was only another decade later some morons started using the term to refer to the genre as a whole.
I played Super Metroid last summer for the first time ever. Fucking loved every second.
Last week, I gave up on SotN after a few hours trying to get into it. Gameplay honestly felt boring, and I am not interested in the setting at all. Uninstalled it. First MV I’ve ever given up on tbh.
Really, you’re gonna tell me I have awful taste? I have played several MVs. SotN is by far the least enjoyable, at least at the outset. Castles are boring. Art style is ugly. Give me a break dude.
Yeah. I was coming here to say the same thing. If you're going to open the door to Super Metroid, why not original Metroid? And if you're going to say SOTN, why not Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest? Honestly, we can go a bit further back than that even and start talking about games like Brain Breaker.
I'd be willing to say that Super Metroid and SOTN were the most emblematic early metroidvanias, but certainly not the first.
SotN easily. I like RPG mechanics. I like a game where two players can approach the game completely differently and finish with their characters being completely different. 99% of SM players are going to finish the game very similarly. It's not bad, it's just not my preference.
Honestly, I need to choose Super Metroid. Solely off of movement tech. I love them both, but I think movement tech is incredibly important. You are traversing a massive world. Moving needs to be as fun as possible.
I can't vote on this because they are two very different games. It's like askimg me if I prefer apples or oranges. They're both fruit but very different fruit.
I loved SM growing up. Got it one Christmas and fell in love. That being said, the entire “Metroid” side of “metroidvania” are very hard for me to get into nowadays. I prefer melee attacking, and weapon equipping. Couldn’t get into Dread, for instance
it’s honestly impossible. SM is tighter gameplay, level design. SotN is more artistic flare, the greatest OST of all time, and imo better boss fights. They both feel so nice to play and lend so naturally to fun advanced movement techniques and are a total gateway drug to speedruns (shield dash and machball goddamn it). One is mother, the other is father (HK is the nonbinary child). I need both. Canmt have one without the other. Ok too drunk for more typing goodnight gang
Castlevania AoS is my favourite game of all time followed by Metroid Zero Mission (for nostalgia reasons, there are better games I’ve played since but hey when you’re twelve and just learning to speedrun shit sticks man). I played SotN AFTER the GBA and DSVanias and found it… eh. It’s fine.
Super Metroid, on the other hand, in spite of weird controls, is still immensely fulfilling and absolutely deserves its praise as a masterclass in atmosphere and using level design to communicate both tone and teach lessons to the player.
They can’t be compared. They are also 3 years apart and on different consoles, so one is of course going to have better hardware, allowing more graphics. 3 years might as well have been a generation gap back then.
SotN is not a "founder game". It's just the inspiration for the name of the genre, since SotN was considered to have gameplay similar to Super Metroid's, and the name got applied to *all* Metroid-like games instead of just the ones in the Castlevania series. Super Metroid, in turn, was just Link to the Past but in side view.
The genre became real when it got a name, which meant that people had a name to attach to the familiar formula of ability-gated exploration. This was long after these supposed "founder games". Super Metroid inspired the genre, but it did not inspire SotN -- that inspiration came from Zelda, of course, which is the *real* founder here -- it's not the first game to use ability-gated exploration, but it's the one that got popular and inspired the greats of the genre.
I haven't played SOTN but I think I prefer Super just because I prefer ranged combat that doesn't make you stop for each attack and I assume SOTN has that because I played Bloodstained. Also maybe a bit of residual beef because the sidequests in that game sucked and I assume SOTN had something similar (but probably not as badly voiced).
I recently played Metroid Zero Mission, Metroid Samus Returns, Super Metroid, and Metroid Fusion all for the first time. I also played SOTN for the first time recently and no other Castlevania games so far. I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but I had a way better time with the single SOTN than with all the Metroid games. I just like the style, combat, and RPG mechanics more I guess. To me, exploration in Metroid is way less fun. Doing some tricky platforming for yet another missile pack is just boring to me. I might make a whole thread fleshing out my thoughts, but I'm not sure how people here are with that kind of opinion.
I’d like to hear more about your opinion. It’s nice to hear the thoughts of someone with no nostalgia affecting them.
I mean, it's not only nostalgia, it's basically different tastes. I played Aria of Sorrow before Super Metroid and I prefer Super Metroid's more claustrophobic and laberinthic exploration. Hollow Knight is still my favourite metroidvania (yeah I know, I'm extremely original).
Yeah I guess that's a good way to put it. I never grew up with either series, so maybe I'll give a somewhat unique-ish opinion. I wanna play some more Castlevania games first though, wanna get the Advanced collection.
SoTN’s end game gave a lot of replay value and secrets. Playing with the different combination of hidden weapons, obscure spells, and discovering what happens when you train your familiars was really fun. Metroid’s end game was collecting upgrades, but perhaps the puzzles of getting those upgrades was the reward in itself.
I prefer Super Metroid all the way. I loved the first half of Symphony of the Night but the inverted castle really didn't do it for me
I loved the inverted castle. Metroid is too short. SOTN has a better sound track, more character and story progression, voice acting, more variety of enemies and a much bigger map. This new Metroid Dread is pretty great.
I actually like Metroid games because they're so short
I love Symphony's soundtrack and art style, but Super Metroid is a more polished and consistent experience.
Its a really hard one for me because SM wins as far as nostalgia goes, but I think castlevania is more my style of game with its RPG elements n stuff. I have deep love for both so its hard for me to say I like over the other
i think i probably like metroid over all better but with this specific comparison its sotn all the way
I love the art direction on SOTN, but every time I start playing SM I end up playing for hours without realizing it, just for the atmosphere.
Super Metroid achieved something no game has since it’s come out. It’s such an insanely atmospheric game with such iconic bosses, items, levels, music, everything. Even the intro ffs was so amazing! It’s just such a masterful platformer, what a fkn game. I would kill for a remake.
I prefer super Metroid, but both are great
I prefer SoTN. I like the rpg elements -gaining xp, different weapons and armor to equip. The controls feel much tighter. I like the atmosphere of SM, but the controls feel loosey goosey to me compared to other platformers of the same time.
Huh. Metroid's controls feel much better to me than SotN. Samus has a weight to her movement that feels much more satisfying and fitting once you start really zipping around the map. SotN feels positively clunky in comparison. Different strokes, I guess.
If you think it’s clunky you aren’t playing it right or are no good at it.
Not close, Super Metroid
I have to go with SOTN. Not only am I super nostalgic for it, I like the aesthetic and music more, gameplay's more varied, and Alucard's movement is fast and smooth while Samus is heavier than a safe stuffed with rhinos. Dread made her movement so fucking amazing that I can't even think of having to deal with SM's sluggishness again.
Well the original Metroid started it and a few others came before both SM and SotN, but those two seem to be the most popular in their respective series. Out of those two it’s SM for me.
Honestly have no real preference but I’d rather play super Metroid because it’s less difficult and I like challenge but I also like making progress
If you find SOTN difficult and you can’t make progress…. ….. ….. ROTFLMFAO
bro get a life
I think I've beaten Super Metroid 3 times. SOTN? 14.
It’s like asking to choose a favorite of my dogs 🐕 I chose Super Metroid, but only because of all of the ROM hacks it has spawned. Between Super Metroid and hacks, I have played thousands of hours of the game. Hacks like Super Metroid Ascent are just as enjoyable as some of the top indie MV’s out today.
Very close, but I gotta go with Super Metroid
my preference is and will always be See Results
I prefer Super Metroid only because I don't like the rpg elements in Castlevania. I've tried getting into castlevania multiple times but it's just not for me, srry.
This is a hard one
If I was trying to go based off my memory of playing them in the 90’s it probably would have been a pretty close toss up. But having played both within the past two years, it’s Super Metroid for me, no question.
SotN clicked for me immediately, loved the gameplay, the theme, the music, SM did not click for me immediately. Maybe it was the gloomy alien atmosphere, maybe it was me getting a little confused, maybe it was because I’m more of a fantasy than a sci-fi guy especially when it comes to games, idk. I did not revisit SM until having played several other vanias and some indies like Hollow Knight, Guacamelee, Momodora, The Messenger, Iconoclasts (those last 2 aren’t true MVs but still) and running out of vanias to play but I really started to like the Metroid series at that point. And that was before I truly fell in love with the genre and seeked out games of the genre (other than Castlevania or Metroid cuz I already played those) like a freak. Still I’d choose SotN over SM. Nowadays I like just about any kind of MV, but I tend to enjoy the ones with Igavania elements at least a little more. Probably because of the satisfaction of getting drops from enemies other than just health and ammo, and being a fan of older JRPGS like Final Fanatasy and Chrono Trigger. I actually played SotN fully twice before beating SM (maybe only once, might’ve mixed up but I still played SotN twice in my lifetime) but did not come back to SM again after having beaten it the first time, My second playthrough of SotN was intended to be randomized but I didn’t feel like it and just went with vanilla instead. It is also worth noting that I played a lot of A Robot Named Fight before completing SM for the first time so I guess it makes less sense that it took me this long to play SM because of this. EDIT: Forgot about the way jumping works in SM, at the time I really hated it and I think it played a major part in me dropping SM at first
Man I feel the same way about the setting, completely in reverse. The atmosphere of SotN was gloomy and boring for me. But I love everything about exploring a spaceship. Honestly, I think exploring a castle sounds terrible on paper. Same reason Dark Souls doesn’t interest me much.
Symphony; Super Metroid was a big step up over its predecessors, but still had a lot of room for refinement. Though it is important to note they *defined* the genre, not *started* it. Just as StarCraft defined base-building RTSs, but Dune 2 was the one that started them.
Super Metroid is the template SOTN knocked off whole (They even made the map rooms the same colour FFS). Super Metroid alone created the specific 'genre' formula, though the broader non-linear action adventure is much older. 2D Zelda games are basically the same thing except top down. Finally, the term Metroidvania was factually coined in 2001 for Circle of the Moon on Game Boy Advance. It was created to distinguish between the two types of Castlevania, Action and Metroid clones, so they became Actionvania and Metroidvania. Here is the first ever recorded use of 'Metroidvania': https://groups.google.com/forum/?pli=1#!search/metroidvania/rec.games.video.nintendo/Iq7Q2fqdkIE/hOLAJKzHR8QJ It was only another decade later some morons started using the term to refer to the genre as a whole.
Knocked off lol. Sour fanboy alert
SOTN all day.
I played Super Metroid last summer for the first time ever. Fucking loved every second. Last week, I gave up on SotN after a few hours trying to get into it. Gameplay honestly felt boring, and I am not interested in the setting at all. Uninstalled it. First MV I’ve ever given up on tbh.
Sad and awful taste. SOTN is one of Ty red best.
Really, you’re gonna tell me I have awful taste? I have played several MVs. SotN is by far the least enjoyable, at least at the outset. Castles are boring. Art style is ugly. Give me a break dude.
These games didn't start the subgenre
Yeah. I was coming here to say the same thing. If you're going to open the door to Super Metroid, why not original Metroid? And if you're going to say SOTN, why not Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest? Honestly, we can go a bit further back than that even and start talking about games like Brain Breaker. I'd be willing to say that Super Metroid and SOTN were the most emblematic early metroidvanias, but certainly not the first.
Yeah Konami did several Metroidvania games before SOTN. Goonies II on NES and TMNT 3: Radical Rescue on GB for example.
Hell yeah! Goonies II! I really loved that game as a kid. Playing it now makes me wonder how I dealt with it's obtuseness.
The Maze of Galious, about at the same time as Simon's Quest too.
So good to see there are people in the know!
I'm really surprised by this. SOTN is way better than Metroid. I'm wondering how many voters have actually played both.
Voted super Metroid, played it to death like 20 years ago, but quite frankly, nowadays I tend to prefer meteoidvania with rpg elements.
Sotn is a great game but too easy after a certain point. When the castle thing happens I thought it was interesting but became a bit tedious.
Play with lesser items and you can make it more difficult
SotN easily. I like RPG mechanics. I like a game where two players can approach the game completely differently and finish with their characters being completely different. 99% of SM players are going to finish the game very similarly. It's not bad, it's just not my preference.
Honestly, I need to choose Super Metroid. Solely off of movement tech. I love them both, but I think movement tech is incredibly important. You are traversing a massive world. Moving needs to be as fun as possible.
I’ve never really liked the vertical movement of Super Metroid so SotN it is
I can't vote on this because they are two very different games. It's like askimg me if I prefer apples or oranges. They're both fruit but very different fruit.
I loved SM growing up. Got it one Christmas and fell in love. That being said, the entire “Metroid” side of “metroidvania” are very hard for me to get into nowadays. I prefer melee attacking, and weapon equipping. Couldn’t get into Dread, for instance
Neither, I used to play "Antiriad" on my Amstrad. It was awesome.
I don't think it's fair to compare these two. SotN came out a whole generation after SM and takes a lot of inspiration from it.
I adore Symphony of the Night but have never played Super Metroid.
Unfortunately SotN just has style 24/7 which makes it the clear winner. The movement, music, the dialog and the enemies are just stylish as fuck
Wish I could vote for both. Can't really decide. I dont even remember which I played first.
it’s honestly impossible. SM is tighter gameplay, level design. SotN is more artistic flare, the greatest OST of all time, and imo better boss fights. They both feel so nice to play and lend so naturally to fun advanced movement techniques and are a total gateway drug to speedruns (shield dash and machball goddamn it). One is mother, the other is father (HK is the nonbinary child). I need both. Canmt have one without the other. Ok too drunk for more typing goodnight gang
I love SuperMetroid but in terms of fun CSOTN was a bit more fun, the hi-jump was a pain in the ass.
Super Metroid is Pink Floyd. Sotn is Led Ze´pelin.
I liked Super metroids exploration a bit more, but I'm a sucker for RPGs so SotN takes it
Castlevania AoS is my favourite game of all time followed by Metroid Zero Mission (for nostalgia reasons, there are better games I’ve played since but hey when you’re twelve and just learning to speedrun shit sticks man). I played SotN AFTER the GBA and DSVanias and found it… eh. It’s fine. Super Metroid, on the other hand, in spite of weird controls, is still immensely fulfilling and absolutely deserves its praise as a masterclass in atmosphere and using level design to communicate both tone and teach lessons to the player.
They can’t be compared. They are also 3 years apart and on different consoles, so one is of course going to have better hardware, allowing more graphics. 3 years might as well have been a generation gap back then.
SotN is not a "founder game". It's just the inspiration for the name of the genre, since SotN was considered to have gameplay similar to Super Metroid's, and the name got applied to *all* Metroid-like games instead of just the ones in the Castlevania series. Super Metroid, in turn, was just Link to the Past but in side view. The genre became real when it got a name, which meant that people had a name to attach to the familiar formula of ability-gated exploration. This was long after these supposed "founder games". Super Metroid inspired the genre, but it did not inspire SotN -- that inspiration came from Zelda, of course, which is the *real* founder here -- it's not the first game to use ability-gated exploration, but it's the one that got popular and inspired the greats of the genre.
Lol Zelda is not in any way, shape or form a metroidvania
I haven't played SOTN but I think I prefer Super just because I prefer ranged combat that doesn't make you stop for each attack and I assume SOTN has that because I played Bloodstained. Also maybe a bit of residual beef because the sidequests in that game sucked and I assume SOTN had something similar (but probably not as badly voiced).
Lot of assuming going on here
You shouldn’t assume too much tbh and just play it
Apparently you aren’t aware of what ASSuming makes you.