7 Hours Shaved off of My Second Metroid Dread Run - Still Not Fast Enough

 My initial run of Metroid Dread took about 12 hours. My second (still on normal mode) took just over 5. Now, the second time around I basically did zero backtracking. I paused in a few places to collect some scattered hidden items (I did the Burenia Shinespark Puzzle again I think just to prove to myself I could, which probably added a good ten minutes,) though it also let me skip a whole bunch of Burenia en route to the Gravity Suit).

I don't know exactly how time is tracked - as I understand, pausing also pauses the stopwatch, as it were. But I also suspect that multiple attempts on a boss will count toward it.

Some of the latter bosses still gave me some trouble - I think Escue took me like 4 or 5 attempts. Raven Beak took I believe 4 attempts.

Actually, on Raven Beak - first off, what a cool fight (though the second phase seems very dependent on RNG). I found that just spamming the wave beam was actually faster than missiles during the counter animation in the second phase - I was able to get him to phase 3 in just two counters, rather than 3.

I also found that 4 Power Bombs was not quite enough to wipe out every big "sun" ability he used in the final phase, so I was forced to dodge (the penultimate attempt I made I got the sun and his charged shots at the same time, which wiped me out).

Under 8 hours but over 4 meant that I got the Samus Returns image for the gallery. I did this on a new file, so my Chozo Archives unlocked on the first file are not filled in (I think I got the Hanubia one, though, as there are like two items to find there, and I got them both.)

One thing that I read is that when you unlock all the teleporters, you can choose which one you go to, which would have been very useful for backtracking to get items, but I haven't yet confirmed that.

Other than just never dying to bosses, I'm not really sure what I could do to shave off that extra hour and ten minutes I'd need to get the under 4 hour ending reward. I don't know that I'm going to really work too hard to do so - after two full runs, I think I should probably let Metroid Dread sit for a while so I don't totally burn out on it.

I do still really hope that Nintendo either finds a way to add some DLC content or comes out with another Metroid game in the next couple years. Of course, in theory Metroid Prime 4 is still in the works. I'm very curious to see what future Metroid games will be about. Supposedly Dread is the culmination of the story that started with the original game, though I kind of feel like it's more of a sequel to Metroid Fusion, which was sort of the start of a new story after Super Metroid.

We'll see.