Metroid Dread is a fantastic 2D game. It has the best feel to a game that I've experienced since playing Celeste.
I can provide some of my thoughts but they're better summarised by this review from Arlo. Taking some quotes straight from the video:
The overall presentation is phenomenal. The environment is highly stylised, yet still pulls off the serious sci-fi look. Everything is slick and polished. The backgrounds are rich with detail, perfectly composed so it frequently feels like you’re looking at a painting.
And speaking of all that, can we talk about how the game controls? I feel like if I let myself, I would dedicate a massive section of this review to just going on and on about how Metroid Dread controls. I could write a THESIS on its controls. Back when these games were only made of pixels, the devs couldn't do nearly as much with Samus's movement. Samus Returns offered the slickest controls to date, but Dread fine-tunes Samus' movement to an absurd degree.
Out of every Metroidvania I've played, there's no doubt in my mind that this one feels the absolute best to control. It's probably one of the best to control out of ALL the 2D games I've played!
There are a lot of button combinations to remember, especially once you've gained a lot of abilities, but it's all laid out very intuitively and empowers you to pull off some incredible moves. Animations all string together so fluidly. And most importantly I think, Samus moves through the environment not like a video game character, but like some kind of parkour pro.
And on that note, perhaps my very favourite new thing in the entire game is the ability to use aeon to do this awesome dash move. In recent years, more and more action games are realising that the ability to quickly dodge away from an attack is EXTREMELY important.
It forces me to--for lack of a better term--GIT GUD. I absolutely HAVE to be doing my very best with some of these bosses or I will not survive. Some of them are exceptionally tricky, but always feel completely fair. And when I earn a win, I EARNED that win.
There is one area where the game lacks some magic.
It's the music. It's...just not very good. I mean it's FINE most of the time. It's not bad. But...why isn't it better?