Played AM2R for the first time recently. It was, as people have said, quite good, though I disagree with takes that it replaces the original Metroid 2. The tone just isn't the same, nor is the pacing or atmosphere. It's a closer match than Samus Returns I'd say, but not a replacement.
Both remakes feel like they're torn between being Metroid 2, remade, and being the first 2D metroid game since Zero Mission all those years ago. Why add an escape sequence in AM2R? Why add a Ridley bossfight in Samus Returns, completely sidetracking the ending and its impact? Why add beam stacking? Why add the speed booster, power bomb, gravity suit, and other upgrades that first debuted in Super Metroid that weren't in Metroid 2? They're not in there because they make Metroid 2 better, or worse, necessarily. They make it more like Super or Zero Mission, the games people have been hungering for more of, justifiably so.
You could argue these changes make for the better game, but they inarguably make the game less similar to the original Metroid 2. In the original metroid 2, the descent into the caverns, the lack of a map, the lack of any visible completion percentage, it all funnels you towards progress. You don't know what you're missing, you don't need to care, you're here with singular purpose and your mission is annihilation. The counter always displays the total number of metroids, and only when paused does it display the area count. AM2R dilutes this, it kills the momentum that carries the original through to its climax. Your metroid counter defaults to the area count first, and the global count in the menu. The map has Zero Mission's QoL features to make backtracking to grab items you couldn't get before a breeze, and the distribution center fast travel facilitates it. But after spending time doing endgame cleanup, you finally get back to the final area and realize that you have no momentum leading into it anymore. It sacrifices the ludonarrative, the verisimilitude, for being more like the more traditional games in the series. This isn't some damning flaw or anything, it's overall fairly minor, but it's indicative of the ways that AM2R does not replace the gameboy original.
All this said, that I'm so harsh on the minute details of AM2R is a testament to how well it overall feels as a Metroid game. It feels like metroid, enough to critique it as a metroid, and as a remake of an older metroid. I almost immediately started another playthrough after I finished, only my urge to replay Fusion winning out more when I grabbed my GBA SP out of the cabinet.
I played what I believe to be the latest community patch if anyone was wondering.
