I can keep resuscitating the Chozo aspects of the game being overused (given this is an abandoned planet), however the teleportation stations were convenient. Though I didn’t find myself using them very much, if at all on the last play through I’ve used them less than 3 times in total. I feel here a series of tunnels with some kind of interconnected tunnel - say one that Samus could powerboost through - could have been more interesting than a simple statue>loading screen, it would’ve helped the planet feel more interconnected. Like Alundra’s stone henge-looking arches which act as portals.
Samus Returns is a "cool" Metroid game, but not really a good Metroid. Good game, yes. But severely lacking in the core ideals of Metroid to feel like a true title. Feels more like an indie project that happens to feature Samus as the playable character imo.
AM2R did a much better job of adding fresh and new things while still keeping to the series principles.
While I haven't played AM2R I have seen many videos of it. While I can appreciate it staying truer to the og game, there are still areas which appear to be brimming with artificial enemies which are highly mechanised. I'm not saying it's bad by any stretch and it perhaps [Varia] suits purists more so, however, for the purest of the pure, itt still doesn't seem completely and utterly faithful to the original.
I noticed this as well. However the original game did have many artificial enemies. At least half the enemy roster were biological while the other half were mechanised (not including the Metroid mutations).
AM2R was definitely much closer to what I would have envisioned a proper remake to be. Unfortunately the maker of the game got a little too carried away with utilising the speedbooster upgrade for collection and progression (more the former then the latter). Speedbooster was alright in Super Metroid as it wasn't overly used to the extent we saw in Zero mission and Fusion (it got ridiculous in those two titles), but I felt it was a bit of a turnoff in AM2R because speedbooster doesn't jive well in execution with the keyboard, and the D-pads on Xbox controllers are not really classic gaming friendly. Someone else helping with AM2R should have told the developer to 'tone it down' a bit.