Quote from jalapeno:
I think, however, that sequence breaking should not be a rating factor for this series of games; they are all excellent regardless. Sequence breaks would be fun after i've beaten the game once or twice, but the absence of them wont ruin the game for me, and should not ruin it for anyone else.
All of the Metroid games are great, it's just that certain aspects of some games aren't liked when you compare them to what Metroid was originally about. (Things like the linear path of Fusion, the key hunting in Echoes, and the repeating bosses in Hunters come to mind.)
Part of why I feel Echoes is the "worst" of the series is because it contains the most of these aspects that I don't feel a Metroid game should have. At it's core, Echoes is more linear than it leads us to believe: You can only go to a new area (Normally) when you defeat the guardian of the current area. You can't just explore the world like in Prime. With Prime, you can go wherever you want, as long as you have the right tools for the job. Echoes doesn't even let you enter these new areas until you have collected the proper translator. And, once you defeat the guardian, you need to collect the energy, bring it back, and then go see U-Mos before you can officially enter the next area.
Then... there's the key hunting.
One other thing that makes Echoes the "worst" is the way the bosses were setup. I do like that they each needed a unique strategy to defeat, but they weren't consistent in terms of difficulty. Prime's bosses gradually got tougher as you fought them, ending with Metroid Prime being the toughest battle. (Again, under normal circumstances. The Omega Pirate becomes a contender for hardest boss on low percent runs.) Echoes doesn't follow this, as the Boost and Spider Guardians prove. They are about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through, and yet they give you more trouble than Dark Samus 2,3, and 4 or quite possibly Emperor Ing.
This is just my perspective on the subject. Obviously, as the favorite game listing in the Statistics proves, each Metroid game is considered a favorite by somebody here.
(Woah: Didn't mean to make such a long post about why I don't like Echoes as much as the others.)
...as for Corruption, almost everything I've seen or heard so far I have liked. The controls will take some getting used to, but that happens when any new console/handheld comes out. (This time it will be even more so due to the vast differences in the Wii from everything else we know.) Just as long as they don't have the same issues that I mentioned above with Echoes, I should really enjoy playing this game over and over again. (On a side note, Fusion has been impressing me lately with the fact that the last few times I played it, I've been liking it more and more than I used to.)
Quote from jalapeno:
That way, you can never really get the complete experience with just one playthrough...
I already feel that way with Metroid games. Being able to choose between doing an any%, 100%, or low% run does that for me.
Quote from jalapeno:
Also, I hope that the upcoming game is extremely difficult.
Unfortunately, Retro themselves have pretty much stated that they plan on making it a bit easier than Prime and Echoes were.
Edit: ...and once again, those Evil page breaks have struck!