I haven't beaten either game, and while Castlevania definitely is a chore right of the bat, I feel like Metroid, with a bit more varied basic combat and the opressive horror atmosphere makes the backtracking thing work. I never felt bored cause I was always too afraid of what horrible alien abomination is gonna randomly jump out at me next and what if I run out of rockets when I need them most ahhh! Then again I'm a whimp and am afraid of a lot of games that are supposed to be just action.
tldr Metroid > Castlevania, don't ya pile em together imma cut you ?
With that out of the way it's my day job to hate games everyone likes:
Mario - like what's even good about it if you are not like 3?
Sonic - they so busy making it fast, they didn't stop to think if it's any fun
Pokemon - let us demonstrate everything that is wrong with jrpg gameplay
Final Fantasy - can you be more incoherent? ... ah, yeah, SMT, right...
Earthbound - does it have a good story? I don't know cause gameplay is so boring my brain shuts off before I can get anywhere
Zelda - there was one good game on a gameboy, for a gameboy game... that's it...
Doom - cheap wolfenstein reskin, made it worse and introduced and popularized some of the worst FPS mechanics
Diablo 2 - has anybody played the 1st? are yall blind? lizzard is what it is now cause you gobbled this shit up, smh
Metal Gear - more like mid gear
God of War - press button - watch cartoon, lets adventure game fans pretend they like hack and slash
Dark Souls - From Software just can't make a hack and slash if their lives depended on it, it's so bad buyers remorse be like "no, this can't be, it must be intentional", so they just doubled down on it so hard there is no going back, everyone will have to pretend it's a thing now forever to save face
The Witcher 3 - ok, we have officially gone off rails, point of no return, this is proof the industry is just hopelessly fucked, to anyone who thinks this is good - you are the reason we can't have nice things anymore